I Thought Everyone Was Exaggerating
Before moving to Bangalore, traffic came up in almost every conversation. Friends who had lived here laughed whenever I asked what the city was like. Colleagues would remind me to leave early for meetings. Even someone who had only spent a weekend here had a traffic story to tell. After a while, I stopped taking those warnings seriously. I thought people were making it sound worse than it really was. Every big city has traffic, so I didn’t expect Bangalore to be much different.
My first Monday proved me wrong.
I booked a cab, checked Google Maps one last time, and felt pretty confident I’d reach the office on time. A few minutes later, we had barely crossed one signal. Bikes slipped through spaces that looked impossible, buses somehow kept moving, and people on the roadside carried on with their day as if nothing unusual was happening. The driver caught me looking at the map again and smiled.
“First week?” he asked. I laughed because he was right.
I Slowly Stopped Thinking About Distance
A few months later, I noticed something had changed.Whenever someone suggested meeting somewhere, I no longer asked how far it was.
Instead, I’d ask, “What time should I leave?”
Nobody answered with kilometres anyway.
“If you’re leaving after six, it’ll take longer.”
“Take the Metro if you’re heading that way.”
“Don’t go if it starts raining.”
One evening my brother called and asked how far my apartment was from the office. I knew it usually took forty minutes to get there. I couldn’t remember the distance without opening Google Maps.
Rain made everything unpredictable. Sometimes it only drizzled for twenty minutes, but that was enough to slow the whole city. On those evenings, I’d stay where I was, order another coffee, and leave a little later.
Every Part of Bangalore Had Its Own Personality
Most weekends, I picked one neighbourhood and wandered around without much of a plan.
Jayanagar became my choice for slow mornings. I’d have breakfast, walk through the quieter streets, and end up spending more time there than I intended.
Koramangala felt completely different. There always seemed to be people walking between cafés, offices, and restaurants. It didn’t matter whether I went on a weekday or a weekend. The place always had energy.
Church Street was where I usually ended up if I had nowhere specific to be. I’d walk into a bookstore just to look around and somehow leave an hour later with a book I hadn’t planned to buy.
Ask me about the traffic today and I probably won’t remember a single traffic jam. Ask me about that bookstore and I’ll probably remember exactly where it was.
I Didn’t Expect the Metro to Become Part of My Routine
For almost a year, I ignored the Metro. Booking a cab just felt easier because it dropped me exactly where I wanted to go. One Monday morning I overslept, parked near a Metro station, and decided to try it. The train arrived. People stood quietly reading messages, listening to music, or staring out of the window. Twenty minutes later, I was walking into the office without checking Google Maps even once. That evening I used the Metro again. After that, it quietly became part of my routine.
People Didn’t Fight the City. They Worked Around It
What surprised me wasn’t the traffic. It was how casually everyone dealt with it. Before moving here, I imagined people would complain about it every single day. That wasn’t what happened. One colleague always left home half an hour earlier because he knew exactly when one junction became impossible. A friend preferred breakfast instead of dinner because crossing the city in the evening wasn’t worth it. Another friend rented an apartment close to a Metro station and said it saved him more time than moving closer to the office ever would. Nobody even thought these were interesting. They’d mention them the same way someone reminds you to carry an umbrella before leaving home. A few years later, I realised I had stopped thinking about those little decisions too. They had simply become part of my day.
Looking Back
When someone asks me about Bangalore now, traffic isn’t the first thing I think about. I remember getting caught in the rain near Church Street and waiting under a shop awning until it eased. I remember quiet Sunday mornings in Jayanagar when the roads felt completely different from a weekday. I remember sitting in a Koramangala café long enough for my coffee to go cold because nobody at the table wanted the conversation to end. Of course, there were evenings when I wished the roads would just clear up. I missed a few plans, reached late more than once, and stopped promising anyone an exact arrival time. Somewhere along the way, that stopped bothering me. It’s funny. Before moving here, I thought traffic would be the thing I’d remember most about Bangalore. Years later, I remember the people I met, the cafés I kept going back to, the bookstore I always wandered into, and the neighbourhoods that slowly started feeling familiar.The traffic was there too. It just faded into the background.
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