A friend was messaging frantically the other day, saying she was melting in the Bombay heat. There was a power cut following a short-circuit fire in their building. They’d have to vacate until mid-May for the electrical system to be revamped.
Her deluge landed whilst I was making an earnest effort to relax on the lush green grass of a Parisian park, where (mostly white) crowds were returning for picnics.
But now, the sun felt too hot and the uneven ground poked at my back in ways that it never does for white folks. They lay on their backs soaking in the sun, looking completely serene, not fidgeting every thirty seconds as I do.
I sat up to type faster replies to my friend, who, by now, had switched to cursing the recent spate of violence targeting Muslims in India. She said it was “the rot” in people’s brains and “it must be the heatwave”.