Eighteen Degrees of Separation

The AC repairman is looking at our split unit like a doctor who has already written the death certificate but is waiting for the family to gather before making the announcement. “Compressor,” he says, the way people say “cancer” in Hindi movies, with a pause that costs more than the word itself. My father is standing next to him with his arms crossed, which is the universal posture of Indian men who are about to negotiate but want to appear like they’re not going to negotiate. “How much?” he asks. The repairman sucks air through his teeth. I’ve noticed that the cost of any repair in India is directly proportional to the amount of air sucked through teeth. More air, more money. It’s basic physics.

“Eight thousand,” the repairman finally says. My father laughs. Not a happy laugh. “Four thousand,” my father counters, and I know we’re going to be here for a while. I go back inside and sit under the ceiling fan that sounds like it’s chewing aluminum foil. We’ve had this fan since 2003. It has outlived three refrigerators, two washing machines, and my will to live through another summer. “We’ll get it repaired,” my father announces twenty minutes later, triumphant. “Six thousand.” Which means we’ve saved two thousand rupees and my father has won. The AC will be repaired by next week. We will sweat with pride until then.

Years later, I’m standing in an electronics showroom with my wife, and she’s pointing at an AC that costs more than our first car. “Inverter technology,” the salesman is saying, the way people say “blockchain” when they want you to feel stupid for not understanding. “Five-star rating. Copper coil. Smart features.” I’m nodding like I know what any of this means. The AC has WiFi. I don’t know why an AC needs WiFi. Maybe so it can ignore my commands remotely. “We should get the warranty,” my wife says. The extended warranty costs twelve thousand. I’m doing math in my head. Twelve thousand is two compressors in my father’s negotiation currency. It’s basically buying an entire backup AC that exists only as a promise. But I’m nodding. “Sure, let’s get it.”

The manual that comes with the AC is thicker than most novels I’ve attempted to read. There are instructions in seven languages. None of them are helpful. The remote control has forty-two buttons. Forty-two. I remember our old AC remote had five buttons: on, off, temperature up, temperature down, and one mysterious button with a snowflake that we pressed once in 2007 and the AC made a sound like a wounded animal. We never pressed it again. This new remote has buttons for “sleep mode,” “turbo mode,” “eco mode,” and something called “i-Feel.” I don’t want my AC to feel. I want it to cool. That’s the whole point of air conditioners. To condition the air when the air is being unreasonable.

I’m learning that adulthood is just paying for comfort in installments and calling it responsibility. My father sweated for twenty years so I could grow up and buy an AC that connects to WiFi. I will sweat through EMIs so my future children can buy ACs that probably run on thoughts or guilt. Progress, they call it. The other day, the AC stopped working at 3 AM. I spent fifteen minutes trying to fix it using the app on my phone. The app kept saying “Device not responding.” I wanted to throw my phone out the window. Instead, I did what my father would have done. I called the repairman. “Remote sensor issue,” he said. “Two thousand.” I didn’t negotiate. I’m my father’s son, but I’m also tired.

In “The Great Gatsby,” there’s a line about how the rich are different from you and me. Fitzgerald was talking about carelessness, about how money insulates you from consequences. But I think about it differently now. The rich are different because they never learned to sleep through heat. They never had to develop that superpower that middle-class Indians possess, the ability to convince yourself that twenty-eight degrees is actually quite pleasant if you think about it philosophically. They never had to have that internal debate at 2 AM: is it hot enough to warrant turning on the AC and facing next month’s electricity bill, or can I just wet a towel and drape it over myself like a corpse cosplaying as comfortable?

My wife keeps the AC at eighteen degrees. Eighteen. I grew up thinking twenty-four degrees was arctic luxury. But I don’t say anything. I just wear a hoodie indoors in May and pretend this is normal. Sometimes I calculate how much each hour of this coldness costs us. Then I feel my blood pressure rising. Then I try to sleep. The AC hums efficiently, cooling the room to temperatures that would make my father weep. Not from joy. From the electricity bill. But it’s my bill now. And somehow, that makes all the difference. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just becoming the person who spends money on comfort and calls it investment. The AC has a five-year warranty. That’s five years of guaranteed coolness. Or five years of guaranteed payments. Depending on whether you’re selling it or buying it.

At this point in life, I’ve realized that comfort is just the expensive gap between who we were and who we’re trying not to become. In that regard, the AC is working perfectly fine.