Heat kills

I hate to harp on about the weather, but ....  

Spent last weekend in Delhi for a change.  It was sweltering.  Monday morning’s paper confirmed what everyone suspected: this June was officially the hottest in the last five years with 27 days out of 30 reaching over 40 degrees. 

Saturday afternoon (like mad dogs and Englishmen out in the mid-day sun) one of my DEF colleagues and I visited Seelampur, an e-scrap slum area in east Delhi.  The heat wasn’t actually too bad for us because we could retreat into an air conditioned car as required.

Up the secret winding staircase

Mohan

View from the roof.  This shot makes it look
like we were 8 storeys up or something.  

Sunday Cathy and I explored some ruins in the neighbourhood along with Mohan, one of the ashramites.  By mid-morning it was already boiling hot.  Afterwards, desperately in need of a haircut, I thought I’d check out my options in the neighbourhood.  Tried a women’s ‘Saloon’ first (yes, that’s ‘saloon,’ not ‘salon’) but the owner couldn’t cut my hair because she only did long hair.  So I tried the next men’s ‘Saloon’ and they had no qualms, though I think a female customer was a rarity.  The barber shop was a space about 6ft wide x 9ft long that held three barber chairs, three barbers and a bench for waiting customers.  The barber chairs were so close together that there was only space for one barber to stand beside any one chair at a time and, as a result, they had to keep sliding my chair (I was in the middle one) back and forth to let someone stand on one side or the other.  A cut, a great face massage and a tip for Rs 170 ($3).  Can’t beat that price.  Still, I had to wonder if I broke some rule about modesty or propriety with the face massage.

Magic fingers.  I swear he had a hundred.

It was 44 degrees late Sunday afternoon when we headed to a (gloriously air-conditioned) movie theatre (Spiderman.  Slim pickings in English in Delhi.).  Three hours later, when we got out of the theatre just before 9pm the temperature outside was still 40 degrees.  Sadly, the day’s heat took a tragic turn for one of the south Indian women staying in our dorm.  Her and her group were visiting Agra and the Taj Mahal on Sunday and she succumbed to the heat.  How awful is that?!  Don't know whether she got to see the Taj first or not, but her whole group headed off Monday night to visit Rishikesh.  How strange is that?  Like nothing was going to get in the way of their travel plans.  

It's Tuesday evening now, and it definitely feels like a new weather system moved in to Delhi.  There's even a cool breeze blowing into our dorm and across the bed.  Down to 31 degrees at 10:30 at night.  What a relief.  Hopefully there's some rain coming.  

Having said what I just did about the heat, I don't want anyone worrying about me.  I'm fine and I know how to pace myself better than that group, from what I can see.

Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback about the blog.  I guess I'm going to have to try to keep the thing up, (though I understand why people abandon them once they started).