Summertime Blues

Come April (okay, March, who're we kidding?) and everyone around here begins to crib about the heat and the humidity and the electricity bills. Pretty much everyone mutters about 'global warming' in rather ominous tones and declares that this has got to be Bombay's hottest summer so far. Then, there are the discussions about how to 'beat the heat'. There's the air-conditioner of course, but what about the rest of us, who actually have to venture out on the streets and travel in trains and buses and work in places which do not have central air-conditioning? I suppose, we make do with several glasses of lemonade with ice-cubes that an enterprising mavshi provides for a small(ish) fee, the cheerily spiced cucumber slices bought from the railway stall on Parel station, the blueberry muffins eaten in the cool Tata cafe with its transplanted tropical palm trees on the first floor lounge, the watermelon and orange fruit dish outside Sarvodaya and then there are the lunch-time trips to the Amul ice-cream parlour, there's the sugarcane juicewallah down the road and I know that times are desperate when even my most misophobic friend demands a tall glass of juice with crushed ice, all notions of questionable hygiene aside.

But seriously, was it really always this hot in Bombay? My parents swear not. Dad has memories of walking from Sion hospital to Cafe Britannia and ordering endless bottles of sweet sticky strawberry soda with ice and sheltering in the comforting shade of the then numerous Irani cafes and small restaurants.

I suppose it has something to do with the increasing concretisation of the city coupled with the exponentially increasing motor vehicles, if not the gruesome reality of the aforementioned 'global warming' that contributes to the near-unbearable heat, not to mention the humidity that comes with living in a tropical city on the sea-coast.

It's just that I don't remember people becoming so harassed by the heat before. A school friend is taking up a job in Shimla for the summer so she can escape the everyday heatwaves and I suppose if this worked for the British, it ought to work for her.

Then, there's an NRI cousin who is bragging about returning to the 'clement climes of California' next week. Also, there are folks who take summer vacations to hill-stations by the thousands.

I just don't get why the summer is being considered harsh enough to warrant an exodus from the city. For me, the summers have an immediate association with school-vacations and wandering aimlessly around the city. Taking long walks at Marine Drive till 6:30 because the sun sets so late. Lounging around on the terrace in the late afternoon heat and doing nothing but vegetating; making intermittent trips to the kitchen to grab a pitcher of Rasna or Glucon-D in the days before Tang arrived on Indian shores.

Pestering Mummy to let us buy Coca-Cola from the neighbourhood grocer's shop and driving down at night to Chowpatty and buying ice-golas and kulfi faloodas from the innumerable stalls on the beach. Waiting for the crates of alphonso mangoes to arrive from Goa and then whooping with joy when we could smell them and press their fresh warm pulp in their beautiful yellow-orange skins to our sweaty cheeks. Aah, the summer and the mangoes! I could write an ode to them right now. The summer-time vacations in Goa with family, eating jackfruit from the orchard with its intensely sweet smell sticking to our fingers for hours. Running about on the beach and splashing about in the sea. And if not Goa, then the frequent trips to the Odeon swimming pool, filled to bursting point with other swimmers looking to soak in the lukewarm chlorinated waters of the big pool.

Then there came the growing up and going to junior college, when there were the afternoons spent walking around Flora Fountain, sifting through the pages of old, beautiful-smelling books. Oh man, the books! I have so many memories of wandering up to Kitaab Khana and just inhaling the summer afternoon air scented with old paper smells and if not buying, then just sitting down and reading books right there with a glass of thandai from the sweetmeat vendor right opposite.

That's how I first read The Great Gatsby and Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.

Not for us, the stale air-conditioned air and sterile shelves of Crossword. We yearned for the unbridled joy of chancing upon a masterpiece in the stacks and stacks of books piled upon the pavements in the days before the cops came around and started up their infernal book-burning. The shock of watching books burn in a place so far apart from Hitler's Germany was coupled with Dada leaving for New York and then, college took over. The days of cruising for books on summer afternoons and skipping to Nehru Science Centre to catch up on the new Hall of Aerospace exhibits ended.

The air-conditioner arrived at home and malls sprouted up like mushrooms in every corner of the city. Salvation from the summer sweats was here.

Now all we do is sit at home in front of a machine while it sends out CFCs to soak through the ozone, inadvertently making the summer sunshine more dangerous for everyone on earth, while we make plans to visit this mall or that multiplex as we order mango ice-cream on the phone.

After all, now that the heat has become a diabolical thing to 'beat' and flee from, the summer has become a season to dread. Well, that's only until the monsoons arrive. Then we can all go back to collectively worrying about the floods and praying for an early winter.

Waiting on the world to Change

"The busy have no time for tears." - Lord Byron

Or for anything else, really. Yesterday, as the rest of my generation set out from their homes with the renewed belief that their actions cud change the world, I set out at 6 AM to spend the next sixteen hours working in the ICU. Every second minute, I received messages from friends telling me to take a day off from work to head to Azad Maidan to stand up for real democracy and in protest against corruption, and there were more messages saying the objective was to get arrested, to go to jail, in Anna Hazare's Jail Bharo Andolan.

I realised the girl I used to be four years ago wud have believed it was my duty as a citizen waiting on change to do exactly what those messages exhorted me to do. To stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends, and chant slogans with them. To believe that I was doing everything an ordinary person possibly cud, by way of peaceful protest, to walk along a path set out for us by the greatest Indian who ever lived.

But this time around, I had work that needed doing that seemed wrong to abandon, even if anyone was naive enough to believe the future of the country depended on it.

How does one order one's priorities, a disappointed friend's sms asked. He rather dramatically asked me if temporarily relieving the suffering of ten people ranked higher than catalysing societal change for a billion.

I said yes, for a doctor it does, and that it was all deja vu for me. I had done this thing before, going to Azad Maidan, climbing into a police van, being detained in a warehouse for four hours. All for an issue I had rather strongly believed in - back when the protests were organised by students against the Supreme Court ruling for 27% reservation in all educational institutions over and above the existing reservations. I protested, felt good about myself, believed I was doing the right thing, doing what Gandhi wud do. Four years later, nothing's changed on that front.

This time it's a different kind of fight staged by the same kind of people. A rather curious mix of young people who're optimistic about the future and older people who've managed to shake off their apathy atleast for the time being. I hope for their sake and mine, the outcome this time around is a favourable one. Simply because this time there is more at stake.

I hope that something truly good comes out of this struggle in the end. And that when it does, I am not as busy as I was yesterday, so I can celebrate with the friends I had to say no to. And go out dancing with them after ages. Because, like a wise man said, 'a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.'