When rain saved my day...

LONDON: It’s very rarely that the weather brings cheer to anyone in London. But today was unlike any day a Londoner would have seen in a long time.
My two flatmates and I had decided to stay put at home, after looking out of the window at the dull, dreary, damp day.
On a brighter day, we would have all headed for the Angel tube station in our area and changed at King’s Cross station, one of the sites of the blast and just two blocks away from where we live.Instead, we all lazily stumbled out of our beds to the ring of phones -- friends and family calling frantically.
It was only when we turned the TV on that it hit us that we could have been at King’s Cross at the time of the blast.
The news on the telly wasn’t anything like the blast coverage that seems to have become a staple of TV news back in India. No bloodied bodies here, no screaming correspondents, nothing. Going by the pictures, it could have been a false alarm with no casualties.
So, I decided to check out the live scene at King’s Cross, a two-minute walk from home.
The area was cordoned off; there were no screaming sirens or dazed passengers streaming out of the station. A few policemen were directly passers-by.
As soon as the rain subsided, it seemed all of London had poured into the streets. On a good day, commuting in central London can invite praise for the chaos that Delhi’s traffic is. Today, the commotion had spilled over from the tube stations to the streets; with people having to walk miles. Shops and offices had closed early. Telephone networks were jammed, but the phones would not stop ringing.
Within a day, the jubilation of London winning the Olympic bid had given way to sheer frenzy. The irony wasn’t lost on many. "They don’t like us; especially now that we have won the bid," the elderly gentleman accompanying me on my long walk to the university said.
By evening, the rain had stopped. The sun would shine hesitantly, and the weather started to cheer again.