u/Desperate_Web_7639

I got sick recently in this peak Indian summer.

I was not running. I was not working at a construction site. I was not climbing a mountain or doing anything extreme. I just went outside and existed in the heat for some time, and my body started asking for water again and again and again, as if some internal alarm had gone off.

And I genuinely want to ask is this still normal summer or are we slowly being trained to accept an unlivable condition as “weather”?

Because this is not just about one person feeling dehydrated. Everywhere you look, people are tired, irritated and drained.

In Mumbai, even when the temperature number does not look as terrifying as North India, the humidity and trapped heat make the body feel punished. You step out, travel, come back, and somehow even ordinary movement feels like a negotiation with your own biology.

Mumbai used to be livable in a very different way. Juhu and Bandra were once outskirts. When Amitabh Bachchan built his bungalow in Juhu, that area still had some sense of distance from the crushing centre of the city. Now the city has stretched and swallowed everything till Mira Road and beyond, and we call it growth, development, opportunity, progress.

And this is not just Mumbai.

Across India, people are talking about heat like it is some unavoidable cultural inheritance. “India hai, garmi toh hogi.” But was it always like this? Were cities always this airless? Did stepping outside always feel like your skin and lungs were being punished?

At what point does a city stop being a place to live and become a machine that processes human beings?

We keep talking about development as if taller buildings, longer roads, bigger markets, more towers, more malls, more concrete automatically mean a better life. But if people are getting sick just from just stepping outside, if children cannot play comfortably, elderly people are trapped in rooms that don’t cool down, workers are expected to stand in heat that should honestly be illegal, then what exactly are we developing?

A country is not developed just because its skylines are changing. A country is developed when the body can live there without constantly fighting the environment.

This is where I think we have made a huge mistake. We treat nature like scenery. Trees are scenery. Soil is scenery. Rivers are scenery. Open land is scenery. Breeze is scenery. Shade is scenery. These are not decorative things.

They are infrastructure.

Soil is infrastructure. Water is infrastructure. Trees are infrastructure. Shade is infrastructure. Breeze is infrastructure. A body that can step outside without being punished by the air is also a piece of infrastructure.

This is why I think Sadhguru’s Save Soil movement deserves more attention than it gets. He brought attention to something brutally basic - Soil. The living foundation of food, agriculture, water retention, temperature balance and human nourishment.

Because if soil dies, heat rises. If trees disappear, cities cook. If water disappears, the body panics. If food comes from depleted soil, health suffers immensely!

If everything natural becomes weak, then human life becomes more artificial, more expensive, more dependent, more fragile.

And then we will still call it development because the buildings are taller and the roads are wider.

But is a city really developed if people cannot walk outside without getting sick?

True progress is not stopping development, but learning how to develop without exhausting the land, the city, and the human body. So the question is not whether India should develop, but can we develop in a way that keeps our cities livable, our soil alive, our water secure, and our bodies capable of simply existing outside?

I got sick recently during this peak summer in India - it felt like my own body asking for water again and again and again.

I reached this condition not after running or after working construction or after climbing a mountain. Just after going outside and existing in this heat for some time in a city that has become so hot and airless that even basic movement feels like a negotiation with the body.

That disturbed me more than I expected.

This heat feels like.... A WARNING..!!

Mumbai used to be livable in a way people who came later may not even understand. Juhu and Bandra were once considered outskirts. When Mr. Amitabh Bachchan built his bungalow in Juhu, that area still carried a sense of distance from the crushing centre of the city. Now Mumbai has stretched and swallowed everything till Mira Road and beyond, and we call this expansion, development, opportunity, growth.

CLOAKED IN SUFFOCATION!!

A city expanding five times is not automatically a sign of success, but a sign that we have built a concrete organism that keeps eating land, trapping heat, killing breeze, exhausting people, and then asking them to adapt.

Modern cities are beginning to feel like. Not places to live but machines that process human beings.

You wake up tired. You step outside tired. You travel tired. You come back tired. Even the night does not fully cool the body anymore. The air feels used. The roads radiate heat. The buildings trap it. The body keeps asking for water and you wonder how your own biology has started sending emergency notifications.

Unfortunately this how collapse arrives these days -- as dehydration, dizziness, people getting a little more irritable, workers standing in heat that should be illegal, as elderly people trapped in rooms that don’t cool down, as children unable to play outside. As cities where even doing ordinary things starts feeling like survival training.

Collapse doesn't look dramatic. It first enters through the body through thirst and fatigue and heat that does not leave even after sunset and slow disappearance of comfort from everyday life.

Mumbai has already recorded brutal early heat this year, with suburbs touching 40°C in March and temperatures more than 7°C above normal in some areas. Reports also noted “feels-like” temperatures surging around 45-50°C during the recent heat spell before temporary relief from stronger sea breezes.

And this is why I cannot look at environmental collapse as some separate “nature issue” anymore.

The Earth is not scenery.

It is infrastructure.

Soil is infrastructure. Water is infrastructure. Trees are infrastructure. Breeze is infrastructure. Shade is infrastructure. A body that can step outside without being punished by the air is also infrastructure.

That's why I think Sadhguru’s Save Soil movement deserves more serious attention than it gets. Because while everyone is busy talking about development, GDP, elections, carbon, technology, and growth, he brought attention back to something brutally basic: soil. The living ground from which food, agriculture, and human nourishment actually come..

Right now, both the planet and the body are saying the same thing.

There are limits.The Earth has limits. Soil has limits. Water has limits. Forests have limits. Cities have limits. The human body has limits.

But our idea of growth behaves as if it has none. A real horror. A finite planet being consumed by an infinite appetite. A finite body being pushed through infinite heat.

And a civilization still calling this progress because the buildings are taller, the roads are longer, the markets are bigger, and the language is more polished.

But if stepping outside starts making people sick, if food depends on dying soil, if water becomes something the body keeps begging for, if cities grow by destroying the very conditions that made them livable, then maybe what we are calling development is just collapse with better branding.

I have not been suffering the way I used to. This is not because my life has become easy. Difficult situations still come. The body still goes through discomfort. The world outside is still what it is - unstable, overheated, anxious, and becoming more uncertain every year.

But through meditation and certain yogic practices, I have slowly started seeing that there is a difference between going through something and suffering it.

Pain may happen. Discomfort may happen. Exhaustion may happen. Fear may happen. But suffering seems to require a certain identification with all of it. It needs me to become completely tangled with the body, the emotion, the thought and the situation.

When there is even a little distance, the whole experience changes.

Yesterday was Buddha Purnima and it reminds me of something people often misunderstand about the Buddha. People say Buddha taught that life is suffering, and then they interpret that as some depressing, defeated philosophy.

But if Buddha truly believed suffering was all there is, why would he spend his whole life teaching people a way out of it? If he truly believed suffering was the endgame for life, he would have advised us end this life for good!

He did not point to suffering because he wanted people to drown in it. He pointed to suffering because he saw that human beings were creating it compulsively - and that it could be transcended.

Dukkha or suffereing was not the conclusion. It was the diagnosis. And Ananda, a state of inner bliss, was a real possibility.

There is also a quote often attributed to Sadhguru: pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice.

I used to understand this intellectually. Recently, I am beginning to understand it in a more lived way.

I have been unwell since yesterday. Just the very human comedy-horror of 7-8 rounds of loose motions, dehydration, body ache, exhaustion, no appetite, and the severe Indian summer sitting on the body like a punishment.

Usually when the body starts failing even slightly, the mind joins the festival immediately. Panic, irritation, self-pity, fear, frustration. Normally the mind immediately starts building a whole drama around it. “Why is this happening? How long will this last? I hate this. I cannot take this.” The body suffers, and then the mind adds a subscription plan on top. Premium suffering, billed monthly! lol...

Because of the meditative practices I have been doing for some time, I noticed that the body was clearly going through discomfort, but “I” was not suffering it in the same way. There was pain, weakness, heat, dehydration, and fatigue - but there was also a small space inside that remained untouched by all of it.

Not detached in a dead way or denial. Not “positive thinking.” Just a little distance.

And in that distance, the whole experience changed. In that space, there was even a quiet kind of joy.

That sounds strange to say, because we usually think joy depends on good conditions. Good health, good weather, good news, good people, good future.

But what if joy is not something created by perfect conditions? What if joy is what remains when we stop becoming completely entangled with every passing condition?

This feels especially relevant now. As climate instability worsens, as social and economic pressures rise, as people become more anxious and reactive, the question may not only be how we survive externally.

But there is also another question:

How do we remain inwardly stable when the outer world becomes unstable?

Because if every crisis outside immediately becomes a psychological collapse inside, then we are finished long before the systems are. Meditation is often dismissed as escapism. But to me, it feels like the opposite. It is the act of finally turning toward the root of suffering instead of only rearranging the furniture of our external lives.

The world may become hotter, harsher, stranger, more uncertain. Pain may come. But must we suffer everything that happens?

Must the collapse outside automatically become a collapse within?

I am not saying meditation solves the world’s problems. It does not replace action, responsibility, preparation, or compassion. But without some inner distance, even our action comes from panic, rage, despair, or compulsion.

The deepest preparation for a collapsing world is not only storing food or reading climate reports or predicting timelines.

It is perhaps also learning how not to collapse within ourselves.