Why India's yogurt drink lassi is the perfect drink for the hottest summer on record

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/08/07/ [login to see] /why-indias-yogurt-based-lassi-is-the-perfect-drink-for-the-hottest-summer-on-rec
When Gulrez Azhar travels from his Seattle-area home to Uttar Pradesh in northern India, where he grew up, he occasionally tries an "American thing": smiling at and greeting total strangers.

"People just look at you weirded out" in India, he explains. "So then you have to put back that scowl on your face!"

Azhar says that scowl, and the feelings of anger and frustration that he's often seen accompanying it, are due in part to the oppressive heat of the region he is from.

Temperatures in northern India routinely climb north of 110 degrees. "I think the word is suffocating," Azhar says. "Everywhere you go, all around you, it's sweaty, unbearable. It's hot. You don't feel like doing anything. Just a continuous period of misery."