The Cure

It's 97 degrees at almost three a.m. - our ceiling fan is set to 'hurricane'. We are grateful the electricity has not gone out today - when it does we suffer like veal calves in a crate. During the random and all-too-often power outages I act out the melodrama of my death by melting and the only thing Hamid can move in his heat inspired lathargy are his eyes. He watches me flop about tut-tutting at my complaining as I go on drawing a sweat with the effort.
Finally, I will give up my impromtu dying to go sit in the bathroom with the cold water tap running at full speed.
Ironically, on these days, we often do not have cold water - the sun has baked it all steaming hot in the massive black plastic solar water tank on our roof. Oh the joys.

I have been feeling sorry for myself lately that I have nothing to wear (you can choose not to believe this as it is a blatant denial of the truth) but it doesn't matter because it is too hot to put much of anything on anyway. I wear a pencil skirt pulled up as a mini dress and call it good. Fortunately, we will escape the most dreaded heat a good month before it starts to get really, really hot - sometimes reaching 110 degrees.

It's been this way for three weeks and will continue to get progressively hotter until we must amp up the fan to 'typhoon' and sit limp before our laptops, listlessly manipulating our heaviness through the pudding thick heat.
It's only March but the Indian summer is coming, and coming fast.

There are a number of things we never bought for this house because from the fifth or sixth month into our cohabitation we were somewhere between convinced and simply hoping we would be leaving soon. One of those stupidly unpurchased things is a cooler - not particularly common in the average Indian home, but something I'm kicking myself for neglecting to invest in. For three years I have been convincing us that we didn't need an A/C - we're leaving soon, no need, I said. But now, as we are again at risk of sweaty fake dying during the eight or so weeks left in our little visit to India, we will buy one.

Then what to do with that big metal and plastic thing when we leave? What to do with any of our clunky household stuff when we leave?
In a nation where the neighbors can be spied going through your garbage to see if you've thrown anything useful away, you don't sell anything...you donate. All of it.
We will give it all away, every last bit, to this place and this place, knowing we will at least save another family from melting once we've gone.