The cold was everywhere. It was unsparing, like the smell of beef fry emanating from your neighbourhood mallu household on a Sunday morning. It made a shivering Sun rise nervously in a cheerless sky. It forced you to coil bonelessly like a tapeworm to fit into the entrails of failed blankets. It taught you to curse with your toes. It made you turn your kitchen stove into a makeshift bonfire.

23.7 degrees celsius on the mercury is not a joke.

It was on a perilous day like this, that the man strutted out into the balcony with a thin t-shirt and short shorts. His lungs turned into big unshapely packs of ice with every breath, but he didn't seem to notice. The woman peeped at him through yards of man-made insulation from the room inside and wished he could be exiled forever to Siberia, naked. The man smiled with a feeling of superiority, and a tinge of sympathy, everytime the woman shivered. "Movie?" he asked casually. Not an atom in the room inside moved.

After a few minutes of complete stillness had passed, the man decided to check if he'd finally gotten lucky and the woman had died. He rummaged through the layers of rugs, jackets, clothes, more rugs and more clothes, found some skin, and pinched hard.

A banshee rose ferociously from under the blankets and found its attempt to obliterate the man in the room, temporarily thwarted by a yardage of thick woven matter. In answer, it tore away every inch of obstructing cloth and stood high on the bed, jumping wildly, ready for the kill.

It was at this point that the cold slid away quietly into a corner.