Notes of despair and hope from India’s numerous heatwaves

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Editor's note: There is a good chance you would have experienced one or more of the regional heatwaves that started this spring and have already turned this summer into India’s hottest ever. And, if you are as unfortunate as me, you would have travelled a lot in the last two months, coinciding with peaks of local heatwaves.  In March, I arrived in Mumbai on the day its temperature hit 40 degrees Celsius. Hot desert-like winds blew through a city whose signature is its marine humidity. There were wildfires on hillocks near the city’s suburb of Powai and chatter that day temperatures in a nearby suburb had hit 44 degrees. I then visited Pune, which went from pleasant to blazing hot within days. I returned to Delhi to face its first heat wave of the season where temperatures hit 44 degrees in April. Now, I’m back in Pune in time for its second (or is it the third?) heatwave. Most people in Pune had just gotten used to installing air conditioners in their bedrooms—few had one in their living rooms. To hold a …