The mercury hits 45C in Delhi. For the city's poorest, there is no escape. No shelter. No respite. This is not a weather report. It is a political indictment.
UK aid agency ActionAid is mobilising. Water stations. Cool centres. Medical teams. The British taxpayer is picking up the tab. Again.
The optics are terrible. Rishi Sunak's government is cutting aid budgets at home. Yet here we are, funding emergency response abroad. The whispers in Whitehall are growing louder. Why should UK cash flow to Delhi when Birmingham boils?
The Foreign Office is nervous. They know the backlash is coming. The usual suspects will scream 'charity begins at home'. But the truth is more complicated. Britain has a moral hangover from empire. And a strategic interest in Indian stability.
Delhi's poor are dying. That is a fact. The city's elite live in air-conditioned bubbles. They do not feel the heat. The gap between the haves and have-nots is a chasm. And it is widening.
The aid agency's move is a stopgap. A sticking plaster on a gaping wound. The Indian government is conspicuous by its absence. Modi's PR machine is silent on this one. They do not want the world to see the cracks.
Westminster is watching. Labour is circling. They smell blood. 'The government's aid policy is in chaos,' they will say. And they have a point.
This story is not going away. The heatwave will break. But the political fallout will linger. The question is: who will pay the price?
The answer may be the poorest, as always.
