Get ready for summer madness
Summer is here, more or less. The next 100 days will be hot and hotter. I live in North India where — as I think an Englishman wrote in the 18th century — it gets so hot that when stray dogs chase each other, they prefer to walk. I have vivid memories of the North Indian summers in the 1950s and 1960s. They were extraordinarily cruel. Then came the afforestation programmes surrounding Delhi with lakhs of trees. That changed things. Thus, before the trees grew fully, there used to be very massive dust storms. The Arabic word for them is khamsin. There would be hot winds that would gust at about 100kmph, fully laden with billions of tonnes of dust. The entire sky would turn black-brown and the sun would vanish behind the swirling muck.
But often these storms would come at night. As was the custom those days, when there were no cooling devices, everyone slept in the open. The worst storms would be upon us in under a minute and everyone had to scramble indoors shouting “aandhi, aandhi”. The next morning everything would be under at least an inch of dust. And then, unless the storm was accompanied by a thunderstorm — you know, the good old western disturbances that the Met Department loves to blame for everything — the dust would trap the heat as effectively as the fog traps the pollution now. Life would be hell for a few days after that. Even the dogs would stop chasing each other.
Back then, no one except the rajas and maharajas were rich enough to escape to the hills. There were no resorts, no hotels, no cottages for renting, nothing. You just stayed put wherever you were and at least for me there was no worse place than Gwalior. It’s situated in a massive bowl of volcanic stone. Because my father was posted there, I spent several summers in Gwalior. Luckily, there were no dust storms but the heat raining down during the day — and radiating up during the night — was unbelievable. I once saw a parrot drop dead from a tree. Seriously. Things are much better now, of course, because of the proliferation of cooling devices. The hills are also full of places where people can go and spend a few days.
For some reason we, Madrassis, think summer is a good time to get married — when the temperature is hovering in the upper 30s and the humidity is above 70. The men wear just a veshti. But the brides, oh the poor ones, are in silks and gold jewellery.
I never go because I know that when I return home the closed house will be like a furnace which takes at least six hours to cool even with all the ACs running full blast. The heated-up walls take even longer. The only good thing about the North Indian summer is that it kills the mosquitoes and drives the cockroaches and other bugs into dark areas. For about two months therefore there is peace of mind.
The South is different. For some reason that I have never been able to fathom, we, Madrassis, think summer is a good time to get married. April and May are the preferred months, when the temperature is hovering in the upper 30s and the humidity is above 70. The men, being men, wear just a veshti. But the brides, oh the poor ones, are in silks and gold jewellery. And the rituals can stretch for a couple of hours. Imagine what happens if the auspicious hour is after 9am. Everyone looks like a boiled potato.
Once, when my sister got married, I spent two months in Chennai in May and June because the wedding had to be postponed. A freak cyclone had hit Andhra and my would-be brother-in-law got stranded on a train for three days. Oh, and just for the record, in case you are wondering, I got married in August. In Bhopal. At 6am. It was like being in Switzerland.
That, as it turned out, was the best day of our marriage.
