New Delhi, March 9 -- Climate change is giving us unprecedented heat patterns this year. Large parts of India can expect an early "summer". During this crisis, those who can will depend on ice: for cooling drinks, bringing down fever, and storing items that need to be kept at low temperatures. Ice has a long history in India. Initially, natural ice offered succour. The Mughals carried slabs of ice from Kashmir down to the plains. During the 19th century, ice was imported from New England in the United States. It was cut from frozen lakes and shipped to India -- this is how ice reached Chennai and Kolkata. Being able to eat ice cream was a luxury then. Experiments to make ice in straw-lined pits were only partially successful. Today, amid heat, and with the widespread use of easily available, man-made ice, of course, natural ice would not be enough for today's needs. More worryingly, ice that is essential for many ecosystems is rapidly melting. The Himalayas saw a snow drought in the first half of winter. According to the BBC, between 2000 and 2023, glaciers outside the major ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica lost around 270 billion tonnes of ice each year on average. It may be impossible to reverse this trend, but it is possible to slow the pace of warming if there is greater global seriousness about the issue. The ice we take for granted carries a history that also serves as a cautionary tale....