Why I Want My Son to Switch Off the Lights

 Why I Want My Son to Switch Off the Lights


I am forever telling my son to switch off the lights and the fan when he leaves his room. And like most mothers, I sometimes wonder why I have to say the same thing again and again. So I thought I would actually do the maths. If we take a regular ceiling fan of about 75 watts and an LED bulb of about 9 watts, running them for 12 hours instead of 4 hours uses about 20 extra units of electricity every month, or about 245 units over a year. Depending on your electricity tariff, that may amount to only around ₹100 or so a month. Not exactly an amount that is going to change our lives.

There is, of course, an environmental cost too. If that same fan and light were left on for 24 hours a day instead of, say, 9 hours, they would use about 460 extra units of electricity over a year. Using the average carbon footprint of electricity supplied by the Indian grid, that works out to roughly 330 kg of additional CO₂ emissions in a year. So yes, there is a difference. But one fan and one light in one room are certainly not going to save the planet on their own.

And perhaps that is not even the main reason I keep asking him to switch them off.

For me, it is about the habit of caring. Switching off a light when you leave a room takes two seconds. Closing your almirah before you walk away takes another two. Making your bed in the morning takes a few minutes. None of these things, individually, are terribly important. But somewhere I feel that these tiny habits make a person. They say that you noticed. That you did not just leave something behind for somebody else to take care of. That you care about your things, your home, the resources you use and, in a very small way, the people who share that space with you.

So when I tell my son to switch off the fan, close his almirah and make his bed before he leaves, I don't think I am really trying to save electricity or keep a perfectly tidy room. I think I am trying to raise someone who cares. And maybe caring, like most things, begins with the smallest of habits.

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