HOW I'D LOVE TO HATE SUMMER IN INDIA

hello guys..well for those of you who have stayed in India long enough to be able to tell what I'm gonna talk abt here lets get straight with it. but for those of us in other parts of the planet cool enough to be lost in translating the words summer, welcome to hell. we have finally reached the dreaded season where your skin roast to the point of being called a barbecue, a time when the blood boils almost up to half the boiling point of water. I'm sure you are saying..it cant be that bad. ok it ain't that bad, but its bad enough to have me talking abt it here, or worse still to dare you to reply with a different opinion.

when i came to India almost five years ago i used to feel the same way whenever old folks here used to talk about their summer experiences. i thought to myself..these people must be homesick or tired with their boring lives with nothing to do. i imagined summer to be a holiday season with lots of merrying and partying as schools and colleges would be closed. with India being such an affordable place for most of us foreign students, i thought whoever has complaints about summer must be sick in the mind.

what i didn't figure out was that they were never worried of the summer season as such. as a matter of fact, they loved staying home and grabbing a bottle or two of the coolest jeremia's water they could dig from their refrigerators.{most of the old guards here were could have sworn by the bottle.) anyway the point is, its not the season that had them complaining but the heat waves that comes with it.

and how did i find this out, well as they say you never know how dark the corridors of hell are unless you lose your way out. my first summer experience, or should i say bakery experience was in 2003. till today i believe that was the hottest season any non deserted area has recorded. i cant begin to describe what i went through and actually i don't want to remember. but i can tell you i swear in the name of ice i don't want to live to face judgment day if the fire will be hotter that the summer of 2003. i remember i had rented a small cubicle with no fan at all. i didn't think it a good investment to buy myself a cooler by then and i had not mustered the knowledge of renting one so i just sat there for two good months getting boiled in the heat day and night. i almost went crazy. i had a couple of heatstrokes as well. when i went for medical check up, the doctor dismissed me without any examination. he had been flooded with cases similar to mine so he didn't think it worth his time to examine me. so i got out the same evening after being on drip almost since i was admitted. my prescription was...yeah u guessed right. a bottle of the finest beer.

thats when it dawned on me. in India, you don't acquire habits by peer influence alone, its the environment as well. if you have to keep your head above the water until you finish your degree and go back home, you must also be willing to adopt an exotic habit that might be hard to drop. honestly, i find it hard to believe it when i look back at the days when i used to drink. i always wanted to quit after each session but the more i drank, the more i wanted to drink so quitting was a hard alternative. so i thought i better admit my condition and live a drunkard's life. thats when i really became one.

now i thank myself and forces that be that I'm far from it and that the best part is I'm outta here. no wonder they always wanted to leave in a hurry after their degrees. but before i can celebrate my survival certificate, i have one more summer to go. this one promises to be my worst challenge. i can pride myself of having survived four such seasons but I'm scared stiff about another ordeal. i pray to God to keep my head cool..the rest of my body is burnt already. i wonder what you would do in my case. i hate to admit that despite being an old guard, i still solicit for an advice. kindly save my soul for that might be the only part of me that has survived unscorched.