Last Friday, as it was pouring more than what cats and dogs can ordinarily manage, I realised what a nightmarish situation I found myself in.

I have mentioned it before on this blog, for some inexplicable reason the city’s CNG powered cabs are especially vulnerable in the downpour. Check for yourself to see the number of taxis you will find stranded in just a couple of centimeters of rain. I know all vehicles – bar the high ground clearance ones --  are vulnerable but there is something about the CNG mechanism that makes taxis and autos more so.

Anyway, here I was, huddled in the backseat of the taxi, the rain lashing its way through the closed windows to dampen my clothes and enthusiasm, fervently praying that one, the taxi doesn’t stall in the water, two, that the driver who is cleaning the windscreen with a piece of rag doesn’t lose control and swing into another vehicle, and three that I reach home safe and sound.

And then it struck me, the yet another danger I was exposed to but had been quite blind to so far. That as lightning and thunder raged outside in true Dante style, the slender, tall antenna in the front that pierced the night sky was in fact a magnet for lightning. And that I was in fact sitting in a tin coffin.

The realisation shocked me so much that I must have turned white like a ghost. But as they say, what’s the option to traveling by taxisL