On rainy days in Dhaka, reaching the office can feel like a job in itself.

Before the first email is sent, thousands of workers across the city have already spent hours navigating flooded streets, searching for transport, and sitting in traffic that barely moves. A commute that normally takes an hour can consume half a morning, leaving many exhausted before the workday has even begun.

As heavy monsoon rains continue to drench the capital, familiar scenes unfold across the city. Water accumulates on roads and alleyways, buses struggle through traffic, rickshaw fares climb, and office-goers stand helplessly at bus stops, watching already crowded vehicles pass by.

For residents of Dhaka, rain is not unusual. What remains remarkable is how quickly it can transform an ordinary workday into a test of patience, endurance, and financial resilience.

Dhaka's commuters have always planned around the monsoon. What feels different now is the frequency and intensity with which heavy rainfall disrupts urban life. As climate experts continue to warn about increasingly erratic weather patterns, the city's recurring struggles with waterlogging raise questions not only about transport and drainage, but also about how urban centres adapt to a changing climate.

The struggle often begins the moment people step outside their homes.

In many neighbourhoods, especially those prone to waterlogging, residents wake up to find the roads outside submerged. The short walk from home to the main road becomes the first challenge of the day. Trousers are rolled up. Sarees are carefully lifted above the water. Shoes are carried in hand. Umbrellas offer little protection when passing vehicles splash muddy water onto pedestrians already struggling through flooded lanes.

Many office-goers do not travel directly from home to work. A typical commute in Dhaka involves several stages: walking to the main road, taking a rickshaw to a bus stop or metro station, boarding public transport, and sometimes taking another rickshaw to the office. Heavy rain disrupts every step of that journey.

For many commuters, the day begins with a quick assessment of the weather and traffic conditions. Colleagues exchange photos of flooded roads, discuss alternative routes, and inform supervisors that they may be delayed. Before anyone reaches the workplace, the city is already negotiating with the rain.

Finding a rickshaw becomes difficult. Some pullers take shelter during intense downpours, while others avoid routes where roads have become difficult to navigate. As commuters compete for fewer available rickshaws, fares rise almost immediately.

A journey that normally costs Tk 30 or Tk 40 can easily cost double. For someone making the trip twice a day, the additional expense may seem small in isolation, but repeated over an entire monsoon season, it becomes a significant burden.

The situation is similar for those trying to hire a CNG-run auto-rickshaw. During heavy rain, many commuters find themselves negotiating fares that are far higher than usual. Some drivers refuse short trips, while others avoid destinations known for severe congestion or waterlogging. App-based services such as Uber and Pathao are often no easier. As rain intensifies and demand rises, fares surge sharply. Even after accepting higher prices, commuters frequently encounter driver cancellations or requests to change pick-up points because vehicles cannot easily access flooded streets. What begins as a search for convenience often becomes another source of delay and frustration.

Rain reshapes the economics of movement across the city. Commuters pay more for transport, while transport workers spend more time and effort earning the same income. What appears to be a simple fare increase is often a reflection of a system under strain.

Eventually, most commuters make it to a bus stop, a metro station, or a major roadside junction.

There, another ordeal begins.

Bus stands that are crowded on ordinary days become overwhelmed during heavy rainfall. People squeeze under whatever shelter they can find. Some wait beneath small bus-stop sheds. Others gather under shop awnings or building entrances. Umbrellas collide with one another. Water drips from clothing and bags. Eyes remain fixed on the road.

Every approaching bus brings a brief moment of hope. More often than not, the bus is already full. Passengers cling to the footboard, faces pressed against windows, and conductors wave away those still waiting. One bus passes, then another, while the crowd at the stop continues to grow.

For many commuters, the wait becomes as exhausting as the journey itself.

Inside buses, conditions rarely improve. Wet passengers squeeze into limited space. The air becomes humid and heavy. Traffic moves at a painfully slow pace. A journey that usually takes an hour may stretch into two or three.

Across the city, commuters swap stories of delayed journeys, expensive rides, and long waits for transport.

The expansion of the metro rail has undoubtedly eased commuting for many Dhaka residents. On rainy days, metro stations often provide an escape from the uncertainty of road travel, allowing passengers to avoid some of the city's worst traffic congestion. Yet the metro does not eliminate the challenges of the commute. Most passengers must still navigate flooded neighbourhood roads, find transport to and from stations, and contend with crowded platforms during peak hours. When heavy rain disrupts the first or last leg of a journey, even the speed and reliability of the metro can offer only partial relief.

The details vary, but the experience is remarkably similar. Rain continues to add time, cost, and uncertainty to the daily commute.

The impact of a rainy-day commute extends far beyond inconvenience.

A delayed commute affects the entire rhythm of the day. Meetings are postponed. Work plans are adjusted. Employees begin the day frustrated and exhausted. Many find themselves staying late to complete tasks that would otherwise have been finished during normal working hours.

For many women, a delayed commute is often followed by household responsibilities that cannot be postponed. Time lost in traffic is frequently recovered from rest, personal time, or sleep. Overcrowded buses, long waits, and travelling after dark can make an already difficult journey even more stressful.

While traffic delays affect everyone, the consequences are not always felt equally. Women navigating crowded public transport often face additional concerns about safety, comfort, and mobility, particularly during periods of heavy rain, when public spaces become more congested and journeys become less predictable.

Rain affects workers across professions, but for many office-goers, the consequences are immediate and unavoidable. Development professionals heading to project meetings, private-sector employees rushing to meet deadlines, bank officials trying to reach their branches, and sales representatives moving between appointments all find themselves trapped in the same cycle of delays, uncertainty, and congestion. Teachers, journalists, and healthcare workers face similar challenges. The destinations may differ, but the experience is remarkably alike: a workday that begins with an exhausting battle against the commute.

Then there are workers whose income depends entirely on mobility.

Delivery riders continue navigating dangerous roads because every completed order contributes to their earnings. Ride-sharing drivers spend hours trapped in traffic. Couriers struggle to maintain schedules that become impossible under severe congestion.

For these workers, mobility is not simply a means of reaching work.

Mobility is work.

When movement slows, income slows with it.

For daily earners, a day disrupted by rain can mean fewer customers, fewer trips, and lower earnings at a time when the cost of living is already placing pressure on household finances.

Perhaps the most significant consequence of rainy-day commuting is one that rarely appears in traffic reports or weather updates.

The greatest cost is often time: time spent walking through flooded streets, waiting for transport, negotiating fares, sitting in traffic, and worrying about whether one will reach work or home on schedule.

These hours accumulate quietly across the city.

A single rainy day may seem manageable. A monsoon season tells a different story.

Across millions of commuters, countless productive hours are lost each year to a cycle that has become deeply familiar.

The cost is not only economic. It is personal.

Every extra hour spent on the road is an hour not spent with family, not spent resting, not spent pursuing personal interests, and not spent recovering from the demands of work. For many office-goers, the journey itself becomes the most exhausting part of the day.

What makes the situation particularly troubling is how normal it has become.

Many Dhaka residents no longer express surprise when heavy rain leads to waterlogging and traffic paralysis. They expect it.

People leave home earlier, carry spare clothes, keep extra cash for transport, monitor weather updates, and plan alternative routes. They adapt because they have little choice.

But adaptation should not be mistaken for acceptance.

The ability of commuters to endure difficult conditions does not mean those conditions are acceptable. Nor should the resilience of workers become a substitute for effective urban planning and infrastructure.

Every episode of waterlogging reveals deeper questions about drainage systems, urban expansion, disappearing canals, and the city's overall preparedness for increasingly intense rainfall.

Yet behind every discussion of infrastructure lies a human story.

A parent trying to reach home before a child returns from school.

A teacher struggling to reach the classroom.

A rickshaw puller navigating flooded roads.

A delivery rider racing against deadlines.

An office worker standing at a crowded bus stop, wondering whether another hour will be lost before the workday even begins.

The problem, ultimately, is not the rain itself.

Bangladesh has always depended on rainfall. Rain sustains agriculture, replenishes water sources, and provides relief from periods of extreme heat. The problem is what happens when a city struggles to absorb it.

The challenges associated with urban waterlogging are likely to become even more significant. Every heavy downpour now serves as a reminder that the cost of inadequate urban preparedness is often paid by ordinary workers.

Tomorrow, if the rain continues, the same scenes will repeat themselves across Dhaka.

Before sunrise, workers will check weather forecasts on their phones. They will roll up their trousers, carry spare shoes in plastic bags, search for transport, refresh ride-sharing apps, and calculate whether they can still make it to the office on time.

Yet they will show up, because missing work is rarely an option.

The remarkable thing about Dhaka's office-goers is not that they endure these conditions. It is that they have been expected to endure them for so long.

Every downpour reveals the same reality: a city where millions of people must work harder simply to get to work.

And as another rainy morning begins somewhere across the capital, an uncomfortable question remains:

How much longer can Dhaka expect its workers to adapt to a problem the city itself has yet to solve?

Masuma Moriom is a Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Specialist with experience in climate resilience, anticipatory action, disaster risk reduction, and strategic communication across Bangladesh and South Asia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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