India, July 13 -- To experience the Delhi monsoon at its best is no rocket science. All it takes is living in a VVIP neighbourhood where the drains actually work. Think of the elegant white sarkari bungalows of Lodhi Estate. Sitting snug beside rain-streaked glass windows, overlooking kitchen gardens and staff quarters, the sahib or memsahib may spend a happy afternoon watching the monsoon, sipping Tetley from Good Earth china. Outside this super-privileged enclave, the city may be surrendering to floods and jams, but here the baarish arrives as calmly as a plainspoken Mary Oliver poem; silver ropes of water softly meeting the earth.

For most of us Delhiwale living elsewhere, the monsoon is beautiful as an idea, not as a lived reality. H...