Burn & Freeze

My body faces a vexing conundrum,

A good half year from Spring to Fall

Sometimes it’s a cry, sometimes a hum

Now let loose on paper, hearken all!

As it dons the garb of a living thermostat

A hypothalamic quandary will unfold

Testing times for the thermoregulatory diplomat

A constant appeasing juggle between armies of heat and cold

The sun gets ready to blaze down, May mornings burn

I climb out of the sheets, with a trembling unease

Fresh from my sleep, as the AC now gets it turn

The room for the final few minutes, remains still in the numbing freeze

I desperately dash out of my room, to the balcony

To catch soothing glimpses of the fire ball

No more than sixty seconds, lasts the harmony

As the growing heat wave sends me packing down the hall

Taking a brisk stroll down the road, the perambulist

In me, draped in boxer shorts and a cottoned vest

With a conspicuous display of a sartorial minimalist

Is ready to brave it all, a fact to which I attest

Soon pearly beads adorn the eyebrow, a rather quick repartee

To the stroll planned for an hour and quarter

Now abruptly cut short to a pathetic Forty

Sweatily drenched I rush home, in desperate quest of water

Mercilesssly switching on the pitiable Air Conditioner

I shatter its blissful slumber

Sieving out its remonstrations to savour

The cool hymnal air, now the poor machine's plaintive number

Throughout the day the vicious cycle ensues

Amidst the cri-de-couer and remonstrations

Unobligated to either side, remain the tissues

Constantly adapting to thermal fluctuations

Office cubicles shapeshift into vitreous igloos,

While the sun blazes outside, with no expected respite till night

I lay Eskimoed, the dozen degree variance gives me the blues

I don’t care whether it is in Celsius or Fahrenheit

But for heaven sake turn off the bloody AC,

Shedding off my sweatshirt, for a care so cutaneous

I hasten out unbuttoned with sleeves rolled up – Disgruntledly and pacy

Vicissitudes of temperature are a shade too miscellaneous

Going down for a meditative cup of Irani chai

I witness mass solar incinerations

Rolling my eyes heavenwards, I submit a plea, ceasing to be the samurai

Beseeching acknowledgement of my heliolatrical mercy petitions

The only silver lining as I continue to sip the tea

Is absorption of a few capsules of Vitamin D

While life continues to revolve in a perpetual Limbo

As heat and cold, pairing up as a deadly combo

Prepares the body for the unrelenting climatic opprobrium

Necessitating an unabated pursuit of thermal equilibrium