“You may want to stay at your home today after lunch,” Mamun, my colleague at BERDO, said to me in the morning, “the weather may have caused some problems in the roads.” After a morning of torrential rain, the sky had finally cleared to a relatively chilly, overcast gray.

I briefly ran through some possible problems in my mind. I wondered if maybe the gutters had spilled over into the road. Maybe the intersection between roads, particularly those where a dirt strip connected the main road to the smaller road, had been washed away. I didn’t imagine any other problems, certainly not any problem that an ingenious rickshaw wallah couldn’t overcome.

After a few minutes of protest (the internet had finally come back up after throwing a fit all morning – I was inclined to stay), we eventually agreed that after a productive half day in the office I would stay at home for the rest of the day. “Good,” Mamun nodded, “we will hire a rickshaw and send Shahinur with you to your house.”

Off we went in the rickshaw. Everything seemed normal, albeit a bit more damp than usual.

Then we hit the main road that connects Rupnagar, Mirpur, and the rest of the city. Water rushed out of man hole covers, creating impromptu fountains in the middle of the flooded road way. Gigantic two level buses with huge wheels to match, a la bright red double deckers in London (but a whole lot more unsettling given chronic Bangladeshi overloading), sank up to mid hubcap. Motorcycles bravely kept going while their exhaust pipes blew bubbles in the muddy water. Several feet off the ground, I kept watch as my feet and pant legs were threatened by the waves created by larger traffic.

We eventually made our way to my house without any remarkable incidents and I was relieved to see that the small roads to the courtyard were high enough above water to allow for walking without wading.

After a wide eyed commute, I now have a new appreciation for the word that I thought I always understood – weather.