It was one of those days when work saw Navin and me at office till the wee hours of the morning. When we finally locked up and left, it was 4.10 a.m. I was exhausted and the sight of my warm, cosy bed kept coming up before my eyes. It was all I could do to keep from curling up on the big armchair in the office.

The monsoon had just set in with intermittent rains and cloudy skies all day. So when we started our scooter and went homewards, it was not quite light. It was a nice drive - pleasant air, no traffic, no smoke, no noise - till it started to drizzle. Knowing that our dear old scooter was quite averse to being out in the rain, we wondered whether we should stop somewhere and wait for the rain to stop. Well, we needn't have bothered thinking so much about it because our scooter stopped for us!

We pushed it to a bus stop shelter nearby. There were some dark, huddled figures sitting on the bench provided in the shelter and I was not a little apprehensive. When we neared them, much to my relief, they turned out to be women with their working baskets and tiffin-boxes actually waiting for a bus. They expressed their sympathies at our plight (we hadn't so much as looked at them directly) and talked among themselves of scooters stopping because of the rain. As two more women came and joined the 'gang,' they made room for them on the bench. They seemed bright and all ready to start their day.

When we looked around, we saw two tea shops already in business for the day. Among the customers, I spotted more than one woman! These women sure started their day early. And then I found the answer to what I had been wondering about. They must have assumed that we were also heading to work, they wouldn't have ever thought of the possibility of us returning home from work.

And when the scooter refused to start even after the drizzle had died down, Navin opened the petrol tank, peered into it and decided we'd better get some petrol. It was our daily route and we knew there was a petrol bunk just round the corner. As we pushed the scooter, the women helpfully told us the exact location of the petrol bunk! I turned and gave them a smile of thanks. It was one more of those moments when I felt enveloped by the warmth of the people of this big city.

By this time, it was light and there was much more movement - city buses had started their trips, a lot of two wheelers and cars were plying, autodrivers were crawling out of their seats where they had been sleeping, people were coming out to get milk and the tea shops were getting crowded. No eyebrows were raised at our presence on the road at that time - it was already morning for the world. Maybe the difference was apparent to me because we have gone home late previously but never this late (which was early for the rest).

We filled petrol and tried to restart the scooter. One of the boys in the petrol bunk came to our help (again, we saw the compulsion that some people have to go to others' rescue without being asked). But try as he did, he couldn't get the scooter to start. So we parked it in the bunk and got an auto driver, who was finishing his morning cuppa at the tea shop opposite, to take us home for a surprisingly reasonable fare.

Quite an adventure and when we reached home, we were feeling refreshed - we too had our morning coffee and went to sleep only an hour later.