Yet another (conveniently timed) post about my relationship with this city

Certain songs are like friends who become a habit. You need them to give you clarity, lend an entirely different colour to the situation you're in. They come to you in the same way every time, each with it's own personality - some to grin at you like idiots and force you to do the same, like you have a secret, like everything is one big practical joke, waiting for the punchline. Some sit with you in silence, observing everything, you and the voice from 1972 are translucent ghosts, half there in a very tangible world. Others empathize with your angsty bullshit with trumpets that sound like booze hounds who have extended their visit beyond last call and are reeling from a kick delivered by the bouncers. Words that shroud our minor troubles with an air of enigmatic despair, exchanging cynical smiles of "I know what you mean, man".
I've got coffee shakes again, my hands are about the only thing moving, except in the occasional sweeps of breeze when the leaves nod their heads and sigh.
I, master at the art of being in two places at once, regress to the lucidity of yesterday. I'm standing at the veranda to the hostel watching the rain coming down to console our city like a working mother on her lunch break. She'll return as abruptly as she came, but we're glad she's here now to cradle us in her arms and soothe us after the sweltering afternoon. I watch the dragonflies who seem to have emerged from nowhere and wonder how they can fly with the rain pouring down so hard. I watch as the footsteps of raindrops form on the ground, soon the colour of the floor is obscured by the little rivulets that Kaveri and I are wading through. We've given up on our work for now and need a drink.
We get into an auto, my sari is wrinkled and wet and getting splashed with water by fuckers in SUVs, to which I yell a self censored "Bhains ki ankh"
One drop of water and everyone sees it as an excuse to go completely apeshit. So everyone does whatever the fuck they feel like and our autowallah deftly goes around them, not saying a word while K and I laugh.
You need a sense of humor to preserve your sanity in this city. She's the neurotic, eccentric wife who we fell in love with in college while she was all unrestrained laughter and youthful optimism, but who now dishes out the emotional atyachar in liberal doses. We're the hen pecked husbands (we probably look like Rajat Kapoor) who catch her when she's off guard with a self deprecating joke and melt into her arms. We get drunk together at parties and dance like baraatis at a Karol Bagh wedding.
A kid on a scooter twice his size is struggling in the river flowing down Lodhi Road. I see another, holding his chappals in his hands, a bus passes in front of him and he disappears - just like the movies! I wave to old homes, old schools and old haunts and the versions of me that resided there wave back.
The best thing I've seen in ages is standing outside Rama Colour, looking completely unassuming in his orange pagdi, white shirt and green pants, probably quite pleased with his display of patriotism. I love him for being so disarmingly unselfconscious. I'm getting familiar hostile looks from aunties. Something about the sari and flower appears to have lead them to believe I'm soliciting sex to their young sons, or buying diamonds with their husband's money.
We drink in the comforting familiarity of Chonas and bitch about the "elite (elitist) institution" we're stuck in and the "disavantages of being advantaged".
A girl on the metro inquires where I got my earrings from. A hyper, fat child jumps around and presses his face against the glass. My friend in my iPod agrees that the world is indeed a curious place.