Heat

The heat. It doesn't stop. Finding AC is near impossible... there are few stores, restaurants, or meat lockers to take refuge in. I'm sure if I tried, I could cook an egg on the top of my head, it's that hot.

"You've come to India at the wrong time," we've been told. December is the best month to visit, but it's also the high season. In March, the mercury moves up the scale, continuing through April and into May. I've read that people who travel here in May are either insane or really stupid. We plan to be in China by then.

The heat. The thought that there is no escaping it wreaks havoc on the mind. Sometimes I wonder if a person can go insane from relentless heat. At the worst of times, I go to my 'happy place'.

I zone out and envision myself rolling around on a massive block of ice, the size of a shopping mall, with little sun umbrellas stuck into it to ground me in the present. I see myslef frolicking with polar bears wearing parkas in the North Pole. I try to remember what it feels like to have 'brain freeze' from eating ice cream too fast. I think about igloos, frosty breath, mountain streams, Catholic nuns... anything cold.

Everything swells during the day. I don't even recognize my own feet -- they are plump and puffy. My fingers bloat into fat cherub hands in the heat of the day... and at night when things cool down a few degrees, the wrinkly excess skin hangs from my fingers like loose stockings bunched up around an old woman's ankles. My clothes are plastered to my body... as if I've covered myself with honey before getting dressed. My face is greasy, my hands are sticky, my hair is limp.

The worst part about the whole thing: after sitting for any length of time, I leave an imprint of sweat when I get up. Is my butt really that big?