IN NEW DELHI
FOR the last few days, I have been locked up in a sauna that has no exit. My skin is burning; I'm perpetually thirsty.
Water, that elixir of life, is all that you want. Beer, of course, is preferred to the elixir. Food? Oh, No... But lots and and lots of fruits, please, particularly water melon and mangoes, though nutritionists say that the two work at cross purposes. One cools the system, the other exactly the opposite.
The searing summer heat has been beating down mercilessly and I and the teeming millions that share this city are trapped in our saunas that we till recently used to call our homes and offices.
Luckily for me, I work from home. But the few times I ventured out for pressers and meet up with some friends, I cursed myself. It felt like fire-walk.
Not that being at home is much better. Prolonged power cuts have rendered air conditioners useless. Luckily again for me, the housing society where I live has back-up generators; so at least the fans runs, though grudgingly. But with intermittent power cuts, the automatic switch-on system to the generator has been messed up, which means one has to seek the help of the society electrician repeatedly to check the trip switch.
Nights are the worst. That's when the walls radiate the heat that they have absorbed all through the day. And that's exactly when power outages are acute. You don't know whether more heat is being generated from the walls and the ceilings or from the mattress you are trying to sleep on. Even when the power comes on, often only to go again, it takes time to cool the room.
There have been attacks on the power distribution company offices in different parts of the city by angry residents, who stoned and ransacked the offices and damaged the cars parked outside. An angry group gathered outside the house of Delhi's Finance Minister A.K. Walia in east Delhi's Laxmi Nagar locality because they thought he was still in charge of power, the portfolio he held during the government's last term.
“Two groups of people, about 200 each, arrived at my house. The area has been facing a very grim situation for the past week, especially at night. They were desperate and I assured them that we are looking into the matter,” Mr Walia said.
The popular Chief Minister Mrs. Shiela Dikshit admits that power outages of 8-10 hours “can't be tolerated”. She said the central government has assured her government 150 MW of additional power and the situation would improve in the next few days.
Promises, promises... Haven't we heard all this in the previous summers too, ask the cynics.
Mrs Dikshit says the central government would give an additional 40,000-50,000 MW of power to the capital from alternate sources likes hydro and nuclear-based plants in the future.
“Ha!” snorts the cynics.
Everyone knows that the immediate and perhaps the only remedy to the killing heat are the rains. And the city, mind you only parts of it, received what the weatherman calls “pre-monsoon” showers” on Sunday and Monday to the utter relief of the people as the temperature dipped from the sweltering 44 degrees Celsius to still steamy a few degrees below.
The good news is that the monsoon is expected to set in by next week, though the rains have often belied the weatherman's predictions.
While man can somehow deal with the summer heat, what about animals and birds? One blazing afternoon last week, when no humans, animal or birds stirred, we spied a member of the mynah family that daily forays among the plants on our balcony sill peeping in with its head cocked to one side, beaks wide open and literally gasping. My wife immediately put water in a stoneware and kept it out. And soon, the entire family of three were quenching their thirst.
Now they know where to get water. But even after several helpings, the father mynah kept its beaks wide open and keeps on looking at us. I wonder he is thanking us or holding us responsible for messing up the climate.
Read the P. Jayaram's story Tempers fray as Delhi reels from heatwave in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.