The monsoon is finally here -

- and Bombay is on a rainy day holiday. How thoroughly charming. In a purely aesthetic sense, I mean. The concept of not going to work on a rainy day sounds very lazy-socialist and alluring.

My Singaporean colleague could not understand the concept of a rainy day holiday - so it rains; you get an umbrella and walk out, right? So I was explaining to her - no, imagine the streets are two feet under water. Like a wading pool? Yeah, something like that. Except you may have potholes along the way so your car might be bumpy. Oh, like a roller coaster ride (!!). Hmm, yeah something like that. You might be wet through and through when you get to work, though. Many people actually carry extra clothes to work during the rains. But so do I, when I go gymming.

At which point I called her a first world baby and let it be. It was a charming conversation, though. I always knew growing up in India had given us a fair sense of the world - you see the good, the bad. Rich, poor, ruckus, quiet, dust, beauty, lovely people, awful people, all voiceferous people. But every now and then you get a jolt as to just how much being Indian shapes our understanding and thought process. And how despite leading seemingly similar lives in India and SG, such everyday things seem so alien to someone brought up in a different country.