Commuters brave a heat wave in Allahabad in India’s Uttar Pradesh state on June 7. Air conditioners in the Himalayas and fans for the cows: How communities in India and Pakistan are coping with extreme heat. For the last six months, one-eighth of humanity has been engulfed in unforgiving heat. South Asia is known for its hot summers. But record-breaking temperatures arrived early this year, in the normally cool month of March. For days at a stretch, huge swathes of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka endured readings higher than 40C (104F). The heat waves claimed 280 lives in India between March and May, according to a partial tally of 16 states. (Other countries have not produced official figures.) Coupled with below-normal rainfall, the record temperatures withered crops and turned forests into tinder. Despite the arrival of the seasonal monsoons in late May, the northern plains of India […]