An Old Fridge

A fridge is a considered a necessity today but there was a time when it was more of a luxury and novelty than a necessity. One of the first major appliances my parents bought was a 165 liter fridge or refrigerator when we were kids. It was a special moment for the whole family as we were upgrading from the water cooled in “Matka” to water cooled by the magic machine as we used to call it back then. The arrival of the fridge was a special event in our family.

Nowadays most people like to keep there fridge in the kitchen but I am talking about the days when fridge was a status symbol (at least for our family) so a prominent corner in the drawing room was vacated for the esteemed machine.

Once the fridge arrived and was unpacked we marveled at its snow white complexion and wondered how we will keep it clean. Our mother gave us an elaborate lecture on why we should not be touching it and how costly it is and what fate we had in store if we touched it with dirty hands.

A sudden debate started between my mother and grandmother on how to do the puja of the fridge. My grandmother wanted to place the OM and Swastika marks on the fridge but my mother was reluctant to put anything on the fridge as it will soil the fridge. Finally a compromise was reached and grandmother made a Swastika and OM on water bottle and it was placed in fridge to be cooled. With this the tempers as well as the water started to cool down in the house.

Our fridge was a hit with all my friends in the neighborhood even with those who had a fridge before us. The reason being our fridge had a small tap kind of thing outside so you could get cold water without opening the fridge. This was a major innovation in those days though such fridge due to some reason never took off.

This fridge served our family for many years but finally became old and again was responsible for temperatures soaring in our family along with electricity bills.

I will be writing about the same in the next blog, while I am continuing to do my research on the tax saving bonds. Some of my friends have emailed me to check which tax saving bond they should buy L&T or IIFCL

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