summertime in delhi

[drink - youngberry Ceres juice and gin]
[song - Amy Millan, Honey from the Tombs]

March 5, 2008

I hear today that it is quite likely that there will still be snow in Toronto when I come back in three weeks. There is another 15 cm due today, which will soon turn to freezing rain. Meanwhile in Delhi, I’ve turned on my fan for the first time in months. It only starts spinning at the highest speed. At slower speeds, it goes for a while, then petters out. The fan probably knows I detest it, and is being purposefully difficult. Right now it is taunting me to stand up and turn it on again. Instead it started again on its own, at full blast, as I stared at it. Papers are flying and the ceiling mount swings like a metronome.

I can’t sleep under fans or air conditioners or any noise at all really. I blame it on camping as a child. The fan on my face feels like a hole in a tent, the sound like a rainstorm approaching through the trees. I lay there nursing adrenaline, wanting to get up and put bags under tarps. I’ve seen men in India sleeping cross-legged on the back flap of a truck moving at full speed. Three women shared a nap on a commuter train in Mumbai last Thursday, as I lost track of my knees and a woman clutched a single cauliflower in her hand above the crowd. Maybe I’m genetically mal-adapted in more than just melanin.

Summer has come to Delhi. It’s 33 C in the day, bright hot and dusty. Clouds of little flies have hatched in the mandir lane, and we’ve all been sick. Two weekends ago we wore scarves gratuitously because we knew it was the last time we’d be able to do so. My computer is hot on my lap, and probably deserves a break after toiling through an entire CBC Ideas podcast. Utopias are misplaced and ignorant, I’ve learned, and the pot of lentils is finished, cooling in the kitchen. Perhaps the true sign of summer is that I’ve splurged on the youngberry from South Africa and moved onto gin and juice from absurdly expensive whiskey (a product of an exhaustion-induced Euro-dollar miscalculation in Paris, luckily for my pride not denominated in rupees on my credit card bill).

I’m listening to the fan come and go, iTunes on shuffle, and wondering if I can fall asleep. In the new warmth the street dogs wake up angry. At 6 am today the street was fiercely noisy. I see the mornings for the next three weeks, sitting in a suggestion of clothes in the wicker chair, reading or wondering whether I’ve done anything useful in seven long months.