India is in a race against time to tackle extreme heat

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Editor's note: When Mumbai resident Piyush Matha was looking to rent a new home, his priority was finding one which was well lit and ventilated with large windows.  Two years on, he now has an air of disappointment when he speaks about it. “I didn't anticipate summers to suddenly start getting so hot. My house gets too much sunlight and it becomes quite unbearable during the daytime,” he said. To adapt, he has now put up blinds that completely block out the sun and installed a new air conditioner in his living room. Roughly 1,600 kilometres away in Uttar Pradesh, residents have started stacking straw over their tin roofs and coating the exterior of their homes with mud. Without round-the-clock power supply, they have to contend with heat in a different way. “Straw protects the ceiling from getting too hot and mud has a cooling effect. That's also why I didn’t install tiles on the floor of my house,” said Asad Khan, a native of Azamgarh. “On some days we also soak blankets in water and cover the windows with it.” Even …