It's getting hot in here
A quiet study of how heat builds the percolating characters living on the Equator
It is warm today, the sun is a ball of fire ready to burst and scorch our skins into feathery ash.
It is always warm here, it has always been warm, even when it rains.
We always wake up sticky and grimy, as if we’d been working in a coal mine all night long, if the coal mine also held the gateway to Inferno. Those of us who live here, who have lived here since the day we were born, are used to it. We are used to the heat, we are used to waking up sticky and grimy. Those who can afford it, get air-conditioners for their homes, so they can mimic winter-weather throughout the house, some who can buy maybe one, or two, and can’t really afford the electricity bill when it comes at the end of the month, opt for the more economical variety of air-conditioners, the energy-savings ones, and walk in and out of that one room, most often a common area for all the residents so everyone can get some, as if they are walking through a portal of time and space. Welcome.
The air is so hot it hisses.
The people way up north or way down south may experience seasonal affective disorders, they say. Lack of sunlight and colder days can affect the mood, they say.
They don’t know about the heat. They don’t know what it can do.
A father, working on his car in the hot sun is sunburnt and dehydrated. His daughter comes over with a glass of water, but also with a painting she made at kindergarten. She’s been waiting for hours to show to him. He’s been busy. She makes one more attempt, shoves it in his face while he’s gorging the liquid into his throat as if he’s taking an anti-venom that would save his life. He is on fire. His fire tears the paper his daughter is holding out and his fire breathes hot air onto her face when he shouts. The daughter is burnt beyond recognition. She returns indoors to cry.
A man, waiting in line at the wet market, where the heat has condensed itself under the zinc roofs and the humidity is doubled, the water on the metal tables holding fishes and crunched ice so they can stay fresh for longer, or at least look as if the mongers make an effort to keep the fishes stay fresh for longer, resembles the water on the cemented floor - as well it should, it came from the crunched ice, now just a different state, now just a different time, but all was once one and the same - can’t breathe for the pronounced smells from the collective stalls bearing, yes, fresh fish on crushed ice, but also sun-dried anchovies, sun-dried shrimp, sun-dried fish crackers, sun-dried spices. His nostrils flare. It catches a waft of body odour from another man, now joining him in the line. The other man is impatient, he needs to get back home soon, he cuts in line when the first man looks beyond to the stall displaying packets of curry powder and turmeric powder, looking through his mental list to see if he was supposed to get one of them or the other. The first man realises what has happened and makes a sarcastic remark. The other man retaliates. Now ensues a shoving, one man sliding across the slippery floor with the weight of the other pushing him. The metal table holding the fishes and crunched ice tips over and falls. The fishmonger joins in the fist fight.
A child, ten children, fifty, is in a classroom, in school, sitting at their desks, a layer of dust covering the top, accumulated from the ongoing traffic of buses and trucks that frequent the main road the school is on. They make friends with the spiders and other insects that reside their place of study, the teacher makes it part of her curriculum so the parents don’t complain. The parents never do. The teacher adopts something she’d learnt from teaching at a Japanese school during her training, she encourages the children to clean up. They sweep the floor, they wipe the tables, they throw the trash. They cough, they sneeze, they get sick. The parents blame their absences on illnesses: a heat stroke, dengue, malaria, asthma. The ones who aren’t sick, who stay in school, gets blamed for inactivity, for displaying lethargy, confirming lack of alertness.
Is too much heat the cause of all these equatorial countries (as well as those in the same vicinity) being poor? Has their proximity to the sun sealed their fate in global economy, global productivity, global wealth? If seasonal anxiety disorder exists in colder countries, why does it not make sense that it also exist here, but in the opposite referential terms?
My mind is sluggish. It cannot unravel this environmental, political, conundrum any better than it can tell me what to cook for dinner.
I listen out for the hiss, the bark of the heat and wish we didn’t live so close to this ball of fire. The grass is greener here, for sure, but who is to say that this greener is better?
I think you’re on to something. In the US it’s no secret that violence increases in the summer months when it is hottest. Heat is inflammatory.
I would give much for some heat in February where I live Lisha… truly, cold and dark are not good for the soul and body either but I also remember that inescapable heat of the Far East, the type that chokes you even when you’re not moving, the type that holds the filth and the dust so efficiently in its waves that you can do nothing more than sit and let it wash over you, the type that soaks your clothes whether it is raining or not - and yes, hot rain!
I would send you cool air if I could, instead only cool thoughts lovely. X