Delhiwale: His days of summertime hostility

In Delhi's sweltering 41°C heat, fruit-seller Zareef struggles under the harsh sun, reflecting on worsening summers as he serves customers.

The afternoon heat is as palpable as a solid surface. It is slamming down from the sky, and roaring up from the tarmac. Per the mobile, the temperature is hovering around 41°C. Fruit-seller Zareef has a headache. He gulped water a minute ago; he’s thirsty again.

Fruit seller Zareef is selling muskmelons—kharbooja. (HT Photo)

This afternoon, the soft-spoken man is selling muskmelons—kharbooja. Even the fruit is hot to the touch. A biker stops, his face covered with a kerchief. “Very sweet, very sweet… 60 rupees a kilo!” The fruit seller murmurs.

Zareef is suffering from the prematurely advanced heat of late April, but he isn’t alone. Millions across Delhi are bracing against the same heat. Some are able to limit their exposure to it, staying indoors in air-conditioned homes or offices. Many cannot. Look around this street. Despite the heat, it is packed with citizens—rickshaw pullers, labourers, and street vendors. Zareef is one of them. He runs his stall from eight in the morning until late in the afternoon. “The heat is attacking me here, the heat is attacking me from there,” he says, waving his arm.

Zareef has been selling fruit for 30 years. Each summer feels worse, he says, when asked if he feels that the temperatures have risen over the years. “Will I be able to stand this heat and run my stall five years from now?” he asks. His question sounds rhetorical; he doesn’t seem to expect an answer.

Meanwhile, the street is cloaked in a wide halo of blinding white sunlight. Behind the fruit-seller, the shutter of a closed shop is reflecting golden glow, as if it were the twilight hour. The effect probably comes from the yellow and blue tarpaulin Zareef has rigged as a makeshift ceiling. The shade dulls the glare, but traps the heat—Zareef calls it “tirpal ki tapan (the scorching heat of the tarpaulin). “Because it is plastic,” he says. “Plastic heats up.” Why not use cloth then? He shakes his head. “Cloth doesn’t stop the sunlight.”

The sun anyway is so harsh that even a glance at the tarpaulin hurts the eyes. Its glare spills across the plastic, flattening everything into a hard, uniform light.

In brief lulls, when no customers appear, Zareef folds his arms and says the heat is wearing him down. “Even in this temperature, I must run the stall. And this is only April. What will happen in May?” At night, however, there is some relief. His two-room house has a cooler and an air conditioner—enough, he says, for his family of nine.

Sometimes, in this kind of heat, Zareef walks a few steps to the next vendor. Rajesh sits beside a plastic crate. To obtain a fleeting relief from the garmi, Zareef presses his hands into the said crate. For Rajesh sells gajras of fragrant chameli flowers threaded with roses, which are very damp and cool to the touch.