#scurf94: sticky dog days this summer season

how do you feel being stuck in a traffic for more than two hours? your vehicle dragging itself barely at a speed of 15-20 kmph. the stasis of the world forming a huge nebula of heat and dissatisfaction around you. the food you ate three days ago curdling at the pit of your stomach. each time you take a sip of water the food races back up, threatening to shoot itself out of your mouth. then your vehicle crawls further up by about five steps.

another halt.

you wait for the traffic to clear, and in that wait you feel as if you have spent the last five years of life doing just that. you wait for the food to crawl its way back to the pit of your stomach.

the food caught in your throat, the sip of water floating inside your empty stomach, the insides of your head swarming with a hum you have by now come to call a background score, the heat inside which your body swims becoming one with your being.

what-do-you-do-now?

you want to abandon your vehicle in the middle of the traffic and run away to nowhere in particular. but doing that would cause you skin burns, financial loss and probably the vomit will show itself out. with all the nearby vehicles blasting their air conditioners you will feel a heat that is so suddenly immense that your body will want to self-combust into a pool of cool ash.

so, you decide to walk yourself and your tired body to a nearby cool oasis, a tree shelter, or an air conditioned restaurant.

it is surreal. every time you walk by a store and the doors slide open it's like an arctic blast in the middle of a desert.

you look for a pedestrian route, some place where the ac blast wouldn't hit you. but it's there too. you take the turn down the road and see a cafe at a distance, still out of nowhere a massive store ambushes you. an air con blast hits you as you try to walk the pedestrians route. shielding your body. every year, year after year, you feel like the entire country has been put under a dome with the humid heat on full power. and even though it is all human made, it doesn't smell like that.

it smells like hard, hot metal layered with that weird rubber melting smell from so many cars just standing and melting in the blazing heat. the opposite of how it smells inside your air conditioned personal vehicle -- like metal peppered with that weird ozone smell from power going through all those electric cords.

you joke to friends that this is the great melt, and that people go to hell from here. and that you cannot blame the people who live in this kind of brutal heat. that their anger and barbarism is somewhat understandable if not justified. weather is supposed to be impersonal, but this heat feels personal. hitting you. "the great melt" you text a friend, after which you stop texting with friends. even being near gadgets irks you. the heat is emblazoning, all encompassing, dissolving everything in its wake. you feel menatlly, physically and spitirually removed from the place and time and motion of existence.

for over a fortnight now you are desperate for the monsoon-creased darkness of the mountains, the storm-blotted windows, the distance swallowed out of sight. two or maybe three hours after waking up, you start to feel entirely knackered despite a stolen nap here and there. tired in the legs and the head and the heart. hoping against hope that the plate of icecream you plan on having after lunch will be poultice enough.

you have many, many chores to affix to many, many empty hours ahead. just thinking this tires you out. you stand by the fridge door, looking agape, astonished and tired, your senses searching for anything, just that one thing that could spur you on. you console yourself, you've braved tremendous sickness through your life, this is nothing. but then you search for your phone again, refreshing the weather app for the millionth time. the hornet swarm of fear snakes round your heart, the sweet hour of salvation when it was supposed to drip in the Capital has further moved on by an hour. this is not the first time this is happening. you have been watching the weather for a week now. and it is so often almost in reach, the monsoon, but again and again keeps dragging itself forward. your fear overwhelms and underlines every single second of your existence. you know no releif from this thunderous monstrous heat. your head spins, a dull ache runs through your knees from doing too much sitting around. your phone slips out of your grip and falls on the laptop. the screen a blinkering nothing, zigging zagging, your words all lost. well, almost lost, until you unearth them from the cervices of the unforgiving draft zones, and then push send.

https://youtu.be/R0uWF-37DAM