This is the summer of our discontent

Traditionally, we of the tropics and subtropics always had to conduct a little pirouette to make sense of the western world’s paeans to summer. For most of us, of course, the season remains a pain. But now with Europe and other temperate climatic parts like North America reaching sub-50° C temperatures — July recorded as the hottest month since modern record-keeping started — they may come over to our side of the fence and go easy on wanting to ‘Let’s all go on a summer holiday’. Whether it’s Janis Joplin’s ‘Summertime’ or Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’, or Shakespeare asking in his ‘Sonnet 18’, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ or Bryan Adam’s ditty, ‘Summer of ’69’, it may be time for a cultural reappraisal ‘over there’.

Winter, as we on the subcontinental plains well know, despite being severe in many parts, remains a ‘go to’ season imaginatively. The charm of sweaters that Europeans take for granted, or the romanticism of a fire crackling that makes outdoors fun in North America — never mind the beauty of ‘god’s dandruff’ that is snow — are what we yearn for in our hill station or ‘phoren’ trips. Soon, if climate change can change moods, cold-climers will also appreciate them more in song, poetry and cinema. Let the glorification of cool set in. For this is the summer, not winter, of our discontent.