Chennai Heat

Saturday 24th May 2008
I love the sun. Don't get me wrong. My idea of a perfect holiday, no a perfect day, is a bright blue sky and a golden orb of fire blazing down upon everything, especially me.

Well, the Chennai Summer sun is something completely different - it is debilitatingly, unendingly, burningly hot. You take a breath, and you can feel the tiny airways in your lungs screaming for mercy from the firebreath you just took. On the first of May, the month of Fire begins. It does not end until the beginning of June. Even then, it is not really a respite, just more muggy humidity and more exhaustion and electricity overload. On that subject - power cuts are becoming more and more the norm rather than the exception. We have recently had a new a/c installed in the sitting room (B could not cope with the minute amounts of cool air from the old one!) However, no-one thought to tell us that the voltage coming into the house from the central Electricity Board was verging on 150 instead of 240 watts. Result - no a/c working, madam! this is even more frustrating as tempers run high in this sort of weather.

I think we should all take a lesson from the cows, bullocks and stray dogs in the Boat Club neighbourhood and simply plop down in the nearest bit of shade, and try a bit of shut-eye for the most part of the day. Moving, standing and even walking are left until the Big Ball of Fire in the Sky dips below the horizon!