The weather has become, and this will not have escaped your notice, all but unbearable during the day.
I say all but unbearable because this is only mid-February, and things are going to get much worse in the days to come, but it still is mighty uncomfortable. There is a stillness to the afternoon breeze that speaks of summer, and there is an assured sultriness to the atmosphere that doesn’t bode well for those of us who wish for the mercury to remain on the lower bound.
It is, not to mince words anymore, going to get miserably hot. And that, dear reader, puts me in a bad mood like nothing else.
Winter, if you ask me, is what god should have created and stopped. Cold misty mornings, bright but chilly afternoons and positively freezing evenings speak of cheery conviviality, pleasant book reading sessions, and of warm mugs of coffee and tumblers of warmer whiskey. Perfection, in a nutshell.
The monsoon I can take. I’d rather not, but I can set my jaw and handle the dark, damp, dank grey of the monsoon months. There’s always ginger chai to make the world a better place, and ginger chai solves most things on the planet. Except for summer.
Nothing solves summer, not even ginger chai.
Nothing solves that dry, parched, stultifying heat. Beer alleviates it, but even that nectar of the gods falls stop of solving the problem. It merely postpones it, at best.
Your columnist, otherwise a cheerful individual, turns into a snappy, ill-tempered, ill-mannered lout beginning March, and returns to his cheerful self only with the onset of the rainy season. As does, in my defence, most of Pune. Traffic disputes tend to be more violent, conversations between near and dear ones tend to be shorter and snappier, and colleagues and peers tend to give you a much shorter rope during these trying months, and who can blame us? Each of us walk around with the weight heat of the world on our shoulders, and that burden doesn’t allow for niceties such as politeness and even a minimal degree of affection to those in the immediate neighbourhood.
All of which is to say that you should confidently expect the tone of these columns to take on a darker, more moribund note for the next 16 weeks or so.
Wish the cheery missives on mundane topics adieu, and buckle up for existentialist musings on why we exist and why the Pune Metro should be outlawed.
Now, if this fills you with horror and misgivings (as well it should), I hasten to add that there is a very easy solution to the problem. Sustained empirical testing, carried out over many seasons and years, has shown that the undersigned remains acceptably cheerful when he is outside of multiple bottles of beer.
All that we need, dear reader, for the cheerful vein to remain, is copious quantities of ale.
Those interested in maintaining the sanguine outlook of the undersigned should therefore get in touch with me, accompanied by (multiple) perfectly chilled bottles at the earliest opportunity. The favour, I assure you, will be repaid manifold.
It’s the only way to survive the summer, I assure you. Bring on the beer.
~~
#All views expressed in this article are those of the columnist and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them.
##Pune365 strongly discourages the consumption of alcoholic and tobacco, both of which are injurious to health.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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