.... and More Rain

Rain has an interesting effect on life in Delhi.  It impacts almost all aspects of your daily routine. This is due to the ridiculously poor engineering and even more ludicrously poor planning on the part of the city developers. I total understand why the rains would take everyone by surprise, though, after all, it is not like they come around....... every single year.... at exactly the same time ... you know, during MONSOON SEASON!  

Besides the biblically stupid drainage, the city planners also thought they would compound the traffic issue by housing the traffic light's electricals in a metal box with no seals.  This way, every time it rains, every traffic light in the city shorts out.  But this is Delhi, so simply snarling traffic would not be enough.  In response to the outage, Delhi's finest turn out to take control.

The police always seem to be on the scene just as the traffic lights short out.  This is an anomaly in Delhi as they seem to be the only department of the Indian Government to anticipate anything, albeit in a very limited scope. They take control of traffic by walking out into the chaos and stopping one direction while waving on the other. Pretty normal. Here is the rub, though, they let that direction continue until it backs up from the next intersection.  Depending on the road, this can take 20 minutes as the next intersection may be miles up the road.  Then, as that direction's traffic begins to pile up, the cop releases the other direction onto the completely empty road ahead.  This continues for hours - 20 minutes one way, 20 minutes the other.  The result is that you can sit in stopped traffic for an eternity.  There is no flow or logic of any kind.  

As the rains this year are more than usual, there are a couple additional unique aspects of absurdity.  The river, Yamuna, which runs along the boarder of the city has been getting more than its share of water from the sky and has already flooded some of the farm land north of the city.  In most cities of the world that have a Monsoon Seasons, they build levees to contain the river in case of flooding.  In Delhi, they issue boats in anticipation of flooding.  You can't make this stuff up.  According to the Delhi Times, if you live in the flood zone, you are encourage to move your belongings to the second floor and wait for the police to come around today and issue you a boat - a freak'n boat! Nothing about how to prepare for a flood, nothing about how to evacuate, nothing about where to go, just when and where to get your government issued boat.

The entry road into the my office complex

My office complex from the road

Since I do not live in the flood zone, I will just have to settle for my bad-ass jeep to get through the flooded streets, although I could sure use the boat to get to work!