This article was printed in the IHT/NYT at exactly time last year. And now, once again, the heat is intense: the head aches, the eyes burn, and the stomach feels a touch queasy. While the Commonwealth Games are over and work on the Metro is finished, once again the main street near our home is all dug up, this time to lay some pipes. Ajmal Kasab is still in jail waiting his punishment. Once again the embassies are on high alert, this time after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

One change though is that the family under the overpass has now grown to a residential community of some 50 people.

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Awaiting the Monsoon                                                          by Ranjani Iyer Mohanty

The dahlias and roses in the garden have long since shrivelled away. The markets have seen the last of the strawberries and the broccoli. Just looking at a sweater makes my skin crawl. Opening the door of the house is like opening the door of an oven. It’s June in Delhi.

A film of dust coats all objects, inanimate and animate. The stray dogs look dirtier. The street urchins’ hair looks browner. The leaves are a duller shade of green. And to top it all off, there is the sporadic Loo, the hot wind from the Northwest that brings with it a brief but brisk sandstorm.

From the top of my bookshelf, my copy of Alexander Frater’s Chasing the Monsoon mocks me, but deservingly, even its pages are dry and faded. The Monsoon rains failed last year, resulting in a drought. And there has been hardly any rain during this past winter or spring. The underground water levels are falling. And there’s an electricity shortage, with many areas facing several hours with no power each day.

Work on the Metro system carries on incessantly, as does the construction of sidewalks in many parts of town. The push is in an effort to complete before the Commonwealth Games in October. However, it seems inhuman to make anyone do physical labour in this heat.

The central government is considering its response to the Maoist insurgency. The 26/11 Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Kasab has been found guilty and sentenced to hang. There have been periodic security alerts announced by the US, Canadian, and Australian governments, warning people to stay away from market places. If they mean the open-air ones, it’s too hot to go there anyways. If they mean the closed ones, then the refuge of the air-conditioned malls is gone.

Even the entertainment is slowly dwindling. The top-name Indian artists have cannily gone abroad for their foreign tours. And the foreign artists are wisely postponing their visits here for a cooler time. Bollywood has not had a noticeable hit in the last three months since My Name Is Khan.

But as the ever optimistic Maria von Trapp, blissfully living in the cool of Austria, supposedly said, “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window”. And indeed, several small windows have opened.

Schools have closed for the summer holidays, so the chore of travelling back home in the mid-afternoon sun is gone. Children, who had to be dragged out of bed for classes, are now up by themselves by 6am to play a spot of cricket outside in the relative coolness: the temperature is only 30 degrees Celsius then.

In an insane burst of energy, the Gulmohar and the Laburnum trees are in riotous bloom of flaming orange and bright yellow.

And of course, there are mangos. True, the fragrant Pairis from South India and the mythical Alphonsos from Maharashtra are finished, but the Safedas – large, fleshy, and sweet with a tinge of tanginess – are everywhere. Carts-fulls of them stand at roadsides. They are joined by bunches of lychees on long sticks: once peeled, the fruit may look like a little brain, but the taste is thankfully much better. On the street outside the Jawarharlal Nehru University, under the shade of one tree are a mound of watermelons and under another, a heap of coconuts. If you stop by the coconut-wala and point to a coconut, he’ll slice off the top for you with a machete and hand it to you with a straw.

Every road has a water seller. His cart has a large clay pot with miraculously cool water, lemons, and scaly-looking glasses. The first thing to offer any visitor who comes to your home at this time of year is a glass of water. There are also a plethora of more upscale pick-me-up summer drinks that taste good and have salts that re-hydrate the body: the Jal Jeera – water flavoured with cumin powder and other spices; Pana – the pulp of roasted green mangos blended with water and mint leaves; Rooh Afza – an exotic and mysterious concentrate of herbs, fruits, and flowers; and Neer More – a South Indian concoction that’s gaining currency in the North, a thin buttermilk mixed with asafoetida and curry leaves.

But, let’s face it, these windows are mere consolations and distractions to while away the time until the door reopens to let in the Monsoon. The India Meteorological Department has predicted that this year’s South-west Monsoon will be ‘normal’ and ‘timely’. Beginning in Kerala early June, it will sweep up to Mumbai a few days later, and arrive in Delhi by the end of June.

But right now, it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the heat is merciless. As fully enclosed and air-conditioned SUVs drive by, a homeless family has found shade under a newly constructed flyover on Delhi’s famous Outer Ring Road. Two young children quietly play a self-invented game with stones of the leftover rubble and an empty plastic water bottle. Nearby, the father is lying down on a ragged sheet, while the mother is sitting next to him, looking on listlessly. They are too tired to chase the Monsoon, but they hope it will come to them.

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