Syed Ali Mehdi Zaidi

SYED ALI MEHDI ZAIDI, then a graduate student at Stanford University, Stanford, California, was approved funding in April 2023 to aid resarch on “Living in Hellfire; Heatwork and Global Warming in Karachi,” supervised by Dr. Mathew Kohrman. This research project, conducted in the lower middle class neighborhood market of “Perfume Chowk” in Karachi Pakistan, studied the subtle ways in which the average increase in temperature manifests and influences everyday social life in the market. The name of the area draws from a small roadside stall selling “impressions” of perfumes produced by international brands. This stall is part of a large number of perfume sellers that have proliferated across the Karachi olfactory landscape over the past two decades. This project reads the sudden increase in the demand for perfumes alongside an increase in demand for air conditioners and men who repair and install them. Not only does the market have multiple sellers of heat technologies, it’s very temporal rhythms are dictated by heat. Sellers prefer to conduct business at night, sprinkle water on the road, set up stalls under trees and bridges, install makeshift fans and hydrate regularly all in the hopes of managing the heat. Not to mention the various bodily techniques deployed at home. I seek to understand the people who deal in thermoregulation, personal or otherwise, and study how the market as a whole makes sense of heat that increases every year.