At 47 deg Celsius.

          If you hear a hawker shouting “naram mulayam kuckdee…” you know you are in Haryana/ UP/ Delhi in summer. Kuckdee describes a long, ribbed, slender cucumber not seen hereabouts. Our thick, seedy tausali are closer to what north Indians call kheera. (Dear Hindi-challenged friends, a kheera has nothing to do with milk-sugar-rice-pudding.) Neighbouring Maharashtrians call the kheera ‘kaakdee’. Kuckdee and kaakdee are similar-sounding but different members of the family cucurbitae. Muddle my already fuddled brain, these names.

These cucurbitae (along with the melons kharboozey, tarboozey) are life-savers when you’re living in degrees Celsius higher than 45, with humidity in the teens. Don’t know what this Celsius-humidity stuff means? Pre-heat your oven to those temperatures and shove your head inside. Stay like that for days, nights, weeks, months, till the rains come. Ghaziabad, Ludhiana, Bareilly summers feel like that. I’ve been there, done that (lived in those places, I mean, not put my head in the oven).

My salty-sweat oozing Goan skin had looked like dried camel bladder (they make fancy translucent lamp-shades of it). When people go visiting, even before the greetings are done, tumblers of water are thrust at the guests. Lest the latter drop dead. People do, when they walk/ stand in the sun, after temperatures cross 42.

In Goa, we politely confirm, during water-shortage periods: “udak peonach bhair sarley distaa.” In banks and government offices here, on every table stands a colourful plastic ‘water-bottle’ owned and used by the staffer manning it. We always carry a water-bottle in our purse/vehicle, don’t we? And our temperatures barely touch 38.

          Near the Thar, in Jodhpur, sandstorms drive house-proud wives and camels crazy. The former fret around shutting and sealing windows when dust clouds attack and the latter shut their eyelids, fold their legs and sit down meditatively. The khejri and the neem rule the scape along with the cacti. No mango trees, no bananas, pineapples, or jackfruits. Even the palms look strange. Tchshay men, all sand and no sea.

I owned a solar-cooker: used it to boil daal, bake cakes, roast brinjals and make toop. Four black aluminium vessels inside a square wooden box with a thick glass cover. The sun’s rays were reflected off a mirror fitted to the lid of the box, then intensified by the glass.  Result: mazho gas-cylinder khubb dis chaltalon.

And a ‘water-cooler’: a metal cube-frame that clung to our window. The side that opened into our room had a fan that pushed in air cooled by constantly wetted khus-grass curtains which covered the other three sides of the cube-frame. (The Brits called such curtains tattees, a name still in use, unrelated to undigested food.)

In Goans’ second home, the Middle East, the same temperatures/ dryness are tackled with 24-hour central air-conditioning everywhere, and packaged water. The cities look cool (pun!) because no matter how purple and gold the interiors might be, all buildings are a uniform white or pale beige outside. Maybe psychological, but even when it’s shimmering and horridly hot, it looks soothing, feels better. Everything is aesthetically controlled.

Could we try that in India?

I read in the papers that in Bengal, Mamtarani said: painting all building exteriors blue would “lift Kolkata’s spirits”. The Mayor’s council agreed to waive property tax on those who complied with that wish. If this happens in Goa, half our population will want yellow stripes, others will paint red spots in protest, traditionalists won’t paint their houses at all (their ancestors didn’t) but pay the tax instead. Orthodox Hindus might want saffron, Muslims green, Christians whatever their local priest chose, Parsis, Jews, Sikhs and others would go into wait-and-watch mode. There would be interpretations of ‘what is white’: grey, ivory, cream, bluish, pinkish, brownish… ai saiba, ami Goemkar can’t agree on such matters. Our weather makes us like that. It’s hot after the sun rises and until it sets. Anything above 27 degs affects us. The high humidity aggravates matters.

Last week Delhi had no electricity. Delhites could not pump water into the overhead tanks. Had they done that, the water would have been hot; pipes at 47 deg C are ‘untouchable’. 

Goa’s skies have darkened. Looking at the clouds, I do what any self-respecting Goan woman does: fan myself with a paper or dupatta, roll my tongue, make a ‘ssssss’ sound, shake my head and complainingly whine, “shee baba, kitle gazgazta, vaaz ailo saamko garmicho”.

Then thank my stars our air is never so hot or as dry as in the arid zones.