• The temperature touches 37.5 degrees and everyone starts panicking and journalists start yelling, “Lead story” “Lead story” “Lead story”…

• The shopkeeper shakes his head when you ask for cold drinks and he shows you “cool drinks” instead.

• In the evening, the temperature drops a few degrees below normal and suddenly everyone is armed with sweaters and jackets.

• You go from one one-way road to another, then another, then yet another…

• After you return from a trip to Mumbai, you wonder why everything is suddenly in slow motion.

• You drive up a busy flyover and have to suddenly screech your brakes. There’s a red light at the very top! What the…

• In the apartment where you live, there isn’t a single floor, which doesn’t have at least one ITwallah.

• You boast that you live right next door to the airport: Just 20kms from my house saar!

• Every second article in the local pages of your newspaper has the word “infrastructure” in it.

• When you go out for lunch, the sun is shining and the sky is blue with not a fleck of cloud. And yet by the time you’re leaving office, there’s a massive traffic jam because the roads are flooded after a torrential downpour and the sky is clear again!

• Your neighbour has been transferred to Delhi and you go to offer your condolences.

• You have a swank fine dining restaurant buffet and think it’s incomplete because there’s no curd rice.

• You keep telling everyone that your city is the fastest growing in Asia (or India) though you’ve never ever seen any statistics in support of that.

• No matter how many malls, arcades and shopping complexes open in your area; you still end up going to MG Road every now and then.

• You are told that your city’s Metro will be ready in 2011 and you just can’t stop laughing.

• When you return from Delhi, you think the autowallahs are sweet. When you return from Mumbai, you think the autowallahs are thugs.

• One day you’re traveling in a crowded stinking bus and the very next day you’re in a high-tech AC Volvo at the very same time on the very same route.

• You try to imagine your city without pubs and… you just can’t!

© Sunil Rajguru