Unlocking a Tata air conditioner

A couple of days ago, I bought an air conditioner to replace the one we had used in our bedroom for ages – and thereby hangs a tale.

The AC was not a high-tech machine. Far from it. A non-inverter window AC, it looked more conventional than the one it was meant to replace. But, unfortunately for me, it was one of those “special” models whose “activation,” demanded what the manufacturing company, Voltas, called “unlocking.” What followed was a comedy of errors in three scenes.

In Scene One, my electrician, who never tires of telling me and my wife that he is a world-class electrician, plumber and carpenter all rolled into one, spent about an hour removing the old AC, doing a bit of carpentry for the frame, fixing the new cabinet, and placing the new AC unit into it, lecturing me all the time about the significance of each piece of work. Pausing for some time to view and admire his own accomplishment, he now set about the task of weatherproofing and insulation. When the demonstration-cum-lecture was over, he strutted peacock-like from one side of the machine to the other, and announced with something of the air of Molvolio that everything was perfect. Then he turned the MCB on and pressed the power button on the remote.

Nothing happened. There was no response from the AC.

It was a classic bedroom farce: plenty of flirting and foreplay with no fulfilment. I heard a slight snort now and looked back. Shanthi was doubled over with silent laughter. She gestured me to follow her, and we quietly moved out of the bedroom.  When we reached the living room, she burst out laughing like a free-flowing drain and said, ‘It serves him right for making a drama out of nothing. God, how he strutted and bragged like Chaunticleer!’ I rebuked her, ‘Why are you gloating at his failure? The AC is ours after all.’

When, a minute later, we went back to the scene of no action, the electrician looked completely spent. There was no need to ask him whether I could call a Voltas technician.

Scene Two opens on a short, undernourished Voltas technician (SUVT) arriving on my balcony. He wore a pair of skimpy jeans far below his belly button, which accentuated his shortness, and a cheap, crumpled casual shirt with fading designs on it. With a scruffy beard and long, scraggly hair perfectly matching this sartorial disorder, he walked into the bedroom with a scraggier-looking technician following him. After fumbling with the AC for some time and attempting a conversation with Voltas Customer Care (CC), he looked at his scraggier colleague in a gesture of helplessness.

‘What’s the problem?’ I asked him.

‘CC cannot speak Telugu, sir,’ he said.

‘And that’s the only language you can understand, I suppose… Perhaps I can speak to CC.’

I called CC, opting for English. A CC executive spoke. It took me some time to figure out that what she spoke was English. And when, eventually, my ears got attuned to her lingo, I started passing on her instructions to SUVT.

‘Turn the power on. Does a code appear on the display screen?’

‘Yes, c1.’

‘c1, OK. Now, note down this password.’

‘OK.’

‘Turn the remote on now.’

‘Done it.’

‘Press the saver key on the remote. Keep pressing it for ten seconds. Now, what do you see on the remote display?’

‘0’

‘Now, use the UP or DOWN keys to select alphanumeric characters…’

This went on. After a certain stage, she said, ‘Sorry, sir, there is a technical problem. Please call us after some time.’

SUVT and his colleague looked tired after this exercise. They went out, came back, and went out again. When they returned, I asked them, ‘What’s the point of this walking exercise? Are you really Voltas technicians?’ ‘Yes, sir, but we’ve recently joined the company,’ SUVT said. ‘And we are not well up in activation techniques.’ ‘Why did you come then?’ I asked him. With a sheepish look, he took out of his pocket a smartphone whose size was disproportionate to his own diminutive figure and called a senior technician. ‘He’s on the way, sir. Will be here in five minutes.’

An hour later, two more technicians arrived, and Scene Three opened on a large congregation of Voltas technicians in my bedroom with my anxiety levels reaching a crescendo, given that the coronavirus was still around. The most senior of the technicians called the CC now, and started dancing like a cat on a hot tin roof: there was no one to speak to him in Telugu. I was the only one on the scene who could understand the Voltas CC lingo to some extent, and so I girded up my loins and pitched in. To cut a long story short, the AC was at last unlocked.

There was a serious epilogue to this otherwise farcical comedy. ‘Can you pay the installation charge, sir?’ asked the senior technician without looking shamefaced. ‘Rs 499 plus 18% GST plus…’ I gave him Rs 625 and dismissed all four of them. My electrician, who had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the activation drama, collected Rs 1800 and quietly left the place. The place was now rid of all the farceurs.

‘Tata is a great man,’ Shanthi mused reflectively.

‘How did you discover that?’

‘With employees whose skills seem to be little better than Neanderthal, he is able to produce a successful air conditioner. Isn’t that greatness?’

‘Indeed.’