If I had a rupee for every time someone told me that it was unusually hot these days, I’d finally be able to afford that air-conditioner I’ve been meaning to install in my den. Of course, I use the sobriquet ‘den’ in its loosest sense; because She Who Must Be Consulted has other ideas about domestic infrastructure development in mi casa. But you get the idea. Folk are feeling the heat. These days, that’s not just about the temperature.
Naturally, weather does feature quite a bit in the equation. And despite sage commentary in drawing rooms and cocktail circuits about El Niño and La Niña, we are none the wiser as to why the mercury rises. The reality is that we all live in a tropical country that is rapidly becoming part of a global hothouse. Fact of the matter may well be that Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth” is coming home to roost sooner than even the alarmists expected.
But in the short term, there is a superfluity of ways in which we can beat the heat. Take a spin up to cooler climes (if we can find reliable help to staff the slum or shanty while we’re away). Turn down the temp controls – because every household possessing its own A/C is the new statistic that’s being trumpeted to prove that the economy is literally cooling down.
Trip out on expensive chilled beverages; and never mind the cost of living which dictates that if only we could dispense with the necessities, we could enjoy all the little luxuries of life. What’s that, dear? Oh, yes! Aerate the room. Irrigate the garden. Migrate while the going is good. Because, in the long run, we are all dead.
Speaking of which, the barometer is dropping on the home front. And judging by the embarrassment of clichés that’s strung out like a line of dirty linen being laundered in public, the powers that be don’t know how to turn off the flak. So when the pressure mounts and cumulonimbus such as the Channel 4 fiasco and the CPC hedging scandal hover on the horizon, we mouth platitudes like there was no tomorrow. “We are a proud nation!” “If only people would leave us alone, we will prove soon enough that we can mismanage our own affairs very well without outside interference.” “No one can hold us accountable because we don’t hold ourselves accountable, so how dare they?” The problem is that fighting fire with fire only tends to increase the levels of energy all round.
And when the adrenaline is pumping too, that makes for a volatile situation. On the one hand, our hypocritical foes at home and abroad have taken a long cool look at the predicament we have placed ourselves in, and have kindly decided to stoke the furnace until we reach boiling point and explode – just so that they can have some cheap pleasure at our expense. On the other, an endless ménage of hotheads all over the show have sprung to our embattled island-nation’s defence – and the hot air they spew out in response to the calumny heaped on our heads has only made the exchange between us and our erstwhile allies all the more volcanic.
Interestingly enough, the large mass of neutrals who comprise our ignorant-by-design and apathetic-by-default citizenry seem to have decided to stay cool about the glut of issues floating around like scum in our small pond. They have periodic cricket and political circuses to keep them entertained, after all, and take the edge off the draining duties and chores of their workaday existence.
Why get all hot and bothered with wayward issues such as commercial trials like international law cases against us? Or political tribulations in the shape and form of electoral shenanigans that see seats transferred where the wind blows, as if they were chairs in a parlour game… Or socioeconomic tribunals which sentence our state en bloc to the bottom of its class because a few backyard or schoolroom bullies refuse to take some much-deserved discipline!
“Hasten slowly”, seems to be the national motto these days. The country as a whole appears to have figured out that all we can ever come to is ourselves, a cropper, or our senses – if we gad about like mad dogs in the noonday sun! What’s that, dear? A tall cool drink? That little green pill? And lie down for a nice long siesta? Why, I think I will. All this brouhaha in a teacup has got me hot under the collar. Nothing good ever came out of pointing out that climate is what we sell tourists, while weather is that which we endure with sunny smiles but gloomy hearts and minds… |
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