I walk out of my house in Triplicane, the keys to my Bajaj Caliber swirling in my fingers as usual. The bike I had parked on the road isn’t dusty. It has neither been moved nor parked differently. It stands just where I parked it and looks just the way I left it. I don’t need to spend 2 minutes wiping the dust off the seat and hood.

As I kickstart the bike and release the clutch, there is no one waiting to jump right in front. Traffic is orderly and the pedestrians are walking on the platform, where they should be. The three autos I see everyday driving next to each other in a row are missing. So is the bearded cyclerickshaw wallah who is always driving in front of me.
Near the Ice House stop, the bus isn’t parked in the middle of the road. People waiting for the bus to arrive have no need to run over each other too get to it. They don’t need to hang outside the window while getting to wherever they are going to.
People don’t behave as if they just left their village home. They are conscious that this is road and people drive on it. They don’t cross the street pretending there are no vehicles on it.
The two flyovers that take me to Mount Road aren’t narrow. I don’t have to inhale a gallon of carbon monoxide from the bus in front of me. Instead, I find ample space to maneuver around the vehicle.
The useless signal that stops me as I enter Mount Road is no longer there. Someone has woken up to the fact that nobody stops there. As I enter the Gemini Flyover, cars don’t drive bumper to bumper.
At the Teynampet signal, I don’t have to wait for 5 minutes sending messages and fiddling with my cell. The Pulsar driver wearing a black helmet with a weird looking chick behind him is missing. The Xing that races me as we leave the signal doesn’t rudely honk me out of his way. Instead, he waits and then drives past me without so much as a murmur.
En route to Nandanam, there is no ambulance taking the latest accident victim to hospital. There are no vague traces of blood or chalk outlines on the road. The 50 people that stand around the accident spot asking each other ‘what happened’ are not there.
There is no grime or dust in the air. The sun doesn’t burn my nose. My eyes are not wet with tears. As I drive past Saidapet, the bus driver doesn’t swerve onto the road from the bus stand.
Guindy doesn’t feel like driving through a fish market. It doesn’t look like a riot scene. The dividers peculiar to the Chennai traffic police are not there. As I enter Ekkaduthangal, I don’t feel irritated. I am not tempted to take 100 tablets of Valium. I feel like I have just driven to work. Not like I fell a thousand trees.