Monday, November 28

Kulosaari metro station, 15:35
Having heard all kinds of things about this year’s process for getting a visa to visit India, everything moves as quickly and easily as it possibly could. Having taken the application into the embassy I get a message the next morning to tell me that I can collect our passports on Monday afternoon.
Collection time starts at 15:00 and ends at 16:30. I time my journey to get me there at 15:00 and arrive a few minutes later. One person has somehow arrived before me and I beat a third person to the door by rugby tackling them in the snow and vaulting over them as they lay there wriggling on the ground like a freshly caught fish.
[Warning: some of the contents of this message may suffer from exaggeration during transit.]
Actually getting the passports takes two minutes and I walk out into the slippery, slushy pavements. I pause as I approach Kulosaari station and photograph the scene, already dimming in the early monochrome dusk.
The metro will reach Puotila in the dark.