Bengaluru techie travels 4 km in 45 minutes in heavy traffic, asks one blunt question

A Google techie from Bengaluru shared his frustration over the city’s worsening traffic after a short commute to work ended up taking nearly five times longer than usual, sparking conversations online about infrastructure and taxes.

Venkatesh D, a software development executive working at Google in Bengaluru, shared the video on his Instagram account, documenting his unusually long journey to the office and voicing concerns over the city’s traffic situation.

In the clip, he was seen navigating through traffic while recording himself and explaining the ordeal. He said, “So, I live four kilometres from my office, and it took me 45 minutes to reach the office today. What takes me like 9-10 mins to come to the office, took me 45 minutes, it's 10 am. I left my home, and I'm reaching here. It's 10:45.”

Visibly frustrated, he then switched to Hindi and said, “Yaar, humare taxes jaana kaha pe rahe hai bhai” (Man, where are our taxes even going?). He continued, “There have been months when I've paid more taxes than I've got my salary and this is not just me, I'm sure there's thousands and lakhs of other people who do this.”

Expressing further frustration, he added, “But it is so frustrating and furious the hell out of me yaar, like, kya chal raha hai yaar” (But it is so frustrating, and it seriously frustrates me, man, like, what is even going on?).

The video was shared with the caption: “Paying premium taxes just to experience a premium crawling speed.”

Watch the video here:

Social media users reacted with a mix of empathy, criticism, and humour, with many relating to the frustrations of long commutes in metro cities.

Several commenters indirectly joked that factoring in travel time to and from work should qualify many employees for daily overtime, pointing to how exhausting urban commutes had become.

Others, however, offered a different perspective, with some users indirectly suggesting that travelling more across the country could help broaden one’s outlook and shift the mindset that personal inconvenience reflected a larger systemic failure.

A few commenters appeared to argue that traffic struggles were not unique to Bengaluru and existed in many major cities.

Some users also compared Bengaluru’s traffic woes to other metropolitan experiences, particularly Mumbai, with commenters indirectly inviting the techie to experience the city’s crowded morning local train commute, implying that daily travel challenges were a shared reality across India’s biggest urban centres.