Delhi has finally emerged from 4 days of straight rain. Monsoon rains, you may say. But actually, it was about two months too late for the monsoon season. June and July were unusually dry for much of India, resulting in drought conditions across the country. While many of my friends and colleagues rejoiced at the cool, wet weather, I exclaimed that it was gross and nasty. Rain + dust makes a lot of mud.
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But the worst part is definitely the traffic. Delhi still suffers from poor infrastructure, including crappy roads and non-functioning drainage systems. Heavy rain, even for a few hours, leads to lots and lots of flooding. And I'm not sure what they use to build roads here, but it seems to disintegrate with a drop of water.
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Last Friday was Day 2 of the continuous rain and I was headed to my office in Gurgaon. On a typical morning with traffic it takes about an hour to get to the office, despite the fact that it's only 25 km (16 mi) away. One of my colleagues had warned me that it took her well over two hours to reach the office and she'd left home before 7:30am. I didn't attempt to head out until 9:45am thinking that traffic would improve. But on this day, I spent about 45 minutes in traffic and barely ventured 10 kms from my house. Fortunately, my boss called me from his car to say that he was stuck in traffic and was turning around and heading to our other office. I promptly replied that I was going to do the same. It only took about 15 minutes to make a u-turn in the traffic.
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And then the rains continued and continued...
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The sun finally emerged on Sunday and things returned to normal. And by normal I mean that yesterday we were stuck behind a procession of villagers traveling on about 20 carts pulled by oxen. Oh, India.
