It’d be wrong if I say I’ll never be able to forget about that particular near-dawn while nestled inside a crammed flat in a congested locality of Kolkata, which was once, in my opinion, given the euphoric title of ‘City of Joy’. Instead, I should say I’ll always remember that particular near-dawn which is essentially to keep myself somewhat prepared for more similar or worse experiences in the near future. Yes, it’s about the IMD-described ‘one of the longest and deadliest summers in India’ of which Kolkata is a very significant part. Now to what happened in that near-dawn which is, in fact, is only a day before.
I woke up suddenly in the dead
of the night and immediately felt the oppressiveness which was apparently the
cause of waking up. The ceiling fan was whirring above us, my wife and I; but
its gusts of air were no longer airy—it only seemed to have lost itself into
the relentless clutch of that oppressiveness. I was sweating profusely and the
heat rashes all over my body were pinching me like long needles, rather letting
me only have the usual itching. The night was calm, still and thick. As if the
tentacles of that oppressive heat that was raging outside barged in through the
concrete walls and the closed doors and windows and launched themselves into
our hapless bodies mercilessly. I checked my mobile: it was just past three in
the morning, a near dawn. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How is it possible? This
time the surroundings always cool off leading all of us humanity to a welcoming
relieving beautiful morning.
I tossed around on the bed for
some time, thinking the air was going to cool off soon and the hands of the
ceiling fan would restore themselves to their normal business. But nothing of
the sort happened even as my wife stirred, sat up on bed and shared the
oppressiveness with me. It seemed like an attack from the aliens: perhaps they
are launching the final assault after all those preliminary warnings.
I had before me only the last
resort to fall upon. We have an ageing window air-conditioning machine that
befits the old rented flat and which we normally run in the evenings for a few
hours to cool the house, and at bedtime we switch it off. That night too we
switched it off around one in the night. Scared by my writhing body my wife
asked me if she should switch it on. I nodded at her with a guilty
feeing—guilty because I was thinking about the huge majority of our country’s
population that still cannot afford an AC machine. I do always think about those
daily labourers, the cleaners & rag-pickers, the rickshaw pullers and all
others caught in that cruel cycle at no point of which could they afford a day
lost without work. And for that matter, the ACs are not the solution at
all—they only give temporary comfort like painkillers to the ‘lucky’ users and
make the world a far worse place to live in.
It was not important that we
managed to fall asleep within the next two hours and could also afford the
luxury of waking up late in the morning; what is of utmost importance is the
question as to what future we’re running toward! Kolkata is just a case study
for us even as the summers in India and in many other countries around are
becoming warmer by 2-3 degrees more every year, and in this particular summer
the ‘landmark’ 50-degree Centigrade has been reached in many parts of India
including capital Delhi. Like last year, the heat waves started in Kolkata in
the month of April too this year, and as a departure from the previous year the
40+ temperatures this year raged on for several weeks on the trot, not allowing
even the seasonal thunderstorms locally known as ‘Kal Baisakhi’ for mid-term relief, even once. And to add more, the
nights everywhere in the country are no longer cooling off with temperatures
refusing to come below 30-32 Centigrade; occasional rains too are failing
miserably to bring the temperatures down.
Cyclone Remal brought some
relief to Kolkata in terms of a user-friendly weather, apart from the damage it
had caused in its trail in the eastern and the north-eastern regions. However,
the cyclone probably left a veil of moisture hangover, and therefore, as the
temperatures started to rise again the humidity became a deadly factor, not to
speak of the immeasurable damage caused by the UV index to the human bodies
thanks to the intense sunrays. At nights or even in the wee hours if you have
32-degree temperature, the humidity of about 80% would surely make it feel like
40 or more. And this tells the exact story of Kolkata in the last fortnight,
and nobody knows for how long yet: intense sunlight and the occasional clouds
coming together in the evenings to make the nights horribly hot and gloomy.
But we cannot explain it off
with only the cyclone occurrence, because from late May to June the atmosphere
gets laden with moisture due to the advancing South West Monsoon. It boils down
to the mercilessly rising temperatures which become near-fatal if combined with
the rising humidity. This does not augur well for humanity at all. And even
with temperatures alone, more than 50-degree C can cause havoc to the human
body, leading to sunstrokes and deaths. This summer many humans have perished
in India including poll officials on duty for the General Elections and many
are falling sick and perishing still, which our politically supercharged media
hardly takes any note of. And our leaders or the world leaders? Well, less said
the better! They’re more interested in power and war games! How the hell are we
going to combat Global Warming and to protect our planet and humanity from its relentlessly
spreading tentacles? Time is running out! Anybody listening at all?
