Where were you when the monsoon claimed the city?

There is no escape from the city, no sidewalk, no alley, no brisk stretch of seaside promenade that can offer respite from the marigold noises and pungent colours of its summer. The dust will find you, wherever you hide, getting in past tinted glass, insinuating itself into the envelope of cold, recycled air in which you have cocooned yourself. You are sweating, and there is no hint of redemption lurking around the corners of this inelegant maze.The bridge that lures the eye with the promise of openness to the sky is where the sun beats down hardest, and the canal below its rivetted spans holds eight bleak lengths of railway track. But then you pass rapidly through a gate of shadows, and up through the core of a building designed like a high ship riding at anchor in a dry dock of shanties, hulking factories, and warehouse marked for demolition. Then glass on either side, and far below you, the maze.