Summertime Blues

“April is the cruelest month,” T.S Eliot wrote in “Burial of The Dead.”  He said the month “bred lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory with desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

That must have been a non-wasted land where spring brings with it hope, verdure, ‘beautiful days’ as most westerners describe their months mostly during this time of year, and literally a spring-back into one’s life. Not here. Because in India, April, or at least the end of it, is truly cruel.  It breeds nothing, the land begins to dry up, aching for water, and reminiscing time is spent delving into memories and desires of the cooler months gone by for succour and support.  April, and the three months that follow, are certainly not the kind that stir and awaken the soporific winter roots. Those are over and done with by March.

In fact, April announces the fading away of the pleasant January to March weather, encourages the deflowering of trees, evident on streets that are littered with flowers scattered and desecrated under trodden feet, announces the onslaught of an imminent, insufferable summer, and proclaims that increasing temperatures, while we await for pre-monsoon showers and monsoon rains, are going to ensure the death of all things bright and beautiful–the colourful gardens and the green foliage that so delighted and uplifted our spirits through the first quarter of the year– at least till the time the earth moves along some on its axis, and brings back to us the exhilaration of mind and body that good weather guarantees.

Basically, the coming of April forebodes the hibernation of growth, movement and expectations for a few months. It means we expend a large part of our waking hours indoors and find other things to do while the dust settles, literally and metaphorically, for us to emerge and venture out again, at an earthly hour of our choice, to do so many things that we couldn’t in summer.

For me, I’ve got to get up real early to beat the heat. During my morning walk these days, and I do this before the road is swept clean, I see wilted flowers and leaves that cover my track, trampled by walkers.  I see some half-blooming and some close-to-barren trees that are in the process of shedding their colourful flowers and leaves—red, yellow and pink–almost apologetically for those of us who have admired them.  The birds still hum around the few flowers that are hanging in, displaying a die-hard, un-succumbing spirit, for nectar.  It’s like they’ve both—the birds and the flowers–made a self-sustaining pact that refuses to let April interfere in their March-on plans! One for the road, kind of feeling I get!  Good for them!

As the month moves on and summer sets in full blast, these sightings start to recede and I miss the externally stimulating sights for sore eyes and the inspiration and lively feeling they instil in me after my health trip.  It’s quite disheartening to see my entire eco-system recede, as I sponge off the sweat gathering on my forehead and neck as I walk.

This seasonal transition brings about many other ineluctable factors that makes the experience a lot more difficult.  There are power cuts, water shortages and mosquitoes, the only ones, or perhaps a small majority, that procreate at this time of year–apocryphal inference, I could be wrong!  The entire package is energy-sapping and debilitating.  This happens year after year, but it always catches me unprepared, just like the establishment that hasn’t doesn’t enough to mitigate the onslaught of the recurrent, scorching heat and the problems that come with it.

There are other countries that deal with hot weather too, we are not alone. Some of those have the wherewithal and monies to tackle the blitzkrieg of hot temperatures better.  Then there are some that are even worse off than us who must accept nature’s ways and deal with them the best they can. I feel their pain, as I do for so many of my countrymen who die every year because of the heat wave.

We’ve got to get our act together to better handle power and water shortages.  We’ve got to make this more sustainable.

And if someone’s going to tell me to cool it, I’m going to say, “Really?”

Show me the way by saving water and power! Just do it!