On a recent Sunday, I went for a jog in the park just behind my house at about 8:30 am. A little later, a friend picked me up for a dosa breakfast at Saravana Bhavan followed by a film in Connaught Place. Tanu Weds Manu Returns has hilarious lines and its ensemble acting is terrific, but its pleasures were heightened that summer morning by a schoolboyish feeling that I had bunked class. We re-entered the real world into such scorching heat that but for the buildings and the cars everywhere, this could have been the edge of the Thar desert. A beggar sucking an orange icicle came up to plead for money near the Hanuman mandir. She blessed me, improbably, with fair-skinned sons who would study hard and do well in their exams. She may have been hallucinating; it was that hot.
Another friend came home for lunch, interrupted by a call from my tennis coach to inform me that he could squeeze me in at 4:30 pm. I protested. It was 45 degrees Celsius. That was all he had available, he said. Incapable of being sensible when it comes to tennis, I was duly on court at that demented time. After half an hour, I actually felt as if my skin was being slowly cooked. My 20-year-old coach was distracted and uncharacteristically unable to feed balls to my backhand. In any case, to attempt to learn a Stanislas Wawrinka-inspired single-handed, top-spin backhand in middle age is a one-step forward, two scrambling steps sideways effort on a good day.
There are two approaches to living in the open-air furnace that is Delhi in summer. You can flee to cooler climes or you can make the most of it. My previous employer sent me to Delhi two summers in succession to stand in for British journalists who were away. Having been in college in the city a couple of decades earlier, I arrived dreading it, but fell in love with Delhi in summer. As in London and New York, the city empties out, leaving restaurants quieter - no small blessing in a city with the loudest ladies (and men) who lunch. (After Tanu smashes a bottle to get the boisterous lunch party at the next table to shut up, the impeccably well-mannered friend sitting next to me whispered, "Don't you sometimes wish you could do that in Delhi?")
The streets are emptier as well. Jog in Lodi Garden at 9 am and you will feel as if you were a sultan of all you surveyed. Opt for sensibly cooler times and you will encounter assorted VIPs and NVIPs (not very...) and their entourages who are injurious to one's sense of well-being. At 7 pm last week, a police officer emerged to take the evening air. From his accompanying jeep, out jumped two bodyguards, a physical trainer and a dog walker to look after his Labrador. After some desultory stretching exercises, the police officer, erm, walked with his trainer. And, we wonder why as a nation we win so few Olympic medals. (At least. we are world champions in yoga.)
But, I digress, which is sort of the point of summer, anyway. Time slows down in such heat. One stops to watch the police officer and chuckle. Meeting a friend for a 10-am film seems, well, almost sensible. As so many people are away, the camaraderie with friends and colleagues who remain is intensified. Impromptu is the order of the day. I have arrived for drinks at a baking top-floor flat hosted by thirtysomething literary friends and been offered a choice of Pimm's or Manhattans, with roasted bhutta as canapes. We sat on the floor because it was cooler and discussed the ninetysomething Diana Athill, V S Naipaul's long-time editor who has become a writer. Ahead of my last dinner at home, I asked the guests to dress casually because the air-conditioner was not coping with the heat as well as it should have. Still, the conversation was fast-paced and fun. Perhaps both evenings would have turned out just as well in winter, but I think winter is a more serious - even sometimes miserable - time. Delhi's semi-permanent canopy of smog certainly makes it feel that way.
Part of the reason I like summer in Delhi is because India is so much more comfortable in many ways than it was before 1991. The widespread introduction of air-conditioning is one reason, the relative rarity of power cuts another, having the metro (and a car) instead of packed buses to travel in is a third. My otherwise happy childhood in Communist-ruled Calcutta, by contrast, was blighted by summer days without electricity for 16 to 18 hours. There was nothing to do but sit in the bathtub reading a novel. I came to the dining table once wearing just shorts. My mother, home from work for lunch, was not amused. When I grumbled that a shirt was an imposition in such weather, she calmly threatened to come to the dining table just as scantily clad.
As a teenager, I remember sitting next to a friend's grandmother in Delhi in summer while she cajoled and charmed the person at the sub-station in Chattarpur to get the lights back on before we went to bed. Was it load-shedding? Had the line tripped? Either way, we were without electricity for hours. Last week, I was sitting next to her niece at dinner at her home when the lights went out. She was on the phone to the neighbourhood electricity guy immediately, bossing him mercilessly. Before we even began to feel hot, the electricity was back.
Twitter: @RahulJJacob
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