I credit this post to the last few weeks of bad mornings. They weren't bad in the usual way. I don't like waking up to the mixer grinder sound, traffic sound, or even people talking loudly in the morning. If you remember, this is practically how most of us grew up.
Decades passed by. I wish one of the things hardware makers solved was noise. Noise from kitchen, noise from different appliances and all things where noise doesn't add any functional value.
I’m tired of the noise!
The plastic lid on my last mixer-grinder cracked three months in. I taped it back, adjusted the way I press it down. It still works. Sort of. The steel almirah in our home growing up squeaked every morning, loud enough to wake the house. The pressure cooker handle wobbles when I lift it. The fan rattles, even after I cleaned it. The switchboards, once white, is now some faded shade of yellow, the corners are chipped, and the plastic case is now brittle.
Everywhere I look, there’s something that doesn’t deserve to be touched.
We've been taught to adjust
We grow up with all these products around us. In our house, in restaurants, in our relatives' houses when we go there for summer vacation and at places we step out to dine. And we grow up believing this is just how things are.
Our understanding becomes that plastic will always crack. We think noise is normal. That “design” is for someone else. We’ve learned to fix, to adjust, to live with. It tells us that well designed is not for us, that durability is a luxury, that noise is power, and that as long as it works, we should be content.
Most mixer-grinder motors are strong but over months, the jars go yellowing with turmeric stain and the rubber gaskets becomes loose. Water purifiers gave clean water but almost all were bulky in form, beeping was a normal phenomenon and the device generally never looked like it belonged in your kitchen. Plastic chairs are cheap and convenient but they bend, creak and we either buy again or upgrade to something more expensive.
In most of these situations, we adjust and we repair. And then we buy again.
What we don't do enough is demand better.
Possible reasons behind this
Indian hardware is driven by manufacturing and not design. Most of our everyday products are made in factories that prioritise volume over value. The same OEM factories that produce for ten different brands with only cosmetic differences. Practically, in these environments design won't thrive. Pick a model, slap on a brand, tweak the colour. The OEM decides.
We’re told we’re a price-sensitive country, right? But we spend ₹50,000+ on a smartphone, but make do with ₹3,000 mixers that fail in three years. Actually, we don’t mind spending, we mind being cheated. We value products that work, that last, that feel right. We don't want cheap. We want value.
If you look around, our homes are humid, dusty, vibrant, full of life. The most well designed products we used are usually designed for Western homes with minimal interiors and also in controlled environments. For us, the white plastic appliances turn yellow or grey with dust. The chrome plating peels off.
We pay for bad design
Fans hum like machines, mixers scream like engines. We are paying for lazy engineering with noise.
Parts of appliances fail and materials decay. We're paying for short-sighted cost-cutting with poor quality.
Frequent servicing, repairing, and replacing. We're paying for lack of depth & expertise with time.
What if
What if the mixer-grinder hummed softly, with jars that don’t stain and lids that don’t crack?
What if the washing machine didn't vibrate to walk across the floor, doesn’t clang at the end of every cycle, and uses metal parts that last, not plastic & MDF tops that wear?
What if the kitchen chimney silently cleared smoke, without sounding like an airplane engine?
What if the door lock closed with a soft, confident thud, not a bang. A handle that feels solid in your hand, with no rattling or fear of jamming, even after years of use?
Possible? Yes. They just have to be designed right.
The smooth, matte yet familiar texture of material, that right amount of click of a switch and that silence in the running motor. Using materials that age with grace. If we design products right, we will truly be designing for Indian homes where spaces are shared and the hands touching are rough.
What I see coming
I’m not just writing this to complain. I’m writing this because I know better is possible. I’ve used better products. I’ve seen what it feels like to hold something that’s been made with thought, and care.
And that’s what I want.
Not just for me but for everyone. We touch these objects every day. They fill our homes, our kitchens, our hands. They should feel like they belong. Not because they’re expensive. But because they’re ours, and they were made with care.
And maybe I’m not the only one. Maybe you're tired of fixing, replacing and buying things that feel like compromise.
It’s time we built products that deserve to be loved.
