The worry of a Chennai summer

It is the month of April and I’m in Chennai.

I live on the third floor- the last in my building.

It is beautiful in the morning. The sun seeps in through the windows by 6 a.m. If one does not have thick curtains, it just might be impossible to sleep in. I have red and yellow ones in the house.

By noon, the sun is over our head. The windows need to be open at this time. The fans- every single one of them- has to be on. It might be impossible to sit in the room otherwise. It is also getting hard to think. Voices are rising with the temperature.

The table fan is now on the sofa subbing in for the broken, noisy fan. We haven’t fixed it in two years. When guests come, we apologise for the heat. "It is the third floor. We don’t really have a choice," we say.

In the evening, the swelter takes a turn for the worse. The hall becomes a furnace. The sofas become impossible to sit in. We must turn on the air-conditioning but our drain pipe has snapped. The secretary of the association had asked us to fix it days ago. We still haven’t gotten to it. When can we, really? With two jobs.

Two AC repairs will also cost us ₹5,000. But we also need to fix the pigeon situation. Where are we on the budget? The old clothes row that holds all of Vasanth’s family’s miscellaneous items is yet to get cleaned out. Can we buy that ladder to wipe the fans finally? Or should we look to increase the aesthetics a little? Perhaps frame some old prints that I had bought? Should we maybe take a loan and go on that impossible holiday our friends keep asking us to take with them?

No. Who has money for beauty and travel now?

It's the month of April in Chennai.

I live on the third floor- the last in my building.

It beautiful in the morning but it has also sucked all the optimism out of me.

I sit on the bed waiting for transient forgetfulness to take over this worry.

I wait for the mangoes to arrive.