Fever

Witness statement from Udhayasûriyan Kurmagati, age 47 By the time you notice it, it's already been there a while. A weight added onto each thing. The fatigue of the legs, the irritation around the neck. And the lightest of sleep. I had to pant while opening a window to suspect it. And to admit it, I had to suffer a startling sweat while standing in line at a peddler's handcart.

I step out of the line, careful not to brush up against anything, to keep my shirt or pants from coming into further contact with my drenched skin. I can feel fat, warm drops rolling down my temples and neck. A repugnant stream starts to flow down my spine. Symmetrically, sweat runs down to my belly button. I'm even sweating from the crown of my head. Its ridge marks out my watershed.

Seeing all around me wet triangles getting bigger on chests, under armpits, at the top of butt cheeks, does nothing to diminish my shame. Hearing the passersby panting, sighing, fanning themselves makes me all the hotter. And the looks we give each other, more horrified than compassionate, seem to say: do something! This exasperation has not subsided. It has taken some surprising forms.

At first, we think we're equipped. We adapt. Ventilation. Fewer solid foods, more sugary drinks. Nap. Bath. Nightwalking. It's not that the nights are cool. But sleep drags around its waste. Soon it begets baffling nightmares. Fragments in yellow, red, fluorescent orange. Off-screen shouts and blows. Incomprehensible words. Fire and Water.

I'm twenty-two, twenty-three, at the time. I speak Hindi, but my first language is Kannara. I still live in the southern suburbs of Bangalore, in Bellandur, in a hut in the back garden of the house I was born in. My mother lives on the second floor. Since the death of my father, my oldest sister lives with her husband and kids on the ground floor. I've never had steady work. I've never "known" a woman, nor a man. But from now on there's nothing in the world that could make me let someone I respect, or someone I like, come into contact with my stickiness.

Time stagnates. I do nothing. The mercury swells upward.

The animals are collapsing. A camel lay down in the middle of the street. A sleeping dog is panting. A dream stirs it. I'm living its dream.

The nights are seeming shorter. And upon waking, hotter than yesterday, less hot than tomorrow? The sun, however, doesn't bloat. It seems like it has Sirius as reinforcement, its celestial pup. The neighbor who finishes hosing off his front steps finds the corner where he started already dry. By morning, the smells come on. It starts with a honeyed whiff of a blooming bush. As I get closer to the market, it's the spice cones, the attars, the incense. Turmeric, sandalwood, vetiver.

But on my way, less pleasant odors pierce the envelopes, sting the nose, pinch the throat. The fermentation of a garbage can whose lid yawns open. The filthy alcohol that evaporates from the juice of vegetable skins enriched with the fat of melting meat. Multicolored vomit.

Week by week, it gets imperceptibly worse. At one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, there's an amniotic pause. In the bath of the air, one can no longer feel one's limits.

The truce doesn't last long. The baking resumes, hotter than ever. When you go out now, it's a hairdryer trained on your face, it'san oven with its door left open. Walking around is out of the question. In parks, walkers are dropping like flies. The stretcher carriers with red cheeks come pick them up unconscious. Their air-conditioned vans fill up from one street to the next like elementary school buses. They administer fluids intravenously to rehydrate. If they wait too long, the pavement sticks to their skin, which burns with an odor of tarry fried chicken. The authorities finally recognize two victims of this heat wave in the...