Yesterday’s summer shower brought smiles! But not for long.

Three days back I wrote about the heat wave in the Telangana region and Hyderabad’s highest temperature in 20 years. Yesterday was also quite hot but suddenly towards evening it became cloudy and there was heavy rain for 45 minutes accompanied by a strong wind. Everything appeared pleasant with such heavy downpours and the temperature falling. But within a short time, the power supply failed and it became sultry. The rechargeable table fans from China which have become very popular in Hyderabad were of some relief. Soon dusk turned to total darkness and we had to resort to the emergency lamps and torch lights. We had to attend an engagement ceremony and we got dressed for the party under these dim emergency lamps.

At the engagement party, we came to know that this downpour was mostly in the Secunderabad area and a few areas of Hyderabad. The venue of the party was powered up with a captive Power Generator but the Air conditioning was switched off. The place was crowded and a little uncomfortable. There was also talk of several trees and hoardings getting uprooted affecting traffic movement at several places in the city. Along our route to the party, there were some fallen trees which were moved aside, water logging and the roads were quite dirty but fortunately no traffic hold-ups.

When we returned home there was still no power supply. It got restored intermittently twice for a few minutes but it was finally restored at 11:30 P.M. I have not yet seen today’s newspapers but from the Television, I find that some areas of the city still do not have power supply.

A short rain in summer only brings about a short relief. I know that today is going to be hot once again and with yesterday’s rain the humidity level would go up causing a sticky, sweaty state and an irritating feeling when you are out in the open.

As a child whenever I complained about severe summer conditions I was told “Longer and hotter the summer; heavier the rains in the rainy season! Which are beneficial to one and all in several ways.”