yes, but it's a dry heat

Way back in the bygone era of my enrollment at university, I used to live with my now-brother-in-law Adam (don't think I could've lived with my other very excellent brother-in-law Ryan...my slobbishness at the time would've probably forced him to kick me to the curb) and we in turn also lived with Anne (hi, Anne!), Andrea, Tom, and Darcy. At the time it was kind of a trend for some people to keep a quote wall at their trashy student ghetto houses so that they could record for all time the brilliant insights that can only be achieved after an ungodly number of hours at the library followed by an unholy ingestion of Purple Jesus or other liquid conducive to spiritual illumination. And now, some horrible amount like 15 years after we moved in together, I would pay top dollar to have in my possession such a quote board. Well, and I'd pay my old past self plenty of boxes of ramen noodles to have actually created such a board in the first place. We were lazy and relied on "memory" to keep track of jokes. Fools that we were. But the reason why I'd have liked that is because, you see, every so often I get the random drift of an old inside joke floating around in my head and because I'm so old and decrepit and the neurons don't fire quite as effectively as the used to - perhaps as a result of just one too many rounds at Clark back in the day - I can't catch the full punchline or else I can't remember what the spark that set off the joke was.

I've had one semi-joke trapped between my ears for the past week and a half. It's this audio memory of Darcy saying - I think about a nuclear bomb exploding onscreen - "Yes, but it's a dry heat."

The current weather here in Delhi is bringing that half-remembered quote into my mind every time I step outside. It's damn hot. And it's damn dry. I've been trying to think of some examples that would help you understand the relative hotness and dryness because it's really something if you've never experienced it before. So here goes, my top examples of how hot and dry Delhi is:

#1: It is so hot and so dry that...I left a box of crackers open a month ago and when I went to eat one yesterday it had actually bent slightly back upon itself with further moisture reduction than it (a DRY CRACKER) had already had, and when I bit into the cracker it was even crispier and more delicious than it had been when I first opened the package.

#2: It is so hot and dry that...the only time I breathe in moist air is when I open up the cabinet in the kitchen that is below the sink. You see, we had a water pipe leaking for, oh, a month and every time we tried to get the plumber to come they'd tell Phet, "Yes, sir, tomorrow" and then even when they finally did come they said, "Yes, sir, parts tomorrow" and didn't reappear for week and we even told Mr. Singh (who, you'd think, as owner of the house would want to ensure that faulty plumbing doesn't destroy his considerable investment) and he said, "Yes, Phet, we'll see about it" and in the end nothing was done for ages and the pipe kept a-leaking. Eventually it did get "fixed", but the cupboard that it was leaking into still maintains a whiff of dampness that doesn't exist anywhere else in Delhi. I realize it's kind of nasty to sniff musty cupboards, but I've caught myself doing it twice now.

#3: It is so hot and dry that...Seung Yi is now sleeping through the night without going pee even once.

#4: It is so hot and dry that... (ok, I have to diverge here for a moment...those of you who know Emma and I really well know that if we put our hair up when it is wet and twelve hours later we put it down before we go to bed it is still wet. Right? Ok, now I can go on with my example) after I have a shower and fully wash and rinse my hair with copious amounts of water and then I pull my hair back in a bun when it is soaking wet, just 45 minutes later my hair is bone dry.

#5: It is so hot and dry that...I have to drink water and not just four cups of tea a day. Which is a pain because despite the heat and dryness water ingestion leads to the necessity of utilizing the bathroom on an annoyingly frequent basis. Today I had my Hindi lesson with my nice new teacher and I had to bring a water bottle and then on top of that he had to serve me a big glass of water and even then my lips and throat were pretty much parched for the whole lesson. I wake up these days in the middle of the night very comfortable in terms of being pleasantly cool with the fan on and not sweating even the tiniest bit (whereas in Laos, Thailand, KL, Hanoi, and even Toronto once the temperature hits 30' you're just bathed and dripping most of the time) but my lips are dry even after I lick them.

But hey, it's a dry heat!

[Delhi-3-May-2008]