Of Sights Unseen - in Bombay

Amit in an e-mail to me (seriously, man, do you ever sleep?) about the Bombay rains: "But some of the stuff I see, never seen anything like it before."

I thought I would never see stuff like what I had seen in '92 and '93 when I lived in Bombay. It was so damn grotesque and gruesome - and unfamiliar.

Then we lived through 9/11. I never thought I would see Apache helicopters flying low, low over our backyards, in a full-blooded September sunset. The sound of their rotor blades thwack-thwacking in the late summer air, reminding us all of that famous sequence from Apocalypse Now. I half-expected to hear the Valkyries come crashing through the clouds.

Again, so frustratingly unfamiliar.

Now the pictures of the cloudburst and the aftermath are here to confound us.

Here's praying everyone is safe, warm and dry in Bombay. Today, tomorrow, always.