Rahul Bedi

Very hot and very bothered.

And I wish we had 31 degrees like your meteorologist was saying.

How hot is it there, Rahul?

Right now it's about 39, 40 degrees in Delhi.

It's been, as you mentioned, in April and May, we've had temperatures up to about 45, 46 degrees Celsius.

and right now it seems a little cooler than what it was then, but it's still pretty sweltering and very uncomfortable.

Well, daily life really goes on as always.

The traffic on the streets is as voluminous as it was earlier.

But a lot of people tend to flock to malls because those are the places that are air conditioned.

And also in private homes, air conditioning is a bit dodgy because electricity breakdowns happen.

There are power breakdowns for several hours in a day because the demand for power has peaked.

And also the current crisis in the Middle East with reduced fuel and gas coming in has also affected the electricity output in many places across India.

Yes, it is.

In fact, a lot of children are sort of doing the equivalent of work from home or being educated at home and schools are likely to open towards the first week of July.

But it's quite possible that the school openings may be deferred for a few days or maybe even a few weeks.

Well, that's going to be absolutely disastrous because right now there is a factor known as the El Nino factor, which basically is that the ocean waters heat up and they trigger extreme weather conditions all over the world, including India.

And in India, they impact the monsoons.

And right now, there is a 45% deficiency in monsoon rains.

And monsoon rains are one of the principal sources of water and irrigation for most of the country.

And it's going to be, if the monsoon is poor, as is predicted, and it's going to have an economic crisis as well as a social outfall, because we are entirely dependent on the monsoon rains.