To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Monday, November 04, 2019
 
The oven in our shared home had a problem. The person who came to fix it moved the oven a bit to figure out what’s wrong and it turned out that it was actually sitting on the wire which is how the wire must have cracked. He told me that he would bring a new oven to replace this one. My spontaneous reaction no doubt ingrained in me over the years in my experience of how such issues are usually dealt with in India was to ask if the wire couldn’t be replaced. I am not usually curious about electric, electronic, technological matters and I am painfully aware of my lack of knowledge in this area but I must have been really surprised that this small problem must mean such a huge deal that I couldn’t stop myself from asking. His answer was something like “oh yes, I can. Let me get a new wire!” I was flabbergasted! I mean, I couldn’t really fathom that it was actually possible to fix the wire and the chap thought of replacing the entire oven instead!

This got me thinking about the cultural difference. In India we make do with resources or fix them till they can be fixed no more. If the soles of our shoes break off, we get them mended; if the wires in the umbrella get bent out of shape, we get them repaired; if the blades in the grinders stop moving, we get them new blades (incidentally my grinder developed this problem and my mom has taken it back to India to get it fixed)… but here one would throw away the shoe, the umbrella, the grinder and buy new ones. It makes sense too because you’d probably pay more to fix these items here (unless one is an electrician like the oven guy) than to replace them. And one is so used to this ‘replacement’ mind-set that even in a situation where fixing is a viable option one does not think of it (like the oven guy) whereas the fixing option comes to mind first to me because that’s the option we always go for when something breaks down back home… getting a new one is the last option and only explored after every other option has been exhausted.

This brings me to another incident that happened today. I had bought a brand new jacket with a zip broken because it was on a discount and because it also had buttons. I assumed I’d be able to wear it well with the buttons and might get my mom to help me fix it when I see her in December but the buttons didn’t really work as planned. The jacket was a bit too snug ;) …and the buttons would pop open which is not much help in the winter. So I took it to a cobbler’s shop where they said they couldn’t fix it but pointed me to a place where they mended clothes. I was pretty happy to know such a place even existed because so far I had never come across any ‘mending’ options. I went there, showed my jacket, and the zipper that had come off… the response was that I would need to replace the entire zipping paraphernalia from the jacket which apparently would cost me more than the jacket itself! I asked her if she couldn’t try fastening the zipper into its place in the jacket. Her answer was an emphatic ‘no’ at first but when I said I couldn’t afford to pay more than the jacket to fix it she said she’ll see what she could do. She then used some of her implements to get the zipper locked into place in the jacket and it worked… just like that, in 5 minutes. She didn’t charge me anything though I kept insisting (extremely kind of her I thought!). Again the first option and presumably also the last that she came up with was to replace the entire equipment rather than to see if she could fix the zipper!

Makes me wonder about the culture of ‘use and throw’ that we as a society are moving toward. Not just here but also in India where the more affluent or upper middle class are concerned… instead of using creative ways to fix things we now simply go for something new… the motivation to fix something is also lacking in that sense… why put effort into fixing the old when you could get a new one for cheaper… it seems to me that this makes us value things in themselves also much less… we do not see them as long-term durable assets that need to be cared for and maintained but as short-term replaceable goods …ready to be thrown at the first sign of a defect… it’s not difficult to see how this attitude may spread to other areas of life including relationships… maybe what we think of as purely economic behaviour has the power to transform our general behaviour by transforming our notion of ‘value’?

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:50 am 0 comments
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