It’s too damn hot

In Bombay we are stewing on that thin line between giving up the ghost and keeping hope alive Yaniki the fortnight between summer and monsoonSummer has cooked and booked us Alphonsos have ceased to console Images of concave maidens in mulmul trailing mogras and gravely eating melon in cool dark havelis no longer evokes vintage summer nostalgia only hatred The alleged sensualities of summer have given way to the grim truth of sweat We are miserably restlessly waiting for the rains Any day now we are told A meditative patience is called for but Americans have strangely not yet invented hot meditationOf course we Bombayvasis know these cusps we have so many of them There is the waiting on platform five for the fast train which is announced as approaching even as slow train upon slow train goes by on platform three Some stand on that nomanrsquosland between slow and fast called the overbridge wanting to do chance pe dance and go wherever it comes but many of us stand leaning over the tracks in tense hopeful apprehension of the rain mera matlab hai train We wait the same way for an Uber driver to be found for the air to clear for a government to changemdashbut only the climate does Cusp ki kasam resilient hain hum When the water in taps is boiling hot we gamely consider it a way to save gas This is what creates the phrase bechara bahut accha haiEven as New York is going through a New Delhi phase here each summer feels the hottest ever Increasingly that is as young friends like to say literally true This is the latest the rains have been since 2009 but theyrsquore coming theyrsquore coming like the fast train Meanwhile schools in the North have announced that they have extended their summer holidays because the heat wave is so bad students canrsquot study and teachers canrsquot teachOn Wednesday the Ministry of Education issued a set of guidelines as long as a Delhi bus queue on how to continue classes in the heatwave Sachets of ORS salt and sugar solution to treat mild heatstroke should be readily available in the schools A first aid kit should be available in the busvan Parents should be sensitised to pick up the students themselves to avoid crowding in public transportSchool hai ki trip to Everest base camp Who is the parent they imagine ldquosensitisingrdquomdash one who doesnrsquot have to take public transport or go to work The reality of government schools is overcrowding poor ventilation lack of water and toilets There is so much to set students back Natural calamitiesmdashheat waves pandemicsmdashshow up the truth of our structures which render the poor ever more vulnerable The summers get hotter but over the years summer holidays get shorter A long fallow summer break is rejected as rank indulgence because we can only imagine people in service to systems not the other way round In 2022 the Delhi government declared only a 15day summer break to make up for time lost to lockdowns We will burn but we wonrsquot reimagine education Quite like cities will burn because we cannot reimagine politics maybe Naturersquos just copying us What we wouldnrsquot do for a different kind of climate change cusp ki kasamParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom