I was talking to mummy when it occurred to me: people's lives in this city revolve around three pedestals. Rains, trains and lanes.
It is always warm, so the precipitation is always a threat. When they say "It's hot!", it's funny. When they get all paranoid about the rains, it's funnier. The local trains get disrupted even when three people sneeze together (as Jairam once mentioned in jest)! So during monsoons it's like all hell's been let loose.
The cacophony of mobile phones and landline ringers goes off to sound distress or simply to discuss exactly how many extra milliseconds one spent on the way. How the slow trains swept past or how the fast trains swum at Ghatkopar. How Ollie got onto a bus at the signal and it was running empty on a shunting route, because the station had no crowds to vomit into it, this morning. How I'm so lucky to be living where I do, the roads ever empty, devoid of traffic and gurgling drains.
The politicos proclaim their influence on on-the-rise infrastructure, the mango people crib how every road's a pothole enlarged. When there are too many traffic signals, the citizens complain about too many hurdles. Once the flyovers are under construction, they say there's no place to walk. And there's no dearth of pedestrians.
So you see, it's a vicious circle. Unending, concentric, incomprehensible, yet lucid, really.
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