Summers in Australia.

Hello my non existent readers!It is time I told you about the Australian heat. No doubt I could finish it all in one word"unbearable" but that would hardly do justice would it? Afterall it's such a heated topic these days and I am totally fired up to tell you about it.

Heat in the tropics would mean sweat, high humidity and generally lots of coconut water or rooafza. Here the sun steals on you, pierces you and refuses to set before 9 in the night. All the colorful parasols outside cafe's and all the grenada's and iced coffee they offer give you no respite. The leaves are still and even the flies get too hot and lazy to buzz and irritate sometimes. As much as my plants love it and sway toward the sun beam lovingly, I am forced to stand right below the AC all day long lest I should melt.

There is a hole in the ozone they say and the tear is right above us. Why on earth couldn't it shift a little to the right and rest above the ocean? What difference would it make to the water creatures? They live in such deep waters that the sun and ozone are irrelevant entities to them anyways!! As there is noone to check the rays, Mr. Sun here is having a great party throwing himself about. I can almost here my skin sizzle everytime I go outdoors. I look like a sultana after a mere 10 minutes rendezvous with the sun. For those of you who are wondering why I am complaining when I look like some bejewelled, beautiful princess.... a 'sultana' means raisin... and not some arabic beauty who married Alladin. Just by the way (and I don't know why), it took me ages to remember that sultana meant raisin. After calling it Shah Jahan, safira and all other names and linking it to precious stones, lamps with genies etc etc.. the meaning finally sank in.

Sorry for digressing but not wanting to look like a raisin, I usually apply copious amounts of sun tan. To those of you who like sun tan lotion...a big boo!! I hate it. It's sticky and generally leaves me feeling darker even before I have stepped out. Buying the right sun tan lotion and applying it the right way is almost very precise and scientific here. The appropriate SPF range for any particular activity and the upward stroke of application on selected areas of the body have nearly become major degree courses. I don't care, I slosh it on myself till a point when even my aura is soaked in it. I can only hope that it protects me from the mischievious rays of the sun sans ozone and all.

I don't mean to disgrace the heat or the summer in anyway. Afterall, I shall probably miss this heat in another couple of months and perhaps be writing eulogies when I am shivering in the cold. But for now the AC toils to spew some cool air. And I sit under it dreaming of cool coconut water and cocum sherbat....