Social media users find humour in Delhi’s waterlogged streets

NEW DELHI: As early morning rains brought the national capital to its knees on Friday, the city found itself flooded, both with water and memes on social media.

The annual occurrence of the flooding of the Minto Bridge, as well as waterlogging in different parts of the city, attracted sarcastic comments and memes from netizens after Delhi received heavy rainfall with the onset of monsoon.

As the video of a car submerged in water under the bridge on Minto Road surfaced on social media, some compared the floating car to an “annual vehicular sacrifice”, others said it was the “only barometer” to confirm the monsoon’s arrival.

“People of Delhi observe annual vehicular sacrifice at Minto Bridge as part of ancient tradition officially announcing the arrival of monsoon rains in the capital,” Kabir Taneja, an X user, wrote on the microblogging platform.

Businessman Suhel Seth said, “For all those criticising the Minto Road Bridge flooding: remember only when it gets flooded do we know the monsoons are upon us. It’s the only barometer we have so stop the criticism please. Am now waiting for the gondolas in Gurgaon.”

Another X user with the handle @ColdCigar wrote, “Minto Bridge ke neeche jab tak gaadi na fase tab tak baarish ko baarish mausam Vibhag bhi nahi maanta hai” (Even the weather department doesn’t consider it a proper rain until a car gets stuck under Minto Bridge), while one Birender Dhanoa suggested the Minto Bridge “needs its own live feed on YouTube” during the rains.

Minto Bridge, renamed Shivaji Bridge, was built in 1933 and connects Connaught Place to the Ajmeri Gate side of the New Delhi Railway Station.

Over the years, it has come to be known for being waterlogged after each spell of heavy rain, almost without fail.

Monsoon arrived in Delhi with a fury in the early hours of Friday as heavy rains, the highest in a single day of June in 88 years, brought the national capital to a standstill leaving streets flooded, traffic caught in chaos and flight operations suspended at Delhi airport’s Terminal-1 due to a canopy collapse.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also tried to find humour in the dire situation that he found himself in. Posting a video of a flooded road in front of his house in central Delhi, Tharoor said he woke up to find the entire home “under a foot of water”. “...Carpets and furniture, indeed anything on the ground, ruined. Apparently the storm water drains in the neighbourhood are all clogged,” the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.