New Delhi, June 5 -- It had been a week of bad news-of water filling homes, streets, even a presciently named Aqua Line metro station. The early monsoon brought little more than grim headlines of flooding and landslides, like a livestream of the effects of unplanned construction, deforestation and pure apathy. Until I found myself on the Ooty-Mettupalayam road in Tamil Nadu, following a motorcycle down to the plains.

She rode sidesaddle, like so many women in India, a pillion rider with a baby in one arm and an overstuffed bag on the other shoulder. A light drizzle began to fall; she turned her face up and stuck her tongue out to taste the raindrops. In that moment of abandon and sly pleasure, she wasn't wife or mother or daughter or dau...