India and Pakistan have been suffering from a heat wave for months, a consequence according to climate change experts. In mid-May, temperatures crossed the 50 degree mark. How do people deal with the heat?

Ram Singh swears by them as a cure for the heat: beel fruit at his street stall in India’s capital, New Delhi. They have rough, gray-green skin – inside they are yellow-orange. Ram Singh puts some in his hand-cranked blender. Beel cools the stomach, he insists.

Customer Devinder Negi buys him a glass of fresh juice. A glass of Beel juice costs the equivalent of pennies, it’s cool and healthy, he says. It also appreciates the shade of the tree under which the sap is installed. But, he says, he is a professional driver and must return directly to work.

If you can, stay inside

Many people in northern India and Pakistan are trying to save themselves from the heat wave with means like these. Those who can afford it stay home, turn on the air conditioning and take cool baths. But electricity keeps dying out, especially when demand is high and water is scarce. In many places it has long ceased to come out of the pipe, but only occasionally in tank trucks.

Technical solutions are also being developed. The Modroof company, for example, sells roofs for houses and huts that allow heat to rebound, says boss Hasit Ganatore. “We have developed a material based on waste paper that insulates particularly well. It is covered with a waterproof layer and reinforced with metal, because people want to go to the roof, sit there and eat, even to several. We have found that the temperature in the huts is six to ten degrees Celsius lower than the usual roofs.”

Outdated heat action plan

The company is based in the state of Gujarat. After the extreme heat of twelve years ago, his government was the first to develop a heat action plan. Among other things, he recommends that owners green their roofs, tile them or paint them with a white paint that reflects the sun. Traditionally, many houses in India are white anyway.

The country basically has a lot of practice with the heat. Until a few decades ago, even in big cities, most buildings were taller than trees. They stood in their shadow early on and stayed cooler. But Indian cities are growing rapidly – in terms of area and height. There is less and less room for trees and less and less natural shade. Then there are the new weather conditions.

Unusually early heat wave

It’s 47 degrees, says Sukhdeep Sidhu of Punjab, India’s breadbasket. Such temperatures are not unusual for mid-June. But this year, the big heat started months earlier and lasted much longer than usual, which is causing problems, including for agriculture.

Since 1901, there has not been such a hot March in India or such a hot April in Pakistan. Climatologists, for example at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai or the United Kingdom Meteorological Service, do not regard the early and long-lasting heat wave as an exception. They see them as harbingers of climate change. They expect these extreme weather conditions to be much more frequent in the future.