This week’s severe rains made Bengaluru’s infamous traffic congestion much worse, causing soggy streets and major commuter delays. Sudeep P. Nambiar, an IT worker, had a difficult trip home that attracted a lot of attention.

After leaving work in Whitefield at 5:30 PM with the goal of traveling the 30-kilometer route to Yelahanka, Nambiar described his struggles in a post on X (previously Twitter). But he was stuck in traffic because of the rain, and he didn’t get home until 9:30 PM, which was over four hours later. He wrote, “Bengaluru x Rain x Traffic,” expressing his aggravation. I thus left my Whitefield workplace at around 5:30 p.m. yesterday and arrived at my Yelahanka house by approximately 9:30 p.m. That’s around four hours spent driving thirty kilometers in rain and gridlock! It was 3.5 hours the day before yesterday. It took 3 hours and 15 minutes last week. It was 1 hour and 45 minutes ago, six months ago. Every day, records are broken! When will this be over? For a trip that normally takes less than two hours, he even posted a screenshot showing the anticipated travel time of over four hours.

Many others found resonance in Nambiar’s story, which sparked an animated online debate on the city’s traffic problems. In response, users offered a variety of ideas, such as moving or even working from home. “Why are the companies insisting on working from office when the city infrastructure cannot support commute?” was a key issue posed by one user.

“Why don’t you ask the employer to let you do WFH during these mayhem days?” said another user, urging Nambiar to think about working remotely under such crazy weather conditions. Indeed, given the appalling condition of the infrastructure, there would be many such cases, but they are unavoidable.

“Bro.. Any chances of using the metro and saving as much time as possible?” another person suggested. Because of the gridlock, I observe a lot of people abandon their automobiles and take the Metro instead. Not much can be done.