British newspapers recently came up with a warning of an impending heat wave all over UK by the end of June. “Cities that will be the hottest include Birmingham, Cardiff, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. This warm spell is anticipated to sweep across Britain from June 26 to 28,” Daily Mirror reported.
The met official warned that on some days the temperature will ‘peak’ around 26 degrees Celsius in certain intervals.
This made the Indian social media users crack up. In a country where the maximum temperature is at a kissing distance of 50 degrees Celsius in many towns and nearly 150 have died of heat strokes so far, 26 degrees looked aspirational. Because it is nearly 10 degrees less than the minimum temperatures of these towns.
Most Indians, especially those residing in the northern Gangetic plain are no strangers to mercury soaring above 45 degrees Celsius during the day. But what has caught them unawares this time is that the nights bring no relief. A 40-degree Celsius at 10 pm has become the new normal in many of these towns.
Amid all these miseries, the Daily Mirror’s social media post on an impending ‘heat wave’ evoked widespread hilarity among Indian netizens.
The banter can be broadly classified into two categories:
The first is 26 degrees Celsius just two degrees above the temperature set in most air-coditioners humming round-the-clock in Indian households. Some even said they needed blankets for such temperatures.
The second one takes a more historical view and tries to vent their angst about being a British colony – How did the Brits rule India for 200 years if they can’t even withstand 26 degrees?
Names like Frederic Tudor began to surface. Tudor was an American merchant from Boston, who made a fortune by shipping ice to India. And cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai had ice houses to store them.
This sniping on UK ‘heatwave’ was not confined to Indian users. Cross-border colonial cousins Pakistan too joined in. So did the Floridians across the Atlantic.
Certain aggrieved Brits tried to explain that it is spring in the UK and temperatures are expected to be cool. Hence a 'spike' of 26 degrees Celsius is indeed a heatwave. Morever, most houses don’t have airconditioners or even ceiling fans. But they were few and far between and got drowned amid the widespread English roast.
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