The season factor

While slumping forward and shutting my eyes in defiant disregard of the teacher in the 90 degree heat of an afternoon class, I’ve often envied the serene temperate climate from the very geography lesson I was listlessly disengaging from.

If the ruthless temperatures of the tropics affect your productivity mentally, there’s little doubt as to what they do to the physical: perpetually dodging unrelenting rays from that huge ball of fire, constant dehydration that keeps you reaching for iced water with no satiation in sight, endless beads of sweat that put huge boxes of Kleenex to shame. And if the heat itself won’t kill you, the bugs that thrive in it just might.

Needless to say, when I was transposed to the land of sub-zero winters (aka Mountain Zone, North America), I spent a long time acclimatizing, and even longer recanting my aversion to timeless Indian summers. But as the cycle went on, I made my peace with it. Extreme temperature of any form is bad, but it’s easier to get through the bone-chilling winter knowing that Spring is just round the corner and the sweltering summer knowing that Fall is going to come a-knocking. And if I’ve basked in the 80 degree heat of my native land the past two weeks, it’s only because I spent the last two months below zero.

The tropics have no such reprieve. The third world countries as they are called make up a huge section at or near the roasting equator: giving history due credit, I wonder if high temperatures without the respite of seasonal changes indeed have something to do with productivity (or lack thereof).