Horror tales from manic Monday

Chennai

"I left from Kilpauk at around 6 pm to attend my friend’s engagement at Taj Coromandel in Nungambakkam. The traffic was so bad that I wasn’t allowed to take the turn towards Nungambakkam and was diverted towards Egmore. The nightmare began there. The traffic was moving at a snail’s pace and then I decided to skip the engagement ceremony and go home instead to OMR. While I was stuck near Egmore, a man knocked on my window and told me that there are seven women, who were stranded for an hour there and needed to go to the Central Station. Finally I reached home at 11.30 pm. To put thinks into perspective, I could have travelled to Bengaluru in those five-and-a-half hours!"
— Anirudh JR,  Surgeon and musician

"On Monday afternoon, we had gone to visit some of our relatives in Vepery and we had driven from our house in Velachery. When we thought of returning back home that evening, we hadn’t anticipated that the roads would get so congested. We had barely gotten out of the compound and entered Poonamallee High Road, when we realised that we were stuck. Traffic was crawling and there were huge traffic jams near Express Avenue mall, Kotturpuram, Adyar and and every possible arterial road in the city. When we finally made it to Velachery at 2 am after an excruciatingly long journey, our vehicle broke down. We had to wade through knee- deep water to push the vehicle. It was a miracle we made it home in one piece."
 — Unni Babu, Engineering graduate

"It is usually a 10-minute walk for me to the railway station from my workplace in Nungambakkam. But on Monday, when I stepped out of my office at around 7 pm, I didn’t know that this walk would take 40 minutes! I had to tackle cars parked on the pavements and make my way through roads that were crowded with pedestrians, who were trying to get through the maze of vehicles. After I managed to reach the station and took a Tambaram-bound train, I thought my ordeal was over. I reached Tambaram in 40 minutes. When I was looking for possible ways to go home from the station, I couldn’t find any transport. It is again a 10 minutes' walk home from Tambaram station, but the heavy rains made it impossible to walk. So along with 10 other people, I got into a shared taxi. I found myself in areas I have never been to as the driver went around Vandalur to avoid bad roads and traffic jams. I reached home close to midnight. "
— Santhosh Kr. Subramanian, Entrepreneur