It's raining cows and buffaloes in Mumbai. Schools have closed; low-lying areas are flooded; and the railway, lifeline for millions, is at a standstill.
Dayanand V. Shenoy has a long day ahead. The deputy station master at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) works the phones, consults weather updates and cajoles his team of controllers. They stare at the screens of a hi-tech traffic management system designed to monitor train arrivals and departures. Except at the moment there aren't any. Waterlogged tracks mean services have been suspended. And if the trains don't move; India's financial capital doesn't move.
CST was built by the British and completed in 1887 to commemorate the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria. It was a time of grandiose colonial statements and no expense was spared on what was to become the headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.
Construction took 10 years and, on its completion, Victoria Terminus, as it was called until 1996, became the largest man-made structure on the subcontinent. The design, inspired by St Pancras station in London, incorporated gothic spires, neoclassical sculptures and stained-glass windows. Today, CST is a Unesco World Heritage site and the most photographed building in India after the Taj Mahal.
The Mumbai suburban rail network boasts a punctuality rate of 97 per cent but the figure is set to nosedive until the rain stops. Dealing with monsoonal downpours is all in a day's work for Shenoy. This isn't the first deluge of the summer; nor will it be the last.
'We experienced worse in June and July,' the logistics man recalls. 'When the chips are down, Mumbai stands up.'
India has been called the land of a billion stories and a three-rupee (50 HK cents) platform ticket is all it costs to watch the daily performance at CST. Moments of high drama are interspersed with glimpses of comedy and romance, all spiked with an impending sense of tragedy. Scratch just beneath the surface and you'll unearth enough material for scores of novels.