The MTC bus driver, one hand clutching his jaw and the other sitting dead on the steering wheel, was blinking hard and fast like bursts from a machine gun as the vehicle barrelled down MTH Road in north Chennai. The road was empty and intact, the sky blue, and the rain faint. There were a dozen or so passengers, mostly old men and women, and a young woman carrying two large cans of idlis and pongal to distribute to those whose houses had flooded. Her house had survived, and she had heard t