Three evenings of heavy rain and Bengaluru has had enough. The showers have turned potholed roads into rivers and made its frothing lakes flood over. Bengaluru normally welcomes its November rains as the north east monsoons bring some respite to water crises year after year but the lashing this week has shows up the city’s infrastructure for what it is – a creaking mess on the verge of breaking down.

On Monday, Bengaluru recorded 95 millimeters of rain through the day – possibly the highest amount of daily rainfall in a decade. Stormy weather continued on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings with some neighbourhoods getting more than 120 millimeters of rain in the single day. Bengaluru’s normally bad traffic became unbearable with thousands of cars stuck for hours in gridlocks as roads flooded over.

Many of Bengaluru’s dying lakes might get a booster shot from the rains but not before they are cleaned up. The highly polluted Bellandur Lake, that has been frothing and catching fire of late, spilled over onto adjoining roads after Monday’s downpour. Last week, rains filled up a mostly dry lake bed in Devanahalli village near Bengaluru’s international airport submerging borewells, more dangerously, electrical transformer.

Across the city, basements and even some ground floors of houses were flooded, trees uprooted and many people stranded for hours together. Of course, Bengaluru took to social media to vent their exasperation with the city.

 

 


 


A few, probably those not stuck on the roads, enjoyed the wet weather.