I don't think people elsewhere fully grasp what's happening in NCR and just how hot it is. At 7am, the tap water is boiling hot. The sun hurts the eye. There's no night time anymore. For 24 hours the temperature feels above 40C. Which means during night the water is as hot
every surface is hot to touch. The human body can't endure a heatwave this nonstop without respite. ACs running nonstop, but rooms are barely cool, house plants are dying - you have to water them with boiling hot water. Struggling to breathe in the thick scalding air
The skin feels like it's on fire because there's minimal sweating here. You can't drink any water that's not in fridge. Water stored in bathroom in buckets need at least 12 hours to cool down to room temperature before bathing is possible. You can't step out on the streets.
The early morning yoga classes are mostly gone where I live because it's near 40C at 6am. Some of us residents in highrises are storing extra bottles of cold water and packets of ice the domestic workers can take home. But I can't imagine how dreadful it is for people without
any privilege, the poor and the homeless, those who cannot afford even a cooler and animals on the streets. A money plant that covered my entire balcony like a carpet of dark green died. The palm is shrivelling up, both in shade.
you can have a couple of days of 47-50C heat. You can't have relentless 10 days with no rain, no end in sight. And I fear this is how we will live from now on. And governments will do nothing because of capitalist greed.
Because the 1% super rich, when they're done cutting down all trees, flying in private jets, building ugly hotels in sensitive ecosystems, mining, displacing indigenous people, when they have nothing left to exploit, they will move their families to colder places and settle there
In Kolkata in the 90s and 2000s we'd sleep on the floor in summers. Here in NCR you can't lie down on the floor even at night. It's feels like a gas burner is on underneath it.
Declare an emergency, extend school holidays, shift to work from home, set up industrial coolers in shelters for the homeless, provide electricity subsidies to the poor who at least can run coolers, set up free water dispensers on roads, set aside funds for climate emergency
I didn't think this would explode, so for those outside of India - NCR stands for National Capital Region, that includes capital Delhi and several districts surrounding it from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
"In more serious cases it can lead to a heatstroke, when the body’s core temperature goes above 40.6C (105F). One of the patients who died in Delhi’s RML hospital on Tuesday had a body temperature of 110F (43C)."
A few days ago, I was at a metro station with a friend and on the stairs this baby (barely 2 years old) came up to us out of nowhere, tugged at my dress, grinned & babbled something. The girl had barely learnt to speak. We looked around to see why she is alone, no parent in sight
we couldn't understand what she was saying when we asked her repeatedly where her mother was. She wasn't selling anything, just a baby roaming the platforms alone, engaging with strangers. For the 15 minutes we were there all the worst scenarios went through my head. Started
speaking to shopkeepers nearby to see if they know her. Someone pointed to a tree in the distance and said usually her parents sit there, selling their ware. I asked the girl again, "ma ke paas chalo?" this time I think a penny dropped and she just happily skipped her way to the
I see the people predictably excusing the rapists of the foreign woman biker. "Everyone knows India is not safe, why did she not take precaution?" A few years ago in an argument with baba. He was reasoning "since you can't change mentality of men and the country in a day
what is the need for women to step out at night by themselves?" I said, "you or ma might fall ill at 11pm and since I'm the only caregiver, I might have to step out to rush you to a hospital. Should I be molested for it and was asking for it?"
Men don't know what a woman has stepped out for. Women aren't just stepping out for recreation. Women are returning from work, rushing out for errands. It needs to be safe for them to step out for any purpose. My father unlearnt a lot of his thinking and understood, and I learnt
My father's simplicity is legendary. But today I was stumped. 20 years ago I bought a thin flannel jacket for Rs 150 or so in Sarojini. In a couple of years as I made slightly better salary, I bought better clothes and left that jacket at home. Today my parents sent me pics
of a river outing they went with some of their friends and my father is wearing that jacket over an old check shirt. I didn't even know that jacket existed after 20 years or that he takes it out every winter and wears it. I have begged him to let me buy better clothes but his
argument is "don't be wasteful, I have enough clothes and anyway there's no proper winter in Kolkata." By enough clothes he means 5-6 shirts, 2 collared t-shirts, 4-5 pants and 2-3 sweaters. If I buy him things he makes me return or doesn't wear. His shirts are washed ironed and
Elon's trying to protect the Twitter Blue folks from mockery by making legacy verified accounts ambiguous instead of taking the blue tick off? What on earth is this @TwitterBlue? I have not paid for the blue tick 🤣🤣
The more hilarious thing is I just checked a couple of trollish handles I know are subscribers of Twitter Blue - they have the same status "either legacy verified or subscribed to Twitter Blue" lol
Rihanna might or might not be a subscriber of Twitter Blue 🤣
🧵At the age of 13 or 14, my parents and I suddenly found ourselves homeless overnight, penniless, abandoned by family. A kind-hearted relative let us stay in their home till I passed my boards. That day on, I promised to never let my parents face that humiliation again. The year
I got my first job, I got a loan of Rs 7 lakh and bought my parents a very tiny flat in Kolkata. The first home they called their own, to live with dignity and free of fear. I spent the next 10 years paying off the loan, saving
every extra penny after expenses, spending nothing on myself. Today after 17 years I bought them a second property, a bigger flat on loan that I will have to pay off. It will mean many personal sacrifices but
🧵 Cute story time: Was walking back from the gym, saw these two pint-sized boys (4-5 years old) in white karate costume rolling on the grass, locked in a cartoonish fist fight. I ran up and separated the two mini martial artists and asked them why they are fighting. The tinier
one (mind you both are barely 3.5 feet tall) said in a discernible lisp "isne mera tooth guma dia". Hooboy. Hold up. Kya gira diya? To which the other criminal pipes up indignantly "nai aunty mayne kuch ni kia". Turns out the former had just lost a milk tooth & was carrying it
around in a fist, when the other samurai, waylaid him and in the shuffle he dropped his tooth in the grass. I said, so what? You have so many other teeth. He looks at me pitifully and says "iske thutty rupees milte mujhe mummy se". It became clear as day why he was so bereft.