Namma Chennai diary: First signs of scorching summer are here already

People may be starting to rehearse their summer lines already. It’s not the heat dear, “It’s the humidity”, or the converse “Much prefer Chennai’s wet heat and sweat to Bengaluru’s dry heat”, and so on.

Truth to tell, a scorching summer is on the cards in the wake of the failed monsoons. The woes of the common Chennaiite only expanded with Vardah blowing through the heart of the city and downing thousands of the selfless shade giving trees. The stripping of the green cover might just lead to increased radiation and a more cruel summer ahead.

The signs are ominous. The southern summer was one of the hottest on record with Australia literally hot enough for eggs to be fired on the bonnets of cars. Sydney, Adelaide and Perth wilted under 47 degree Celsius temperatures, fans got sold out, air conditioners strained the electricity grid and mayors were advising people to go to the movies to beat the heat or, better, take a swim in the ocean.

Leave an air conditioned mall and the heat outside was hitting them like a car door. The same happens here every summer with people sweating from places they did not know sweat could come from.

The one difference between Australia and India is they tend to discount global warming as the cause of climate change and are known to be in denial while out here we accept the reality of climate change with the belief that warming might actually be causing all these bewildering changes.

Chennai has particularly been battered by climate change in the last few years, from the unprecedented floods of 2015 after the record rainfall of close to 50 cms in a 36-hour period on December 1-2 to the extreme water scarcity being faced now with the city’s reservoirs dry and the state ravaged by drought.

In between, Chennai also got battered out of shape by the Cyclone Vardah which blew right through the heart of the city, the quieter eye of the storm passing over the harbour.

Suffering both the El Nino effect which helped only the southwest monsoon and suppressed the northeast and the La Nina which did nothing for even drops of pre-monsoon rain in February-March, the city felt cheated by the Met forecasters looking at every formation far out in the ocean and imagining the winds would bring every incipient cloud formation to Chennai and douse its heat and its thirst for water.

Scary reports about the drying reservoirs feeling the lack of rain after 142 years projects a scenario of runaway water tankers fleecing customers for their basic water needs this summer.

It is a bit of a mystery why the umbrella is not considered a necessity in the summer, unlike in Sri Lanka where each one carries it round the year, either for the rain or the sun.

Caps are not a great fashion accessory in Chennai either, which again is a mystery considering how quickly the sun can burn you and the pollution that usually delays sunburn in our conditions is of little use when the temperatures are soaring past 40 C.

Maybe, the new symbol of the ‘Hat’ in the RK Nagar by-election might just tempt people to bring out their headgear and keep some of the radiation out. We had an early peek of this new fashion in the candidate himself wearing a stylish hat while submitting his nomination papers. The word on the street is the MGR cap will anyway be back in fashion to bring out the election heat

The huge difference between the actual temperature and the real feel can make the blood of the Chennaiite boil. In the old days of “Bright sunny day ahead” forecasts, it didn’t seem so hot under the sun. But then teenagers playing cricket in summer is different from the aged trying to cope with the climate challenge, which unfortunately takes a few lives every summer.

The conundrum of having fans given out freely as freebies but not the power at the height of summer affects some neighbouring states more than Tamil Nadu, which boasts of being a power surplus state now, what with the second unit firing up in Koodankulam and contributing substantially to the grid.

Open your smartphone’s weather app and you get every minute detail of the day’s weather. Start the car and it offers you an opinion on what the outside temperature is. There is no escaping the harsh reality of knowing how hot it is when the feeling itself is bad enough.

It is time then to switch to cool cottons and bring the cap or hat out and get going while the sun beats down. Another little irritant may be the non-availability of the foreign colas this summer following post-jallikattu stir wisdom. But that is a story longer than the unforgiving Indian summer.