Take this Chennaite

7:20 am: I finally get up. I had initially planned to get up at 7am to kick off a new week. I went to the window, saw that the rain which started last night hadn’t yet subsided, so went back to bed, rolled around for 10 minutes, trying to sleep, but sleep is one rare quantity for me, it never strikes twice, not after I had four continuous hours of sleep.

7:30am: After filling up hot water, I get ready to take bath, but on my way I now saw Rajan looking at the rain with utmost interest. Since I was in no mood to decipher what his interests in rain were, I decided to take bath.

8:00am: I come out to see vinay still in dreamland. Kapil was calling out to me, asking me if he could come with me. Why? Saran is still sleeping and wants to come office late today. Ok..

But it is raining heavily!! So we wait until we could wait no longer.

Having no prior experience in driving in rain, it was fun, except that the brakes weren’t working normally. That was little scary when overtaking vehicles.

As a chennaite I welcome rain with both hands and but unlike others I don’t expect the roads to be dry. When it rains there are a number of articles in The Hindu every day in Chennai in late October, November. Throughout the year people crave for rain and when it rains instead of being happy they start cribbing about the bad roads, water logging slush. Be it because of bad administration or not, the roads normally give away in the first rain itself, from then on almost all roads are full of potholes, sometimes making them really dangerous, be it bad roads or not. I sometimes feel, it is the ill will of so many people hating the rain that rain never comes :D. Many people in Chennai mostly office goers start complaining when it rains.. “aiyyoo, road ellam ore seru, thanniya irukkum .. office porradhu kastam L ” .. what do you expect when it rains? A clean dry road ? I heard one neighbour complaining to my mom one day, there was one thing she mentioned I didn’t like.. going to office in such a climate is difficult .. seri ok don’t go! .. the roads are full of slush, water logging …blah blah… what is the point …anyway she is going to the office rain or not then why crib.

It was fun going to school when it rained, the roads were water logged, every trip was interesting as there was always a question of whether the manhole was open underneath all that water. Vembuliamman koil was the worst of it all, even for an overnight rain the water would be knee deep on that road, but it was worth the ride. Now coming back to the problem, Chennaite’s don’t deserve the little rain they are getting because of the noise they make when it rains. Even years of water shortage never taught them a lesson.