A woman in the eastern state of Odisha baked a flat bread on the car bonnet to show that a searing heatwave is passing through India, cooking everyone.
On YouTube, she rolls out the dough and places the flat bread on the hood of the car, and the heat slowly bakes it to a yummy, puffed-up bread.
I could imagine how hot the exterior of the car must have been, but the interior gets equally oppressive, as I once realised to my dismay, when rushing to work in Dubai one afternoon.
I clicked opened the door, slid into my seat, started the car and held on to the steering wheel … and then screamed and swore silently.
Oven hot car
The leather seat and the steering wheel were searing hot. I also realised that you never keep the water bottle in the car, because the water then turns lukewarm and tastes like something the alternative medicine doctor prescribed for your liver.
After the woman put on the cooking show, trolls then came out of the internet woodwork and questioned the authenticity of the video. “Why isn’t the women sweating if she is outside,” said one.
They had a point there because just standing in the sun for a few minutes seemed like an eternity, recently. The temperature climbed to the high thirties and schools in some cities such as Delhi where the temperature was hovering around the 40s, halted outdoor activities and advanced the summer holidays.
But much before the heatwave arrived in India, my wife and I nearly killed ourselves of heat exhaustion, climbing up a hill in the cooler climes of a “hill station”, about 1800 metres above sea level.
Drive on a twisting road
The drive up the hills was cool, pleasant and scenic, though a bit nerve wracking as there were no barriers on the twisting road. Our phone then said we should visit the nearby “Buttermilk Falls” while we are here.
At one point, we had to stop the car and walk down a pathway and it was lovely, shaded with trees all around and deep down below on the side we could see a lone house on the side of the mountain, and a cloud slowly rolled by.
About 40 minutes after trekking down we could hear the faint murmuring of a brook. The waters of the waterfall looked like they were first churned, and they came down the rocks milky white, like the sweet yoghurt drink. The water was ice cold and we splashed around a bit and it was time to go back as the crowd of tourists was building up.
The clouds vanished, the sun came out in all its glory, and the shaded pathway was now boiling hot and it felt like walking on a treadmill that was set on a high incline. Gasping and panting and holding on tree branches we paced the walk back, halting under any shade we could find on the way.
“Your cheeks are red,” croaked my wife. “Splash water on your face.” Despite the dehydration, I wasn’t feeling thirsty. At this point if you don’t drink water and cool your body down, things can take a turn for the worse as the body can no longer regulate its temperature, and it becomes a heatstroke.
When the heatwave started in India (a heatwave is declared when the temperature touches 40 degree in the Plains and 30 Celsius in the Mountains), I bought car window shades that cut out the UV rays and we applied enough moisturiser to go slipping and sliding in our seats whenever the driver braked.
Just to make it interesting, India ran out of coal, which is used to run thermal plants, and when you are standing under an overhead fan, the power goes off invariably, and you are left in the dark, sweating silently.
The world is getting hotter each year and there is no place where you can escape for a cool summer getaway. In the future, most probably everyone will be given their own astronaut type suits with their own private air-conditioning and cooling systems.
Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi
