Heat
It is hot this week in Goa, a coastal region in India, and it is difficult to think about anything else. At eight in the morning, usually a respite from the peak heat of the afternoon, the air is settling, unmoving, on the skin. The breeze at the beach has stopped. Sweat beads on the forehead, above the lip, under the chin, and even the lightest clothing quickly becomes damp. The sky, normally a hazy blue, is grey, threatening to rain. The sea is also warm, offering no relief from the air. The journey to the water is too treacherous by about 10am, when the white sand heats up to an inexplicably scalding temperature. You can tell when to avoid the walk because the uninitiated sprint, grimacing, across the beach.
The pre-monsoon nights are no cooler than the days. Sunset promises a reprieve, a hypnotic moment that demands attention and silence as the sparkling sun descends slowly over the ocean. It reddens and intensifies until it is a perfect watermelon-coloured orb, banishing any other features from the sky. Then it disappears before touching the water, obscured by an imperceptible haze on the horizon, its light suddenly extinguished. Its heat lingers on in the pink and yellow dusk, and long into the night, unrelenting. Even in darkness, we cannot escape the heat.
My mind feels cooked, and I wonder how anything can get done when it is this hot. The temperature is mid-thirties, but feels like forties with the humidity (in Celsius; for Americans and no-one else, this is around mid-nineties to mid-hundreds Fahrenheit). Yet people continue to work, even in the holiday land of Goa. Men toil building new houses or digging ditches to lay pipes and cable. Women hawk colourful scarves on the beach. Fitness instructors continue to train people, and people continue to train, often outdoors.
India is so notorious for heat that a believably catastrophic heatwave sets the scene for Ministry for the Future. In the book, tens of millions die in a single heatwave, spurring India and the world into all kinds of action. In this epic novel, doubling down on humanity’s efforts to manage climate change includes a darker, more violent approach alongside our typical diplomatic, financial and technological methods.
We were not sufficiently spurred into action, however, after the 2003 heatwaves in Europe, which I only learned about last year. Seventy thousand people died of heat that summer. The UK recorded temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius for the first time ever, and some streets literally melted. Fifteen thousand of those who died were in France, most of whom were elderly. My French teacher described senior Parisians living alone, without family, dying in their over-heated apartments, some left unfound for weeks.
Europe’s commitments to tackling climate change have increased since 2003, but it’s not clear that much has changed in managing extreme heat. Almost twenty years on, researchers estimate that the heatwaves in 2022 killed sixty thousand people across Europe. That summer in London, as the UK was setting its new top temperature record, the hot air was cooler outside than in my top floor flat in an early 19th century building, and there was no escape but to wait for the winds to change.
At least the wind does change, eventually. The first rain in months arrived in North Goa today. Half of the sky surrendered to shadows, and lightning cracked over the water. A solitary man walked out onto Mandrem beach and began a slow, meditative dance, presumably for the rain gods – but who knows in Goa. I was worried he would be electrocuted for his trouble, but he was spared, and it started pouring. While I’m not hoping for a rainy summer in London, today it feels blissfully better than the alternative.