The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.-Virginia Woolf

I haven't seen him for the past 8 days and I kind off hmm miss him. No Sajjan , I am not talking about you but about Ra! Ra the Sun God, Duh!!. It’s been dark,dull and cold out here in Bangalore. According to Anand , Hosur Road which is the only road to Electronics City is no longer a road. Sigh*. My plans of going to Hosur (Tamil Nadu) to buy crackers and bringing them in huge gunny bags goes down the drain.Once upon a time ( read a month back) I was proud of all the lakes in Bangalore , now I dread them. Everyday I pass the Ulsoor Lake, which is all set to burst out into the open. It has been reported that three major lakes in the city breached their banks. siliconindia.com reports : "It is very uncommon for Bangalore to be flooded because the city is at a higher plateau and water seeps away, but an incessant rain due to low pressure over the Bay of Bengal has had its toll on the city. Many lakes and drains in the City are over flowing and the water has gushed into houses." According to the Met Dept the unforeseen rains are because of the cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, but according to my Mom it’s because of the Solar and Lunar eclipses which occurred in the same month of October :) (Solar on Oct 3rd and Lunar on October 17),there might just be some truth in it. The local FM station has stopped giving warnings of Traffic jams, you can't blame them, every street and gali is jammed, morning, noon and night, and not with vehicles, mind you, but with water. I saw an interesting article in TOI yesterday, which compared Mysore's infrastructure with that of Bangalore. *Land rates(per square feet) : Rs 300 in Mysore compared to Rs 2000 in Bangalore. The rates have to come down,no one in their right mind would pay for water logged sites. But you never know.... *Number of Engineers graduating in a year: 5000 in Mysore , a whooping 25,000 in Bangalore. This was rather evident a couple of days ago, when the neighboring MNC company, conducted " A Walk in interview".It has been estimated that 7000 people stood for 2 days in a Q ,weathering the rains and the cold temperature. *Commuting across the city : 20 mins in Mysore , and 60 minutes in Bangalore. 60 minutes ? I'm sure the journalist who wrote this must have rented a Tata Sumo and drove across the city at 2 am.Our driver tells me that even at that unholy hour of 2 am there is a lot of traffic, mainly because of the cabs that drop the tired BPO employees’ home. My mom received a lot of anxious calls from her 3 brothers in Mangalore. They wanted to know what was happening in Bangalore. The news channels tend to exaggerate a little. In one of the conversations, my uncle told her that the sun was shining brightly in Mangalore.Aah for a glimpse of the sun. Thankfully it is clear today, no sign of rains, yet. Schools and Colleges had announced holidays on Tue and Wednesday and have decided to remain closed all week. Lucky kids. Yesterday while traveling to office, one of the rear wheels of the bus got stuck in a slippery ditch and leaned precariously to the right.( A scene taken straight out of Keanu Reeves's film -Speed ).One of the aunties saw me getting down and shouted out a warning " Don't get down". I ignored her. If you don't know what the problem is you can't solve it. I and my colleague saw that the rear wheel was stuck in the mud and we asked the others to get down and help us push . The ladies as usual were reluctant to even step out of the bus, let alone lend a helping hand. Talk about equality.Oh I think I forgot to mention that it was drizzling, as usual.The driver put the bus in first gear and after 3 attempts, Voila!! we were off. We thanked our lucky stars that the bus didn't topple over onto its side.The very thought of “P aunty’s” 212kg of flesh crushing my head into pulp is frightening and quite amusing :) . Sri who works in Gurgaon and Saj who works in Hyderabad are coming down this weekend to celebrate Deepavali with their families. Here’s hoping their flights and trains are not cancelled. On a lighter note, a friend said that I looked like a Second World War German U-Boat Captain. I thought that with my beard and cream turtleneck , I looked a lot like this guy or at least like this dude. Alas! I will have to be content with being compared to Sean Connery ( The Hunt for Red October ) :) "The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate; try not to miss a pinch of joy".