Commuting in Mumbai can be looked at in two ways. Mumbai's roads are shocking, everything's dug up, there are around 1.6 million cars on these same roads and it is not uncommon to spend an average of four hours a day traveling to office and back.

The other way to look at it is in the spirit of the public transport system - the best in the country, certainly the most cost efficient in the world, its trains legendary, its red BEST buses synonymous with everything tat the city stands for - dogged dependability that enables you to earn a living and have some kind of life.

Commuting is something everyone talks about, whether it is at ritzy cocktail parties, cutting chai shops, around the water cooler in office, even while you are actually doing it.

You talk about the road component screwing up your timing, compare the rail component to a trip by bus, figure out whether using your car three times a week makes sense in terms of time and money saved.

It dictates where you live, how much you can afford to sell your home for, what kind of neighbours you have. Commuting can give you friends or enemies, tell you the mood of the city, decide whether you should get a job instead of have a career.. In Mumbai, unless you are among the three per cent of the population who lives close to their offices and travels only by car, it matters. So make that commuting with a capital C .