Delhi, my current ‘home town’ for over 30 years, increasingly looks like a City that is learning to sweat, as  it slowly descends into a  Humid Heat environment, from a largely dry and hot summer.

For a tad over three decades, I have lived through Delhi’s summers. I distinctly remember a time when heat here had a certain clarity – harsh, yes, but mostly dry. Except the occasional breaks by a storm or ‘aandhi’,  which brought the temperatures down, but left it mostly dry.  The afternoons scorched, the loo winds burned your skin, and yet early mornings and  evenings offered a measurable  respite from the high temperatures. Sweat quickly evaporated in the dry air, allowing our bodies to naturally cool down by the loss of heat of evaporation. Nights cooled, at least enough to sleep – because the dry rocky surface quickly re-radiated heat back to space. And that heat had a much clearer escape route, as the atmospheric  air had much lower moisture, a powerful heat trapping green house gas .