they dont allow umbrellas on-site...

At first i thought the building was going to collapse. The cracking came from overhead, like a thousand steel beams crashing down. And i trembled. Verily I did.

The fluorescent lights flickered, but only for a moment. I feel rubble on my face. It is dark and cruel here in the belly of the concrete structure. In a few months time, this place will be a lavish hall, with thick carpets soaking up the wine of the rich and glamorous as they spill it on the hotel floor in the merry dances and drunken stupors. But for now, it is a pit, a hell hole, thick with dust and no oxygen. You cant open ur eyes for fear of blindness and u dare not call out lest to swallow the particles. The ground is uneven and perilous. There are slab openings everywhere, covered with thin ply wood, with hardly any warning. One wrong step or a stupid decision could send u plummeting to the solid cement below, and your ghost will haunt the future carpark.

And they said I never climbed Everest.

My partner signals to me. It's over, he says, Let's get out of here.

We emerge to the sunlight and for a while i am dazed. The clear blue sky, was now a swirling mass of blackness.

Seemed like the end of the world. And here I was, wearing an old nike polo, in PDI jeans, wearing a safety helmet and in safety shoes, and standing in the middle of a fucking construction site.

Symbolic racism, i thought to myself - for as i watched, hundreds of white helmets were scrambling back to the office. The yellow and red helmets carried on, working in the middle of the kicking winds, thinning air and approaching storm. I supposed i should say something abt growing up in Bangladesh, but that would be highly inappropriate.

The white helmetted management staff are screaming to run faster. The storm has started on the far side of the Sands resort. I am at once beset by the enormity of the project.

Running in safety shoes will kill you, and I am in no hurry to return. After my venture into the basement, i have now to survey a different skeleton.

As I step into the bald structure, the thunder bellows once more, sending the scaffolding shaking and more dust seeps from the ceiling. The structure is like a lobotomised patient, the building a huge circular maze, except that the centre is a hollow cavity 4 storeys deep. And there in the centre, is to be Casino Floor.

For now it is a cess-pool, a spawning hive of disease and algae, where rain water collects and festers the stone, and through which the yellow boots of workers thread. The rain will bring new blood to it. I scribble a few notes in my book, this cannot continue.

The sky is now about to explode. The lightning is flashing and the cranes are swaying in the winds. The thunder, like an unfed infant, is crying out with greater and greater intensity.

And now it is time for my retreat. My boots splash through the puddles and i feel mud on my cheek. Another manager shoves past me.

As i pass the exhibition hall, the shit hits the fan. The sky explodes. But it does so with the most magnificent of silences. There is a brief pause, as though everyone knows it is about to happen. And wind doesnt move and the footsteps cease.

And the precipitation coats the land with thundering applause. Whether they like it or not, all are part of this grand instrumentation.

And my footsteps quicken again. Hurriedly, i rush. I can feel the rain on my back. The sensation is bewildering and refreshing.

I reach the shelter and exhale with a flourish. It's as if i havent breathed for the last hour.

And the phone rings.

Work as usual.