Raining Cats And Dogs

Every year, I read about how the rain messes up the traffic and disrupts life in Delhi. I see it happen to myself. I see myself sometimes taking twice as long to get to work, or to get home from work.

But this year, I am only reading about it. I read about some wall collapsing in Noida after the downpour a couple of days ago. It is a huge contrast to this place, where people go about their lives normally when it rains, save for minor slow downs in traffic speeds due to low visibility. I am told that people here go about work almost normally even when it snows. Everyone clears their own driveway (and their own mailbox. You can be fined if you don't clear the mailbox.) and brushes the snow off their own cars. The roads are really slippery, with a very thin layer of ice, but everybody still drives to work. Well, except a few people who do have the option of working from home, but even those people do not work from home all winter. They do go to their workplace a couple of times a week. The city administration knows that they have to clear the roads, and they do it. Everybody knows they have to clear their driveway, and they do that too.

It felt slightly odd when my friends and family in Delhi were waiting for the long overdue monsoon and complaining about the scorching heat, and we were hoping, every morning, that we would see just a bit of sunshine that day. For two weeks we saw only grey skies and it rained so much that I was drenched, just walking to the next building in my apartment complex, with an umbrella. But life went on normally. Even the landscaping guys, who maintain the trees and the grass in the apartment complex, went about work as usual.

In Delhi, I did not like it when it rained for days on end because the traffic would go into a state of total chaos. Here, I like it. As long as the rainy spell is broken every two or three days by a sunny day. I am enjoying the rains again, just like I did when I was a little kid.