“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in the poem The Waste Land. For the 30 million residents of India’s southern state of Kerala, this April was particularly cruel, with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declaring the first ever recorded heatwave in the state. The heatwave also came at a time when Kerala, along with other parts of the country, is part of the national elections process, with campaigning, public meetings and voting taking place in high temperatures. The ambient heat is expected to continue in the coming days, too, while the political heat is likely to continue until June 4 and beyond. Every year, summer comes early to Kerala, compared to the other parts of the country. It starts in February, when the rest of the country is still shaking away the winter cold. Located at the southwestern edge of the Indian peninsula, Kerala has to pilot in the southwest monsoon. For that to happen, the state needs to become hotter earlier than the other parts of the country. By May, when the rest of the country sizzles with summer heat, Kerala usually receives a few pre-monsoon showers and become relatively cooler. In the years of the decades past, when the southwest monsoon would come with regularity, June 1 was considered the date for its onset. Voting underway in Kerala. The southern state is experiencing its first recorded heatwave amid the ongoing election campaign. Image by S. Gopikrishna Warrier/Mongabay. It is not the summer itself that surprised the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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