Stuck in jam? Bengaluru bikers choose mud over madness
In Bengaluru, if traffic jams were a horror story, the commuters on two-wheelers just found a cliffhanger ending — they ditched the main road and dragged their bikes into mud, railway land, and whatever passed for a shortcut.
The Panathur–Balagere stretch, clogged thanks to bungled roadwork and civic dig-ups, has forced riders to abandon tarmac and experiment with “off-road commutes.” A video going viral shows a band of bikers navigating a muddy, slushy trail — ducking potholes and sloshing through water-logged patches.
Some called it daring; others called it desperate. Driving along active railway-adjacent tracks while dodging mud might be an adrenaline rush, but mostly it looks like a commuter’s final-minute gamble.
Officials plead patience. The roads will be smooth... eventually, they said. Meanwhile, Bengaluru’s bikers seem to have accepted that until then, every ride to office comes with a free mud splash and a side of scrapes.
SBI branch running on bamboo and balance
Some people climb the ladder of success. Others, apparently, climb a bamboo ladder balanced on a tractor to withdraw Rs 500.
Welcome to the Charampa Market branch of SBI in Bhadrak, Odisha, now officially India’s most adventurous bank.
A viral video shows customers and employees scaling a bamboo ladder that is itself perched on top of a tractor, all because the bank’s staircase was demolished for being “illegally constructed”.
Banking may be a serious business, but in this branch, every deposit comes with a side of parkour training.
Since the demolition, the ladder has become the branch’s unofficial VIP entrance.
The bamboo isn’t long enough, so the tractor acts like a bonus floor.
Elderly customers? Forget it. Unwell customers? Impossible. Anyone with a fear of heights? Better switch to online banking.
One wrong step by the tractor or one slippery rung, and you’re on your way to testing gravity in front of the ATM.
According to reports, both the bank and the building owner were given multiple notices long before the demolition.
Nothing happened then, so now everything is happening above ground level.
Social media users were horrified, confused, and entertained.
One user demanded: “At this point, SBI should provide free health insurance with every passbook.”
Another wrote: “This is not a bank entrance. This is a survival exam.”
Kerala BLO goes off-duty — and off-dress code
In a plot twist no one asked for during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a Booth Level Officer (BLO) in Tavanur, north Kerala, managed to get himself removed from duty after he decided to give an unscheduled, unwanted, and unnecessary visual performance.
The incident happened last week, but the videos only hit TV channels today, achieving the kind of virality no government staffer wants.
In the videos aired, the BLO can be seen calmly doing his paperwork before suddenly standing up and opening his mundu (dhoti) toward the person filming him — because apparently, democracy needed extra transparency that day.
The act unfolded in full view of several people, including women, turning what should have been a routine enumeration exercise into a live episode of “What Not To Do as a Government Employee.”
According to district officials, the BLO — whose job was to fill out voter enumeration forms, not rewrite the dress code — was served a show-cause notice on Tuesday.
Officials said the matter reached the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) on November 23. By Monday, District Collector V R Vinod had relieved the BLO of his official responsibilities—and, by extension, his unofficial hobby of surprising people with wardrobe malfunctions.
"Another BLO has been handed over the responsibility of completing the SIR work," an official confirmed, presumably someone who understands the basic principle of staying clothed in public.
Slow-mo Romance on SUV roof
Indian weddings are already a maximalist art form. Yet, one couple merged it with a gravity-defying rooftop choreography.
They proved that Bollywood is not a film industry but a national condition.
A viral clip from Goa shows a couple sprawled on the roof of a slowly moving Toyota Highlander, gliding down the Britona–Salvador do Mundo Road. A commuter driving past notices the scene-two motionless lovers, one obedient SUV, and a driver who appears to have surrendered to fate.
The passerby asks, what is going on. "Are you doing a shoot?"
The driver replies, “Yes, it’s just a wedding photoshoot, nothing else."
Nothing else, except two humans lying on a moving vehicle, a narrow Goan road.
The commuter, performing the rare civic duty usually outsourced to traffic police and kind strangers on Reddit, tries again: “What if they fell from the moving car’s roof?"
The driver dismisses the concern with the confidence of a man who has never met physics.
“No, no, I was just driving by 5 km/hr," he says.
The Telegraph Online could not confirm the authenticity of the claims in the video.
What’s VIP intervention: Tiger cub
It takes a certain authority to stop traffic in India. A minister’s convoy, a monsoon, or, as Maharashtra has now reminded us, a tiger with no interest in human schedules. The latest viral video from Tadoba shows a young cub seated on the Chandrapur–Moharli road, exercising a level of command over commuters.
The viral clip, filmed by local resident Akash Alam, shows the cub, believed to be tigress Madhu’s offspring, positioned in the middle of the road, unmoved by honks.
In Tadoba’s buffer zone, this is business as usual.
Locals say wildlife on the road is now so routine that they no longer bother telling stories about it. “If a tiger isn’t blocking your commute, is it even Chandrapur?” one villager joked on X.
The people in the video appear calm because everyone knows the rules. The forest department has long advised travellers not to honk, not to get down, and definitely not to test who runs faster.
With big cats frequently strolling across this stretch, everyone has now accepted that the tiger has the right of way.
One X user wrote, “In Maharashtra, even tigers do dharna.” A second wrote, “Honestly, the tiger looks more patient than anyone on my daily commute.”
After all, some jams are better left unquestioned.