A note before you read — this essay is about our years in Sydney, where we arrived in 2015 for my husband’s project. Some memories stay with us not because they were grand but because they quietly became part of who we were in that season of life. This fridge is one of mine.
When we relocated to Sydney in 2015 I was focused, as you are when you arrive somewhere new, on the practical work of beginning again.
Finding an apartment. Buying furniture. Choosing appliances. Creating, from scratch, something that felt like home — in a country where you know almost nobody and everything from the supermarket layout to the tap water tastes slightly different from what you know.
Through friends who had made the same move before us, I learned something useful: families on temporary assignments often bought second-hand appliances. The logic was sound. Why spend on a brand new refrigerator you will leave behind in a year or two? Buy second-hand, use it well, leave it when you go. Save the money for something that matters more.
I thought this was an excellent idea. I was, at this point, still optimistic about second-hand appliances.
After some research I found an appliance shop in Burwood, run by a Chinese gentleman who had clearly built a small but reliable business out of this exact need. Everything was cleaned, checked, priced according to age, and declared perfectly functional.
I chose two — a refrigerator and a washing machine.
Both arrived and worked perfectly.
For a while.
The Revelation
It was the refrigerator that first revealed its true nature.
I noticed it gradually. The fridge, I came to understand, had developed its own philosophy about temperature — one that was entirely responsive to the weather outside and entirely indifferent to what I needed inside.
When the Sydney weather was cold, the fridge became warm.
When the weather turned warm, everything inside froze.
This was not a minor quirk. Vegetables emerged from the fridge in states that could only be described as shocked — so thoroughly frozen that thawing them resulted in something limp and flavourless and entirely unsuitable for cooking. The milk, which I bought with the genuine intention of using it sensibly, had its own ideas about how long it wanted to remain milk.
The freezer, I should note, behaved with complete normality — the sensible, reliable member of a slightly chaotic household.
The beeper was the fridge’s other strong personality trait. It gave a strict ten-minute window for any interaction. Door open, item retrieved or placed, door closed — all within ten minutes. Not nine. Not eleven. Ten. It beeped with the authority of something that had decided this was the rule and was not interested in negotiation.
What the Fridge Taught Me
I tried to work with its personality. This is, I think, what you do when you are new to a country and a little low on options.
I learned to buy milk in smaller quantities. I learned to store vegetables according to the fridge’s mood rather than my own preference. I learned to cook exactly enough for the meal — no more, no less — so there would be nothing requiring storage.
And I learned to make paneer.
The first time the milk spoiled I felt guilty about the waste — that particular guilt of someone managing a budget carefully in a new country where every dollar is accounted for. But then I remembered something and I made paneer instead. My husband, who is a committed enthusiast of anything involving paneer, received this development with great happiness. Over the following months I discovered several paneer recipes I might never have found otherwise.
There was something the fridge was teaching me, I slowly realised — not about refrigeration, but about adjustment. About improvisation. About finding the workable solution inside the inconvenient situation. About how humour — genuine, affectionate humour, the kind you direct at an old inanimate object that is clearly just doing its best — can soften the daily friction of a life that is not quite running the way you planned.
These are, I would later understand, Sydney lessons. Not the ones in the guidebooks. The real ones.
The Final Chapter
I eventually replaced the fridge after a few months. It was time — and I had learned what I was going to learn from it.
But it chose to leave on a remarkable note.
The last batch of milk it spoiled led, in a sequence of events that still strikes me as improbable, to my making Rasgulla entirely from scratch. No shortcuts. No ready-made mixes. No previous experience with Rasgulla making. Just spoiled milk, an unreliable fridge, and the particular stubbornness that comes from not wanting the milk to win.
The Rasgulla worked. It was good — genuinely, properly good. I ate it quietly, just me, a small private victory in a Sydney kitchen.
I replaced the fridge the following week.
Now, back in Bangalore, when those Sydney years return in unexpected ways — and they do, in the smell of certain coffee, in the memory of particular streets, in the sound of rain on a different kind of roof — I find I remember that fridge with something close to fondness.
It was inconvenient and impractical and slightly absurd.
It also taught me to measure carefully, waste less, improvise more, and find the small triumph available inside most frustrating situations.
Some memories stay not because they were grand. But because they quietly became part of who we were in that season of life.
This fridge is one of mine.