Sainik Farms, where I live, has become lush green and peacocks strut about, filling the air with their cries. In the nearby villages, you can see children on swings they have hung from the branches of trees. The rains have brought relief and much joy to the residents of this bijli-less colony, where the cost of running generators and the hassle of maintaining them had forced poorer residents like me to live elsewhere during those torrid months.

How I love the rains! But my enthusiasm for them is often short lived. The monsoon creates another kind of havoc. Disrupted phone lines, clogged gutters and waterlogged roads. Needless to say, all these problems double at Sainik Farms. Sometimes, the water level on the streets rises so much that I really need not go all the way to Ashok Hotel for a swim -- I can easily do a few laps across to the neighbours.

My driver, incidentally, is more protective of the car than he is of me. He refuses to take the little Maruti through the stagnant knee-deep water on the streets and waits for hours on end for the level to dip. So, I am left with no option but to pull up my salwar and wade through. And as I do so, I live in constant fear that one of these days I would fall into an open manhole and come to an ignoble end. I even have nightmares of there being a little news item tucked away in some corner of The Indian Express, titled, `Woman falls into manhole'. By the way, will someone please explain why manholes are called manholes? Why can't we have a less obscene name for them, like road vents or something.

Well, now it's back to Sainik Farms and back to school as well. As I drive to drop my son to school, I miss my companion for the drive, Meenakshi Rani, the FM deejay. She always managed to pep up my morning with her irreverent humour. Meenakshi's style is slightly affected and she conjures up an image of a young thing dressed in tiger-striped leotards and a tank-top with a plunging neckline.

So, I did a double take the first time I met her. The Yankee twang in her voice was missing, and I learnt the lady was a corporate lawyer. But for the 17 rings on her fingers, she was even soberly dressed.

For the Delhi girl, it was Modern School and Lady Shri Ram College before she took her law degree, words came as easily to her as laurels for her debating skills. It was while she was still at Law Faculty that Meenakshi took up the challenge of conducting early-morning FM radio programmes. What attracted the young lawyer to radio was the thrill of going on air live and the opportunity to script her own shows.

Switching roles and voices, from irreverence on radio to seriousness in court, is her daily routine. Now, she's landed a role on television as well. Meenakshi makes her debut as host later this week in a new Star Plus series called Without Malice. In this programme, which looks at history through political cartoons, she has the hugely talented and sexy actor Girish Karnad for a co-host. It is for this reason I envy her.