Meltdown

JULY 2000 - Can anyone be more blighted than we are ? Other than chocolate milk shakes, what else can ever prepare any one for the ruthless burning at the stake which we all undergo stoically, summer after hot summer ? Every year it becomes harder and harder to suffer the heat. Every year we all swear we’ll never survive another scorcher, but when the heat wave hits us, we simply lie down and get trampled. When it’s over, six months later, we are bruised, we are burnt, we are tortured, but we are still around. Some are even ready to savour a shadow of what are still mistakenly called winters, knowing fully well that long before you can pull out that thin, half sleeve sweater out of the mothballs, the sun will be back, the dust will envelope everything and the heat will arrive in large and depressing waves. Whoever wrote that silly line about spring being far behind should have spent a fortnight in Multan and then let off with three tight slaps delivered to his behind.

I know other countries where the weather is just as bad, but there are two differences. They have money and they have camels. We have no money, only asses; not behinds you understand. Frankly, with all the money they have, there is still nothing they can do to beat the heat. So you can frolic in the pool, have a few very dry Martinis (alcohol is prohibited, senor), walk barefoot inside the cold halls of marble and ask for your favourite after slave lotion, but you know that old cunning sun is right outside burning date palm after date palm. No, this is not a cheerful scenario. Agreed that those who live in cold countries yearn for sunshine and one can yearn for many things including sunshine, since it is still legal to do so, but against the cold, man has made some progress. There are any amounts of beverages for example which can melt down the coldest bones in mankind’s history and send a warm flush down the iciest back (there we go again), but when it comes to grappling with intense heat, all mankind seems to have is cold water.

Mind you I have nothing against cold water (we are still good friends), but when you consider that forty gallons of the stuff inside your system is still not going to save you from the resounding slap you will get the second you step out, the whole charade of drinking gallons of 2 parts Hydrogen and 1 part of whatever it is that makes water, assumes a most ridiculous proportion. While there are options to combat heat – one being to lie down quietly and pass away unnoticed or if that is a bit extreme and in poor taste, to get under a shower and stay there till the water tank runs dry, let’s face it the choices are limited.

Of course you always have the choice of starting to complain about the heat the minute the first slap lands on your face. This is a favourite exercise in which everyone indulges though the purpose of this national lament doesn’t quite make sense to anyone, other than the communal moaning reducing somewhat the beating that is about to commence. People talk endlessly about how hot it is. Some look up and roll their eyes and say it wasn’t so hot at this time last year only to be quickly contradicted by others who say that it was hotter at this time last year. More join in helpfully and remind you that there were a few rain spells which took the bite away which only leads others to speculate that the rains the year before the year they are all talking about were far heavier, but this year there are hardly any. Sooner or later somehow, the tedious conversation ends up with Shahbaz Sharif having cut down so many trees that the climate of Gulberg Main Boulevard has undergone a transformation, of course not for the better. This rather inane and pointless exercise relieves little pressure and certainly doesn’t drop the mercury from 44C to 43.8C. In fact talking on and on about how hot it is only makes it worse, which of course should lead most of you to conclude, why this silly article then? The answer to that is, Because and there you have it (or perhaps don’t).

The truth is that after years of summer-harassment, we are still not prepared for them, other than intelligent women who have discovered that Swiss Voile is a way out. The men, poor things melt because they wear socks and more or less the same garb they wear when the temperature is 25C. Trousers, shirts, socks, shoes. The silly ones add neckties and the real demented ones, two piece suits while roads turn into melted chocolate . Last week, on a field trip to the Districts & Sessions Courts (don’t ever go there even if your granny has left you a million dollars and a Rolls and all you have to do is go to the ‘adda’ of Mohamamd Akhlaq Gujjar, Advocate to sign an affidavit and traipse off to the South of France). The place defies description and is God’s sign of what hell will be like particularly on the Monday that I was there on a sightseeing tour. With temperatures in the middle forties, in the shade I might add, except there wasn’t any, the sight of hundreds of lawyers melted my heart.

The poor things looking like fried penguins in black and white scurried about from one end of the ramshackle sheds that pass for the legal fraternity’s hangout, to the other, carrying ridiculously heavy bundles of papers, always in thin, badly-made large brown envelopes or bulging files precariously balanced between perspiring armpits. Who ordered that lawyers have to wear black coats and black ties in this weather ? Is it somebody’s idea of punishing them for what they do to the rest of the community throughout the year ? Why didn’t it strike the wily British to devise half-sleeve white shirts and khaki shorts for lawyers minus neckties, or did they and we have forgotten to follow that sensible advice much the same way as cycling after dark without lights ? In any case, whether your best friend’s are lawyers or not, the sight of perspiring men in black coats is hard to take without suffering pangs of grief for their plight. I guess the only sensible people around other than those in Swiss Voile, are the rustics who wear voluminous clothing, but half of it is air-conditioned and the other half barely covers anything.

The thing is we haven’t had the luck of the draw when we settled here. Agreed that the Arctic Circle would have been awful but this is no picnic. And if you still think it is great because this is the time of the year when the pores of your body, and I mean all of them, are full open and you perspire like a …like a….well you know what, stay put in your seat on your next PIA flight when your co-passenger gets up (while the plane is still landing and having activated his mobile), reaches up and pulls down his briefcase. The Dark Vanilla, pardon the abuse, scent (read stench) that will float over and knock you out senseless is just another small bouquet of summer gifts that are ours to enjoy for free.