Delhi is sweltering through another summer of extreme heat, with top daytime readings consistently reaching 43C and even minimum temperatures hovering around 32.4C (90.3F).
Last week the city endured its warmest May night in 14 years. As government heat alerts follow one after another and people retreat indoors, more than 300,000 individuals living on the city’s streets remain out in the punishing heat.
Homeless people are among the most vulnerable to climate extremes, says Chandni Singh, a lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Beyond exposure alone, homelessness is often accompanied by unreliable access to food, water and healthcare – all of which are essential to cope with and adapt to extreme heat,” she says.
The consequences are deadly. During Delhi’s heatwave last summer, at least 192 homeless people died over a nine-day period, according to a report by the Centre for Holistic Development.
Shahida has lived through these realities for almost her entire 20 years. Sitting beneath a Delhi flyover, where her family sleeps on the pavement under pop-up mosquito nets, she says she dreads summer’s arrival. “It severely stresses me out even thinking about summers coming,” she says.
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Shahida dreads the arrival of summer, and this year, she has the additional worry of keeping nine-month-old Jannat safe from the heat
But this year Shahida is enduring Delhi’s extreme heat with a baby, her nine-month-old daughter, Jannat. Shahida says her fears are now less about herself and more about whether her child’s body can survive the heat. “I’m not even sure how her skin will bear this weather,” she says. “I just don’t want her to fall sick.”
When her partner left shortly after Jannat’s birth, Shahida moved back with her family under the flyover. Today, the family of 10 – including her mother, father, two sisters, a brother-in-law and four children – all live on the pavement.
The family once lived in a small shanty in the park opposite the flyover, but it was demolished by municipal authorities years ago. Since then, repeated attempts to rebuild shelters have ended the same way. “We’ve lost track of times when we lost the house,” Shahida says, pointing at the stream of traffic overhead. “Every time we try to make a shanty again, it gets demolished. So now we don’t even try.”
The flyover has become one of the few places where Shahida’s family can remain relatively undisturbed. The concrete offers some shade from direct sunlight, even if the trapped heat underneath it often becomes suffocating by noon. “Police usually don’t say anything unless some VIP or minister is passing from the road,” Shahida says.
Over the course of a day, the Guardian followed Shahida to witness how rising temperatures are reshaping the rhythm of life for Delhi’s homeless women.
Under the flyover, Shahida is still asleep inside a pink mosquito-netting tent on the pavement. Jannat lies curled against her as cars and buses move along the road next to them.
A loud honk cuts through the traffic noise. Jannat stirs first. In seconds, Shahida is sitting upright. “This is how we sleep,” she says. “Even the smallest sound wakes us up. A truck passing is enough.”
Shahida folds the mosquito net and rolls up the thin carpet she sleeps on before handing Jannat to her sister, Abida, who sleeps nearby with her three children. Around them, others sleeping under the flyover slowly begin gathering their belongings before the pavement grows busier with commuters.
Splashing water on to her face from a plastic bottle, Shahida walks to a nearby tea stall and returns carrying small cups for her mother, sisters and the children. As she sips her tea, she takes Jannat back.
“I try breastfeeding her as much as I can, but in this heat it becomes painful and uncomfortable,” Shahida says. “Even the milk reduces because of the heat, so I sometimes have to rely on packet milk instead. But that also gets spoiled quickly in this heat.”
Later, Shahida helps her mother fill water containers from a community tap in a park across the busy road. But when the tap water gets too hot to drink the family has to buy drinking water – at nearly 20 rupees (16p) a litre. “We only buy cold water when we are extremely thirsty,” Shahida says. “Otherwise, we somehow manage with whatever water is available.”
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Shahida and Jannat wait for Shahida’s mother, Daida Khatoon, to return with water from the tap in the public park
Shahida is asleep again on her mat while Jannat is entertained by her aunt and cousins. When she wakes, she rubs the red rashes spreading across her back and sweat-covered face. “By now, even the pavement has absorbed enough heat and started radiating it back,” she says. “Lying down or even sitting on this floor feels like sitting on a hot stove. No matter how thick the mat is, there’s no relief.”
After trying to nap again, Shahida gives up. “We sleep the way we sip cold water,” she says. “Whenever we get it, we take it. However little it is.”
Nights on the street are spent in fear of harassment. “By morning, the exhaustion from staying alert through the night carries into the day as nausea, dizziness and constant drowsiness,” she says.
Data suggests that nearly 99% of people living on the streets suffer inadequate and interrupted sleep during extreme heat. Nikita Popat, an urban expert on homelessness at the NGO Urban Management Centre, explains the increased impact of heat on homeless women. “The constant vigilance women maintain deprives the body of rest and recovery during extreme heat,” she says.
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Shahida, her sister Abida, and mother Daida, prepare food over a makeshift wood stove, which adds to the heat and discomfort of their camp
Giving up on sleep, Shahida joins her mother beside their stove made of loose bricks. Fed with scraps of wood and rubbish, the fire crackles beneath an aluminium pot as waves of black smoke rise around them. The family prepares only one meal, stretching it across lunch and dinner.
Today’s food is rice and a curry of potatoes, cauliflower and pointed gourd collected earlier in the morning from a street vendor. “Sometimes, when there is no money, we don’t cook at all,” Shahida says. “Those days we either stay hungry or rely on alms from passersby.”
Popat says women will absorb the invisible labour of caregiving during heat stress. “Even in extremities women are often the ones cooking, caring for children and compromising on their own food and nutrition making them even more vulnerable.”
After the family has finished cooking and eating, Shahida sits on the pavement with Abida, surrounded by children. The afternoon heat has intensified beneath the flyover. “Every passing vehicle throws hot fumes towards us and makes the air even worse,” says Shahida.
The afternoon passes waiting for the sun to weaken. “Our entire day is spent waiting for evening to come,” Abida says.
The sisters scroll endlessly through videos on a shared phone, watching one YouTube clip after another. They pay 10 rupees to charge the device at a grocery shop.
Abida says falling sick during summer has become routine. “You constantly feel nausea, dizziness, vomiting and diarrhoea,” she says.
In such situations, the family visits a local doctor, who sometimes waives consultation fees. But the effects of heat can quickly become severe. Last month, one of Shahida’s sisters was hospitalised after collapsing from dehydration.
But the heat drains and exhausts them. “I don’t feel like doing anything,” Shahida says. “There’s irritation all the time. You feel angry and restless. Even working feels impossible because your body constantly feels drained.”
She says the effects are visible in the children too. “After a point, even they stop playing,” Shahida says, looking towards Jannat and the other children sitting quietly. “Sometimes they just sit silently and stare around. Seeing them like that worries us even more.”
A 2025 study assessing the psychosocial impacts of extreme heat on homeless populations also found behavioural and emotional distress during heatwaves. Nearly 82% of respondents reported heightened anger and irritability, 58% said they felt withdrawn, while nearly 48% reported crying more frequently during periods of extreme heat. Women reported significantly higher levels of emotional distress and psychological exhaustion than men.
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Shahida, her sister, Abida and Abida’s daughter at a public restroom. Using the facility for a shower costs 10 rupees
As the sun begins to set, Shahida and one of her sisters walk half a kilometre to a public restroom
“We wait for evening to bathe,” Shahida says. “First, because the heat becomes slightly less. And second, bathing is not free for us.”
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Shahida, her mother, Daida, and her niece carry potable water back to their camp
A shower at the public toilet costs 10 rupees. Washing earlier, Shahida says,is pointless. “If we bathe in the afternoon, within minutes we are sweating again and covered in dust,” she says. “So we wait till evening to clean ourselves.”
At dusk the air remains heavy and humid, but the absence of direct sunlight offers relief. Returning from her shower, Shahida bathes Jannat carefully using the water collected in their plastic canisters.
Shahida and her mother collect drinking water from a public institution that allows them to fill containers with cold water during the evening hours. The family stores as much as they can.
According to Indu Prakash Singh, a member of the state-level shelter monitoring committee set up by the supreme court of India, living on the streets is often the only option for many families as Delhi faces nearly a 75% deficit in shelter capacity.
Barely 200 metres away from where Shahida’s family sleep under the flyover there is a night shelter for homeless women. But, she says, it is “even hotter inside than outside”.
“Who can stay inside those shelters in this heat?” adds Shahida.
Singh says many shelters in Delhi are portable cabin structures that trap heat. “And in many cases coolers are either inadequate or not functioning,” he says.
By nightfall, temperatures have fallen slightly. Under the flyover, the family reheats and eats the rice and curry cooked earlier in the afternoon.
Shahida pulls out the pink mosquito net, spreads the mat across the pavement and folds a blanket into a makeshift pillow. Jannat crawls and plays inside the net while Shahida watches, waiting until she drifts off to sleep.
Other families around them are also settling down for the night. Some rearrange belongings into corners, others fan children in the humid air. But the night rarely brings rest for women here.
“Even when your eyes close, your mind stays awake. I need to be always protective of myself and my child,” Shahida says, staring at the endless traffic. “Every day feels like surviving somehow until the next one begins.”
Looking at her sleeping daughter, she says: “Maybe she is the only hope I still hold on to. Otherwise, I don’t know what is left.”
Temperatures all from India Meteorological Department data.