Summer is Here

Now it is coming back, like an ache that returns with the weakening of anesthetics, and I find myself awash with the discomforts that had never quite gone away. I am writing about the Chennai Summer, of course.

There have been many books romanticizing the monsoon, but can anyone do it to summer? I think if you are reasonably skilful, you can. But no one has dared or been sufficiently inspired to do that. There is only one passage I remember that deals with these humid, sultry summers- it is about the heat in Calcutta, and I somehow associate it with the famous Black Hole Massacre or something when the British were thrown into a dry well to die. You can guess how bad my experience of the summers here is.

The point of Chennai Summer is that it is always there, the heat, sweat and the thirst, all the year round. It is only as if by inadvertence that you find relief from it, and sooner or later, you awaken to its terror.

The next six or seven months are going to be horrible here, and I hope I don’t make much of a moan about that. Instead of that, I will try to find and enjoy reading about the hot weather everywhere around the world.

That is the best course open for me, I think- I can’t get away from here, so I better try to find something good about it.