A group of youngsters wishes passers-by a happy new year in Thane on Saturday. Pic/PTI

Good morning, 2018. It wasn't a great ending to 2017, what with the tragic deaths of the kids, etc, at 1 Above in Kamala Mills Compound late Thursday night. Hema Malini's senile babblings aside, it was like the Elphinstone stairwell stampede, a depressing reminder that going out in the big city is fraught with unpredictable danger. I spent a few days in Mumbai last week, in the Versova-Seven Bungalows area, and since my host doesn't cook, we even went out for our breakfast. In Mumbai, you can't avoid going out. You can't avoid the low-level corruption in licensing. You can't avoid cutting corners in any cramped quarter of this crowded city. Indeed, these are what give Mumbai its energy. Landing in the city after four-and-a-half years, the thing I most readily recognised from the back of my kaali-peeli cab was that its roads swelled and ebbed with breath.