Heat's On

Word From God’s Own Country

I

The only thing that troubled us when we took the decision to relocate to Kerala was the heat. It was March when we realised, through a series of unforeseen events, that it was time up for our over-a-decade sojourn in the UAE.

Heat, and my wife, Jeena, would run for the duct of an AC. I remember how she came back home in Sharjah from Kerala after attending her co-brother’s funeral. Her upper back was a minefield of prickly heat. But, Gee, the moment she landed on the shores of the UAE, they disappeared like any other opportunist, and her skin was back to its smooth, ebony best.

In the year she spent in Kerala recovering from a massive stroke, her skin became dark and patchy as the monsoon clouds. She hated it as she hates my snoring. The itching was violent and led to bloody affairs that oft prompted a loud thinking if at all we were the right pair “to grow old together”.

April and May are seasonally the worst. I wonder if Mr TS Eliot had spent a month traveling in this beautiful land before he sat down to write those immortal lines:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory with desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”

The great poet must have taken a good look at his smooth-turned-scratchy skin to realize lilacs were bred out of the dead land, and it had mixed the memory of the old skin with the desire to have it again. He longed for some spring rain under the tropical sun.

Before we set out from our Sharjah Corniche home, Jeena had a simple prayer, asking the Almighty to take care of the situation.

We landed on a land soaked in rain water. “Yes, it does rain in summer. But soon it goes away,” it was Daddy’s words out of years of experience. We hardly enjoyed the rain as we were worried about its imminent going away. We did not let the kids sing like Little Johnny asking the rains to go away.

We were not that rain-hungry this time because of the uncharacteristic week-long rain and floods in the UAE. We’ve got video shots of a flooded King Faisal Street in Sharjah to show off and convince family and friends that life in the UAE is not the same again!

Defying Daddy’s words of experience, the summer rains overstayed the welcome—the expatriates often do it here, much to the chagrin of the kith and kin. And, it rained on for days. Media headlines changed tone from enthusiasm to warning to lament as the unrelenting rains washed away paddy farmers’ harvest plans.

The farmers in Kuttanadu, the rice bowl of the state, suffered massive losses as they could not reap what they sowed. The rains had come “like a thief in the night” to steal and destroy. There were crises all around, but there was no itching as long as the rains stayed. There was no irritation on Jeena’s skin. Most of the days she slept well, letting me snore away to a crescendo.


Jeena was ever grateful that her prayer was heard.

Who says life in Kerala in summer is hellish? We enjoyed the verdant villages. We went for drives from one district to the other; stopped at country tea-shops to have vada and banana fry; we went shopping; we gazed at rain and slept under a humming ceiling fan. We wrote to friends praising the summer rains.

Life was all that till mid-April. Gradually, the rain clouds went away but not before wreaking havoc in Kuttanadu. As the showers disappeared, flowers appeared on Jeena’s skin. Slowly but steadily she began to scratch. The texture of the skin began to change. Lilacs were bred.

Nights became hotter than days. Not a leaf moved. Power supply was disrupted for most part of the night. We all were soaked in sweat. I called up the electricity office. The officer said he couldn’t give me a word on supply. He blamed it on 11 KV lines and rubber trees that fall on the lines.

Our little daughter, Keziah, came up to me one day, scratching and said: “When are we going back?” Our son, Sean, who has inherited Jeena's skin, pondered over the tiny lilacs on his atopic skin.

The nights lost their romance. We lay awake wet by sweat, staring at each other and the still foliage outside, wondering if we had meandered into an inferno.

Scratching. Scratching. Scratching. And, we made many trips to a famous dermatologist. She examined Jeena’s and Sean’s skin, and wrote out a long list of prescription. A few thousand bucks less, we still scratched.

Yet, the officer at the electricity officer is stoic. He couldn't put an end to our misery. After watching the action and dancing girls of the Indian Premier League, we go back to our own cameos of helping one another scratc.

The old hats say, the monsoon is still weeks away…sorry, the power is off again. My laptop has no cell.

In The Land Of Cedars

Though going through the immigration process at the airport was a noisy, sweaty affair--people are coming back to Lebanon since the Doha agreement--the country is beautiful.

It is a pity that there has been no peace in the land of cedars. For the time being both fighting factions are smoking the pipes of peace reached in the Qatari capital--to accommodate all factions in the government.

Though some say now things are going to be better, some still doubt if the stillness is the calm before the storm. Hope it is not.

The relief is quite evident as you talk to hotel staff and cabbies. The five-star hotel I've been staying for a week had ten guests till the previous week and all of a sudden has 100 of them. There are smiles everywhere. The senior chef, an effable youngster who has worked in the UAE for some years, is all smiles. So are other staff.

For the first two days I just walked along the streets--beautiful and very French--just to get the hang of the place. The streets are punctuated everywhere by pretty girls and women. Stylish, elegant, and vivacious, they brighten up the dark corners. To put someone from the Arabian Gulf at ease, there are the familiar sights of Filipina and Sri Lankan housemaids. They are out mostly on Sundays--their holiday--in droves and hang around their usual streets and joints, said Hussain, a jovial taxi driver who took me around.

For two days Hussain wore the cloak of the Tempter and offered to take me to a massage centre. He had also tossed in his business card. Just in case I was tired!

I think by now I am quite familiar with French towns--I have been to Paris, French Polynasia (Tahiti) and Montreal. But my French stops at oui. Hmm, what a pity, and how many interesting conversations I have sacrificed for this linguistic incompetency. How many friendships I have missed!

Anyway, the going is still good. I am enjoying the weather though I miss home. Jeena would have really liked to walk around the place and shop at all these cosmetic stores.

Yesterday I lunched at Sultan Brahim, one of the best restaurants for fish in Beirut, I was told. We--two friends and me--just ate up a school of fish. The Italian food at the hotel I was staying in the first week was horrible (subjective opinion), except for the braised salmon. I went in to a Turkish restaurant and had a hearty Arabic bite.

Good, with a pinch of thoombh!

I want to visit the Drews' villages and mountains. That's in my next post.