An elderly man from California joked with his granddaughter. "Can you ask the metro driver to put on the air-conditioner?" The others in the family break into laughter.
The man at the counter of a bistro, opposite the Chateauroux train station, bungles with an order from a customer. "I am sorry. The heat is too much. Cannot take it anymore," he says.
The young Parisian, manning the parking zone of the North Paris Arena, where the preliminary and quarter-final boxing rounds were held, was drenched in sweat. "Bad summer," he complains in 'school English'.
The Indian embassy bought 40 ACs in Paris and provided those at the Games Village rooms where the Indian athletes are staying. The Americans, too, have brought their own air-conditioning units.
Paris is hot.
It may not be like last week's heat wave when the temperature rose to 36 degrees, but the French capital is unusually warm during the day time. And the lack of air-conditioning and fans has added to the woes.
Gymnastics superstar American Simone Biles posted a video on Instagram struggling with the lack of air-conditioning. “Don’t come for me about my hair,” Biles wrote on Instagram before the gymnastics team final last week. “IT WAS DONE but bus has NO AC and it’s like 9,000 degrees. Oh & a 45 minutes ride.”
"It's unmanageable. During this time, it used to be much cooler even a year back. We just do not know how to deal with it," a Calcuttan now based in Paris sounded miffed. This is from someone who spent most of his 39 years in a city notorious for energy-sapping weather and high humidity. "Hardly anyone has an AC connection at home here," he said.
The organisers of the Paris Olympic Games have aimed to cut the event’s carbon footprint, with measures like turning to an underfloor cooling system and insulation instead of air-conditioning at the Games Village. "That hardly worked," Sourav Chakraborty, India's table tennis coach, said.
In most of the venues now there are hoses and misters to cool down the spectators. Outside the South Arena, the venue for table tennis, handball, volleyball and weightlifting, fans were seen cooling down in front of the misters.
Volunteers used hoses to spray down cheering fans at the shadeless beach volleyball stadium near the Eiffel Tower and put up signs about water refilling areas. Spectators ducked under trees for shade.
The situation is such that the Paris area's train and metro operator said it was distributing more than 2.5 million containers of water at over 70 train stations and other stops on its network, as well as at bus stations. "Even at 1.30am you can take a cold water bath. You do not need geysers anymore in the summer," the Calcuttan added.
In the past two days, evening rain brought down the temperature and the mornings are generally cooler. But as the day progresses it becomes more humid.
The heat is on in Paris.
