Indian summer: Too hot to handle for Europeans?

It’s a wonder that the British managed to rule over colonies from Africa to Asia, considering that a hot day in July — a not-unexpected eventuality, surely — has sent it into a national panic. It used to be said that only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the midday sun. Good thing they did too, considering the latter delayed setting on the Empire. They would hardly have been deterred by the temperature currently being touted as practically Saharan in intensity: 36 degrees Celsius. Indians would regard it as positively balmy, as the mercury nearly touches 50 degrees during a subcontinental summer. And considering Britain yearns for a sunny reprieve from the usual drippy, grey weather, a double shot of sunshine should have been welcomed with joy rather than dire warnings about children and pets in closed cars, skin cancer and heat strokes among the elderly. To think that their ancestors weathered blistering colonial summers armed with nothing more than sola topees, parasols, punkhas and ice chunks.

Europeans in general must realise that climate change has brought a new migrant to its shores that a new EU treaty cannot stop: extreme weather. And their increasingly sweltering summers spell a profitable opportunity for India: to capture the burgeoning market for ceiling fans, for a start.