An early sunrise, long days, the slow rise in temperature and then the summer rains that cool the evenings when the heat gets unbearable. Now that is a fairly pleasant portrayal of summers and one would find such idyllic descriptions in books. Australian summers on the other hand seem to singe a hole in that picture. Perhaps because there is a hole in the ozone layer above this country or perhaps because it is not tropical, but the summers here need getting used to. I say this when I am cosily tucked away in Canberra and wouldn't even dare to look at the temperatures in Perth and Adelaide. The weatherman for the last couple of weeks has been constantly reporting heat waves and hospitalized people.
Summers in India are extreme too,temperatures soaring upto 49 degrees, but back home we combat the heat in many different ways. First of all the food we eat in summers helps us cool the body. Coconut water,melons and "Nongu" (I wonder what this fruit is called in english), methi leaf, buttermilk, lassis, tandais, sugarcane juice and nimbu shikangi are all summer favorites. Australians cool down with a beer. I am not convinced how effective it is but research shows that it rehydrates just as well as water and restores lost calories and considering how popular it is, maybe it really works. For the teetotallers, I suppose water melons and rock melons offer some respite. In India people use umberellas! No one does that here and that would probably be because Australians wait for summers to acquire that envious tan. Even so, it just feels very awkward being the only soul walking down the road holding an umberella. In small towns and villages of India, houses have mud walls and mat curtains that keep the house cooler than any AC here would.
No one knows cottons like we Indians do. Even though the average Indian women is draped with 6 yards of cloth around her, cottons like voil, malmal and khadi form the perferct barrier against the heat and keep the skin cool and breathing. If only the men here knew the comfort of wearing a lungi or veshti, it would have probably become their official summer clothes. We balance out the extremities of the season by using one part of nature against the other.I have yet to figure out nature's own way to beat the summers here and maybe there are many that I am yet unaware of but until then a cold bottle of gatorade under the full blast from the AC will have to do.
