28th June 2022

28th June 2022

A longish diary note.

Photo by Vikram Nair on Unsplash

My balcony opens facing the North East direction. Since the complete side is glass we are blessed with great morning sunlight starting from March.

Also lucky not to have a direct building obstructing the sunlight.

It’s 28th June and the sunlight is clear, unobstructed by any clouds, entering the length of the room. The tinge of cool breeze with moisture is the only indication of it being the month of June. Yes, rains are delayed again.

This “morning light” has been very bountiful all the way to June. Earlier, 15 years ago with the onset of monsoon we would hardly get any sunlight as it would be overcast. As a result we would miss upon the sunlight entering the length of the living room. Most of the time the balcony blinds would be drawn completely because there was no light coming. The room lights must compensate for this.

From last 5 to 6 years we are consistently observing a decrease / delay in monsoon and barring for a year or so the June sunlight is unobstructed all the way, sometimes till mid July.

Hyderabad is not much benefited by the south westerly नैऋत्य monsoon in the last 5 years. We are getting late rains and lot of deficient rains too. We get the rains late in mid June when they are timely. Some places rains start with the onset of मृग नक्षत्र. Hyderabad is more inland and away from the western ghats. It’s the Deccan plateau. The rains shower the western ghats first and then come more inland.

The larger day span near to the summer equinox has been more prominently seen in the recent years due to the late / deficient monsoons.

We also get the North easterly ईशान्य rains during December and January, these are very less compared to the monsoon though.

There are very few days every year which come in winter. These are “slow rising” days. On a particular winter days, it’s overcast and the sun does not come out too soon. Sometimes the sun comes out after 10am. This is a very queer variation of nature one must experience. I look forward to such days, even if they are only a few in the year.

Hyderabad’s landscape is characterized by a rocky terrain, situated on the Deccan plateau. Rock formations used to be considered an identity of Hyderabad, but with unplanned and fast paced development most of these formations, hills are blasted to create concrete towers.

Historically Hyderabad used to be called “The city of lakes”. Only 50 years ago it had 5000 plus lakes and the climate was much cooler, strawberry farming was high point here.

But what we see now is hardly 500 of the lakes are remaining and many of them in dying state.

Hyderabad is not blessed with large rivers or sea shore, hence the lakes used to do the major portion of cooling, in the summers particularly.

With the lakes gone the heat of the summer has no outlet. It just stays there. Very often during peak summers Hyderabad faces early morning very warm weather because the terrain gets so much hot that it does not cool down within 24 hours. Of course unless there are rains after a thunderstorm.

With rapid urbanization the smoke and exhaust from the vehicles add up to the heat and city areas there are pockets which reach peak temperatures like 45+ sometimes in the month of May.

These are very dangerous and any unassuming outsider can get a heat stroke.

The winters are mild and due to global warming, urbanization the winters are getting more and more mild.

The dangerous trend during the winters is very low and very high temperatures all in one day. This makes it difficult for the human body to adjust and lots of issues related to immunity crop up during this time.

As temperatures rise above 26 and upto 35C it is considered perfect for breeding mosquitoes.

Changing seasons get allergies, not much from pollen but more from new variants of viruses and people with. low immunity catching them and then spreading them to all.

Rampant use of antibiotics is one of the reasons to have these new and strong variants.

Once upon a time laid back city of Hyderabad has gotten itself in too much rush. Losing its basic nature and becoming more and more mechanical.

But that is the case with every developing metro city in India.