It was way hotter then. And without air conditioning.

These being the hotter months of Chennai, where the three seasons are hot, hotter and hottest, practically every conversation with dad is punctuated with his comments on how hot it is, and how much dad and mom have to rely on air conditioning to get through the day.

"Maybe it is because I am getting older that I am not able to take this heat" dad often adds.

At least there is air conditioning, and they are able to pay for it.

Life, as I recall my younger days, was rarely not hot in the industrial town of Neyveli.  Relatives coming from other places, including Madras (as Chennai was known then,) would comment on the blistering heat in Neyveli.  But, as kids, who grew up with it, we didn't know any better.  I don't ever recall knowing the temperature outside because it really didn't matter.  I biked, played, and even sat under the trees to read books, during those hot, hot days.

Most summers were at grandmothers' places--Sengottai and Pattamadai.  And every time we returned to Neyveli, dad's first few comments were directed at mom for having let us run around in the sun.  And with every passing year, my grandmothers and aunts kept commenting that I was getting darker and darker.  Of course, I was getting more and more tanned--who wouldn't when out in the sun, and staying put indoor was not an option for me, and even now is not!

Those were the days when there was no air conditioning available.  To most of us, going to an air conditioned movie hall was a thrill.  But, even this enjoyment was only during any visit to Madras--the only movie hall in Neyveli was not air conditioned.

Air conditioning has dramatically changed our relationship with heat.  Summer has barely crept in here in Oregon and my neighborhood hums in the afternoons with the sound of air conditioning units.  An irony, when we are the same people waiting and waiting for the sun to come out from behind the clouds and the rains that overwhelm and depress us for a good chunk of the year.

Air conditioning, which is an early-twentieth century innovation, is perhaps one of the easiest measures of affluence.

Data on air conditioning in the developing world is scarce, but it's safe to say most Africans and South Asians still make do without it. A recent Times of India article on how to stay cool in summer recommended wearing linens and drinking lots of fluids to avoid heat stroke. The modern Indian version of iced tea on the front porch? Nimbu paani from a street cart.

The American South, with its heat and humidity that made living there quite a hassle, might not have experienced the rapid grown in the post-WWII decades if it were not for air conditioning.  As the Economist pointed out a few years ago, "the South became suddenly more comfortable to live and work in."

The friends and relatives who live in the Persian Gulf countries know the heat all too well.  It is interesting to hear them complain about the heat in Chennai though.  They do have a point: while working and living as professionals in the Middle East, they rarely step outside the climate-controlled environments.  "We go from air-conditioned homes, by air-conditioned cars, to air-conditioned offices or malls" is their typical explanation.

Of course, that is for life as professionals out in the deserts.  It is a harsh life for those laboring at construction sites--this is the cheap and exploited labor that makes possible those homes and offices and malls to exist.  When the recession hit, this labor, especially the undocumented. suffered:

hundreds of laid-off migrant workers were stranded in labor camps without electricity or running water for months on end after their Dubai-based employers closed; some had to fight off rats while sleeping amid garbage heaps

Meanwhile, scientists keep reminding us that the planet is getting hotter.  To make things worse, the urban heat island effect seems to amplify the temperature--I feel it every time I visit Chennai. 

I wonder if the kids in Neyveli now think that all this talk about the heat is bizarre, as much as I never gave t a thought back in the day!