Give us water, O black clouds

 

Kaale megha, paani de!

(Give us water, O black clouds!)

Is it global warming? Is the earth’s atmosphere changing as our planet ages?

Is it the effect of the pandemic?

Or is it simply our slowly-lowering capacity to withstand cyclic weather changes as the pages on the calendar change with the months flying by?

Whatever the weather experts say the answer is, summers are slowly becoming more and more unbearable not only for me, but also for most others if their mutterings and mumblings about the heat and worse, humidity  are anything to go by.

 

Just a few months ago I shared with you that I prefer the winters https://anupamaexcursions.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-it-already-goodbye-winter.html

because summers are turning crueler in not only our country but also the rest of the world.

  

Consider the cold climes where traditionally people never needed air-conditioners like Russia, Canada, and the seas around the North Pole. Now they witness fast-melting glaciers rising seawater levels and even forest fires. It is no wonder then that Russian President Putin likes to pose shirtless.

A friend’s sons who returned from trips to Kashmir valley and Leh early this week, told how the sun-rays were scorching and the heat was intense during the day. It was so warm that the thick woolens, jackets, gloves and boots they had carried to fight the cold, were merely lugged around and they never got a chance to wear except some of them at night.

The weather sites try to console me that the temperatures outside are merely between 30 and 37 degrees Celsius, but they also mention the 75-95 percent relative humidity which makes things difficult.

According to https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/why-the-monsoon-stalled-in-2021-blame-it-on-anomalous-world-weather-77911

As of July 12, the monsoon winds over India have remained stalled for 24 days. This is one of the longest such hiatus in the progress of the monsoon season over India in recent time and even if the monsoon revives, it may remain weak for the next week or so.

The monsoon stalling is also one of the reasons for the spate of heat waves in the north and northwest India for the past few weeks.

Elena Surovyatkina, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam, Germany, and a principal researcher at Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia, Surovyatkina predicts that the monsoon will reach Delhi after July 11, a prediction she had made at the beginning of May, but the rains may begin in earnest only after July 19.

All of us have grumbled about getting out of the bathroom and feeling that film of sweat slowly covering our bodies which in a sweaty and irritated state, one had gone to wash off in the first place. After all how many times can one take a bath!

My sympathies are with the two-wheeler riders who are happy with the breeze as long as the vehicle is moving. But with a helmet on the head and a mask on the nose and mouth, they feel like a cake baking in the oven when they have to stop at the traffic signals or in a traffic jam.

The need to go about your work even within the house is difficult and it does not matter how comfortably but shabbily you are dressed. Switch on the AC to fight the humidity and then you do not want to go out in the humid weather again. No wonder, those who can afford it, have started looking for centrally air-conditioned residential buildings. And right now, I am not talking of the issue of paying the bills for this comfort.

Yet one simply has to dress up decently and go out to work or just to run errands. How stifling can that be! Even standing in the tiny cubicle of the ATM with non-working fans and air-conditioners is suffocating. And how can people actually crowd fabric and clothes stores in this heat?

When we were small, air conditioners were a huge thing. The cinema halls were the only places and they ran them at such low temperatures that one had cold feet and hands by the time the movie show was over. (There are people who run the keep the temps at 18 to 21 degrees and use a blanket.)

Now I don’t even remember how we tolerated this weather when we were children. It is not that it was not warm and humid in those times. Maybe we had more exciting things to occupy our minds and did not have enough time to sit and curse the weather.

In compliance with Covid protocol, children are studying from home. But with rains being absent, they are missing getting drenched in the rain, splashing in the puddles showing off their colorful raincoats and swirling their umbrellas as are we, savoring hot pakoras with cups of chai or impromptu picnics under cloudy skies with a cool breeze blowing.

Scores of songs and poems have been written about rains, but can you tell me just one about the Indian summers, please? How will the heroes and heroines in our films now do their romantic song and dance routines, an essential part of our masala films? As it is one sometimes notices that even during a rain scene, rays of the sun are coming from a window and you know the director has cheated and used the rain machine.

(Mani tells me that if one is in a very generous mood, then maybe Hindi poet Bihari's couplet about the heat of the summer is the only one which can take in a positive manner 

                                             कहलाते एकत बसत, अही, मयूर, मृग, बाघ

                                             जगत तपोवन सो कियो, दीरघ, दाघ, निदाघ  

meaning because of the intense heat arch-rivals snake and peacock or deer and tiger are sitting together in the shade of the tree to escape the heat. The heat has turned the world into a tapovan or the forest where one goes to do spiritual practice.)    

Are these merely urban issues? What about rural areas and smaller towns that do not have more than a 12-hour electricity supply? People tell me that with agricultural lands being sold fast and migration to towns, the pace of construction is increasing there too and open spaces with cool breeze is slowly shrinking.

June to September is the humid weather in India, yet these last two summers almost the whole of India has seen unusually high temperatures. Delhi recorded a minimum temp of 30 degrees C on July 8.

The few showers of rain early this month had brought hope for everyone. But they proved to be a false hope. I look at the clouds in the sky and the only simile that comes to my mind is of our politicians- all rumble, appearances, and no performance.

I worry about the farmers who have sown paddy in their fields and do not have good irrigation facilities due to a shortage of water and poor electricity supply. Water shortage and poor crops mean unavailability and higher prices, and everyone knows how that spiral works.

And here I am, pouring out more than a thousand words just because it struck my mind that whoever propounded the idiotic  theory that the Covid-19 virus would die in summer should now be taken to court for spreading rumors.    

                                                                     

                                                                                           -Anupama S Mani