it means hot. brutally hot.
despite having grown up in Arkansas and having spent summers in India, I am not someone who handles hot weather well. in that respect, my brother and I are exact opposites: he was born during a snowstorm and hates cold weather; I was born on one of the hottest days of 1983 and despise the heat. for some reason, my body tends to heat up quickly and take a long time to cool down.
I managed to survive my childhood down South in part because there were escapes from the heat. we had air-conditioning and overhead fans, and even though the summer days were boiling, most of the evenings were at least pleasant. but here in Bangalore, at 7pm on a Monday night, it's still 31 degrees Celsius, or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. and it's stuffy.
that's hot. at least for me.
my argument for preferring cooler to cold weather is that when it's cold, you can always add layers to keep yourself warm. but when it's hot, there is only so much clothing you can remove before it becomes indecent. not to mention that in India, that limit is far higher than it is in the US.
for example:
on a day such as today - a 93 degree summer day - in Memphis I would roam around town in shorts or a skirt and a thin t-shirt or tank top. no questions asked, no funny looks, no aunties looking at me like I'm cheap. but in Bangalore, the rules change. if I want to travel by bus and not get more than the normal quota of funny looks [because somehow, they all know that I'm not from around here], I have to wear either a long kurta and salwar pants or jeans and a t-shirt. essentially, I have to be covered. and it's really not fun to already be hot and sweaty and then be jammed in a crowded bus with lots of other sweaty, smelly Indians. so that increases my body temperature even more.
my problem is confounded by the fact that my house is an oven. I don't have an overhead fan in my bedroom, only a standing fan, which is slowly dying from overuse. I've had to reconfigure my sleeping arrangement -- I now sleep slightly diagonally across the bed so as to have the fan hit as much of my body as possible. I can't open the window because of the crazy amounts of mosquitoes that would swarm in, but it wouldn't be much of a breeze anyway [it's a poorly-placed miniature window].
and despite all of this, I still contend that Bangalore has one the best climates in India. it's at least not too humid. I can at least walk around my neighbourhood in shorts and a t-shirt. I still get funny looks, but most of the people around here know me and don't bother. it still has one of the milder summers and one of the cooler "winters". plus there's nothing better than a proper grey monsoony-day in Bangalore.
I guess maybe it wouldn't affect me so much if the evenings were at least a bit cool. I can handle a hot day if there is a pleasant evening to look forward to. and I can handle most things if I can at least be cool when I'm trying to sleep.
and because I'm so smart, I've managed to schedule my year so that I get to experience summer fully in India before returning to the States in July and getting to experience 2 months of summer there as well.
well planned, Veen. really.
xx
despite having grown up in Arkansas and having spent summers in India, I am not someone who handles hot weather well. in that respect, my brother and I are exact opposites: he was born during a snowstorm and hates cold weather; I was born on one of the hottest days of 1983 and despise the heat. for some reason, my body tends to heat up quickly and take a long time to cool down.
I managed to survive my childhood down South in part because there were escapes from the heat. we had air-conditioning and overhead fans, and even though the summer days were boiling, most of the evenings were at least pleasant. but here in Bangalore, at 7pm on a Monday night, it's still 31 degrees Celsius, or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. and it's stuffy.
that's hot. at least for me.
my argument for preferring cooler to cold weather is that when it's cold, you can always add layers to keep yourself warm. but when it's hot, there is only so much clothing you can remove before it becomes indecent. not to mention that in India, that limit is far higher than it is in the US.
for example:
on a day such as today - a 93 degree summer day - in Memphis I would roam around town in shorts or a skirt and a thin t-shirt or tank top. no questions asked, no funny looks, no aunties looking at me like I'm cheap. but in Bangalore, the rules change. if I want to travel by bus and not get more than the normal quota of funny looks [because somehow, they all know that I'm not from around here], I have to wear either a long kurta and salwar pants or jeans and a t-shirt. essentially, I have to be covered. and it's really not fun to already be hot and sweaty and then be jammed in a crowded bus with lots of other sweaty, smelly Indians. so that increases my body temperature even more.
my problem is confounded by the fact that my house is an oven. I don't have an overhead fan in my bedroom, only a standing fan, which is slowly dying from overuse. I've had to reconfigure my sleeping arrangement -- I now sleep slightly diagonally across the bed so as to have the fan hit as much of my body as possible. I can't open the window because of the crazy amounts of mosquitoes that would swarm in, but it wouldn't be much of a breeze anyway [it's a poorly-placed miniature window].
and despite all of this, I still contend that Bangalore has one the best climates in India. it's at least not too humid. I can at least walk around my neighbourhood in shorts and a t-shirt. I still get funny looks, but most of the people around here know me and don't bother. it still has one of the milder summers and one of the cooler "winters". plus there's nothing better than a proper grey monsoony-day in Bangalore.
I guess maybe it wouldn't affect me so much if the evenings were at least a bit cool. I can handle a hot day if there is a pleasant evening to look forward to. and I can handle most things if I can at least be cool when I'm trying to sleep.
and because I'm so smart, I've managed to schedule my year so that I get to experience summer fully in India before returning to the States in July and getting to experience 2 months of summer there as well.
well planned, Veen. really.
xx
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