RAIN DICTIONARY

DEPRESSION
Not just the low-pressure zones in the sky that invite the heavy rain-clouds and the monsoon, but the hollow feeling in my stomach when I look at the still-wet washing hanging on sagging lnes inside rooms where they have no business to be. Wet clothes should dry fast and smell fresh and sunny, not go on hanging for ever.

DEBRIS
Is the muck that rises up to greet your feet (or ankles, or knees, or waist - depending on the water level) when you wade from job to home, or anywhere to anywhere.

DECISION
To take the raincoat or the umbrella? The foldable brolly or the huge one with the hook-like handle that always gets stuck in other people's bags? Whatever I decide is ineffectual anyway, because the monsoon has a mind of its own. And a heavy downpour can throw cold water on all my decisions.

DEVILRY
The sheer cussedness of auto-richshaw drivers who are always zipping up and down, but never where you want to go. In monsoon, along with dengue and malaria, auto-rickshaw refusals reach epidemic proportions. Even if you have tons of grocery bags on your arms, or wet-and-wailing children in your arms. They'll never go where you ask them to, but always stop and pick up the next person.

DESPERATION
Personified by me when I am standing in the pouring rain, trying to flag down an auto, with an ineffectual umbrella in one hand and the aforesaid tons of grocery bags on the other hand, getting horribly late for home.

DELINQUENCY
Personified by monsoon-mad Mumbaikars who seem to be in love with this misery-pouring season. As Obelix would say, "These Mumbaikars are crazy!"

DEFIANCE
Me arguing with the above-mentioned mad phalanx and saying, "Monsoon, huh? The sooner it is over, the better. And anyway, why doesn't it just go and rain on the lakes, instead of messing up my life?"

DELIGHT
Is a fast-forward to a future when the lakes are full and the sun is shining.

Care to add some more words to the list?

URBAN OASIS

Sometimes, I travel to the ad agency where I work part-time via a little neighbourhood called Amboli in Andheri. It is a place where many of the residents are Catholics, and it's a place where things seems to slow down of their own accord.

My auto-rickshaw, which hurtles down the manic Andheri roads when it is not fuming at traffic jams, trots with leisured ease down the winding paver-blocked Amboli roads. The sun seems softer, the shops seems sleepier, the air seems gentler. There's a playground where somebody has thoughtfully hosed down the grass-less field, so that the kids can play without the swirling dust choking them. There's a street-corner flower-shop, where a maxi-wearing young lady with flowers in her hair deftly weaves myriad garlands. There are gaggles of goats and sheep by the roadside - some leaping out to surprise the auto-driver, some chewing cud casually. And there are numerous wooden or concrete crosses with the legend I.N.R.I (Jesus of Nazareth, King - Rex - of Jews; in Hebrew script, I and J looks the same).

This benign spirit seems to guard and cosset lilting lulled-down Amboli from the heat and dust of Andheri - with its buzzy busy-ness and reckless skyscrapers and frantic shops. Amboli houses are small, dilapidated, sloping-roofed shanties, or four/five storeyed small-townish apartment blocks.

That place has a character of its own - a stubborn refusal to blend in with the rest of the faceless, multi-storeyed, swanky-malls-dirty-roads urban desertscape of the rest of Andheri.

It's anyone's guess how long this oasis will hold out. Deserts have a habit of taking over everything around it.

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

I travelled with Deepika Padukone today. As I was coming to work, I sat alongside a smiling Deepika, all demure-pretty with a clip in her hair and a sunny yellow dress, posing against an impossibly-blue sky and a fairy-tale cottage with a riot of flowers in the garden.

Surprised? Don't be. Ever since I came to Mumbai, I have travelled with the likes of a fresh-faced Salman Khan (with long-hair, cute-smile and his shirt-on, looking like he did in his Hum Aapke Hai Kaun days). And with Amitabh Bachchan, when he was still a beardless and helmet-haired angry-young-man with an intense gaze and a sneer on his rouged lips. And a cherubic-fresh Preity Zinta, or an angelic-vacuous Aishwarya - often dimpling down at me or gazing down at me from both sides. Or sometimes a Shah Rukh Khan from his floppy-haired, puppy-eyed days, who looks ready to break into a K-k-k-kiran every time the vehicle stutters in a traffic jam.

No, I don't travel in a Merc. I travel in auto-rickshaws. And one of the greatest amusements is to find whose image will be there on the inner walls of the rickshaw when I climb in. Glossy, glamourous and larger-than-life travelling companions I can look at when the rickshaw is stuck in a traffic jam.

And imagine myself in the company of stars. After all, Mumbai is the City of Dreams, and a little bit of tinsel gets rubbed off on me even when I am caught in the middle of suburban roads and daily chaos.

Unfortunately, all auto-rickshaws do not have Bollywood stars as interior decoration. Some have lights and blasting sound-boxes, some have shabby velvet and some have shiny rexine. But, for me, the shine is missing from a rickshaw-ride if I don't have a brooding Amitabh by my side. Or a rosy-cheeked Aamir. Or a twinkling Juhi Chawla.

I'm not choosy. Just celebrity-struck when I'm traffic-stuck.

KOLKATA: BACK TO THE FUTURE

We are back from a few weeks vacationing in Kolkata, where the more things change, the more they remain the same. Or seem to, at least.

Kolkata welcomed us with a host of new flyovers and a not-so-new 'aborodh' (obstruction) because of some political agitation when we all got stuck for three hours on these very flyovers and newly swanked-up roads. Red or green, whatever be the colour of West Bengal's political affliation, it seems that the roads are still stuck in the STOP-RED-LIGHT mode, whenever any leader worth his/her weight decides to sulk and scream.

During our stay we were caught in the midst of the GREAT AUTO DIVIDE - that is, the divide between the new-green-and-yellow autorickshaws that have switched to LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) and the old-black-and-yellow autorickshaws that have not. They are environment-unfriendly, and so, have been rudely ostracised by the Kolkata Police and pushed to fringe roads in areas like Haltu. But many people live there, too. Don't they need environment-friendly conveyance, or are they less important that the residents of posher places like Ballygunge and Jodhpur Park?

Any such argument unarguably made us hungry and during the vacation we had a lovely time feasting at many of our old Kolkata favourites like Peter Cat, Bedouin, Coffee House, and Kafulok at Tangra. Food to die for, at prices that do not take your breath away.

The more things change, the more they remain the same? Not such a bad thing, going by our drool-worthy food experiences at Kolkata.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

The time: 6.45 a.m. Not quite morning (Mumbai mornings wake up late, though the people, of course, are up and about, including yours truly).

Up and about at high speed. On the Western Express Highway, which is converted to a Formula One race track every morning (till 8.30 a.m -after that it's a different story altogether). And so, the daily round of Formula One races are underway. Instead of foreign-Ferraris, our local F1 champs drive the proudly-Indian auto-rick(ety)shaws. From their respective pit lanes (in the bylanes of Borivili and Kandivali), the desi Lewis Hamiltons, Kimi Raikkonens and Fernando Alonsos cruise (at deceptively ‘normal’ speed) to the Highway. The wide open newly-concretised makes a tempting racetrack in the pale yet-to-be-sunlight. And then the race begins. With me as a VERY RELUCTANT PASSENGER and SPECTATOR (with wind-whipped hair, high-jumped heart and gut-curdled stomach).

At any red traffic light, the autos screech to a stop, forced into what is called a grid position. But even when cars and buses are content to wait, our intrepid auto-champions push and jostle their way to pole position (the most advantageous position in the front of the grid from where to start the race). And almost before the light changes to green, they open full throttle, slipstreaming behind the huge Goliath-like BEST buses and overtaking them like fearless Davids. They zoom over flyovers and down monstrously wide stretches of not-so-open road (often passing within centimeters of people running to cross the road) from Borivili to Malad and beyond. (I am not even mentioning the heart-stopping daredevilry of the helmetted-incognito-two-wheeler-riders who weave in and out of the more-than-two-wheelers).

What further unsettles me is the high-fiving camaraderie of the auto-rickshawallahs, interacting with all the bonhomie of members of a Scuderia (racing team). They will often casually lean out and chat with a fellow driver (riding alongside recklessly at a similarly breathtaking speed), making my heart almost leap out of the autorickshaw, too, in the process.

Turbulence, according to the Formula One Glossary, “is experienced in the area directly behind a car”. In auto-rickshaws, however, turbulence is experienced in the area directly behind the driver, especially when that area is occupied by me. I sit upright and afraid, clutching my mobile and bag and desperately dreaming of all the things I want to do while I live. With neither the hi-tech suspension or the fancy survival-cell of a Ferrari, I am always in a suspense about my survival in this auto(rickshaw) racing line. I keep having flashbacks to the fate of Ayrton Senna, the Formula-One triple world champion who died in a crash on the racing track in 1994.

As my Michael Schumacher (or whoever it is for that day) approaches the Pushpa Park bus-stop, with immense relief and thankfulness I say, “Aagey se left” (Take a left turn). Rather indistinctly, because my heart is still blocking my throat and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.

As the disappointed driver (he has been forced to retire from the race, not because of accident or mechanical failure, but because of passenger interference – surely that is against the rules of racing?) reluctantly turns left off the Highway, his speedometer (if he has any – many auto-rickshaws do not) and my blood pressure returns to normal.

Till the next morning, same time, same place, different race.