Always keep an onion in your pocket

“If you don’t like eating them raw then just carry an onion in your pocket.” This was the advice I was given the other day by a colleague on how to avoid heatstroke. It was backed up by my other colleagues and accompanied with sympathetic looks that implied, “I can’t believe you’ve got to this point in your life without carrying an onion in your pocket.” No one seemed to be able to explain to me or provide any scientific evidence as to why onions serve so effectively as portable air conditioning units. Perhaps it’s because if you carry enough onions on your person the smell will be so pungent that it will lessen the risk of others crowding your personal space and causing you to sweat more. I did suggest this to my colleagues but it was met with blank expressions. However, with temperatures reaching 42 degrees and rising, it is getting to the point where I’m willing to try just about anything.  

Having a constantly ‘damp’ backside and waking up in the middle of the night and wondering why your mattress is wet only to realise it’s your own sweat is sort of what 42 degrees feels like. Stepping outside feels a bit like entering an overly central heated house (Soph, it’s like your house in winter time when Steve’s not there only three times hotter). When it first started to get really hot I was convinced this must be what had happened and that there must be an ‘off’ switch somewhere. Usually when it’s hot if you sit in the shade you can cool down. Not so. Here the air is hot, the walls and floors are hot and the water that comes out of the tap is boiling hot having been nicely heated by the sun. My flatmate Zoe described it best when she said that coping with  Delhi and its extreme temperatures feels a bit like a perverse science experiment. You are forced to push your body to extremes you never thought possible. I marvel at how I manage to sweat out water at the same speed at which I drink it or, in the winter time, eating double my normal daily intake of calories and not putting on weight (this was quite a novelty at first but after a bit I just wanted it to stop being cold).

Eventually temperatures are going to reach around nearly 50 degrees and I’m almost intrigued to see how my body will cope with it. It could be the most spectacular spontaneous human combustion anyone’s ever seen.