This isn’t about people dying of heat at a political rally because I had a feeling the title of this column could compel a few readers to recall that incident. In fact, I would like to reiterate that there has been no incident involving the death of any Indian resident at any political rally in our country’s history. Any report alluding to that possibility has inadvertently come from some gullible uncle on WhatsApp and must be ignored the way our government has taught us to. To reiterate, political rallies are great, and no one dies at any of them.

No, this column is about the heat wave sweeping through large swathes of our country, making it harder for us to imagine what the coming century is going to look like. Will our cities and towns by the sea disappear a few decades from now? Will cities that lie far from water bodies be rendered uninhabitable? Will there be mass migration from rural India to urban hubs in a few years? Will our current resources be able to cope with the strain of what is to come? Will ground water levels drop to worrying levels?