Until a year ago, my days were measured in hours and minutes. Every night, before going to bed, I would calculate the hours of sleep I could afford and set my alarm accordingly. Once awake, there was barely any room for delay — brush quickly, sip my coffee while beginning work, squeeze in half-an-hour of tasks before hurriedly eating breakfast, packing lunch, and rushing out the door. Even falling behind by ten minutes meant reaching work — located 20 km away — late.
In Chennai’s relentless heat and lashing monsoons, I would hop on my scooter and leave anyway. The stress did not end after office hours. Though my workday officially ended at 7 pm, I would often stay back longer to avoid peak-hour traffic, leaving around 8 or even 8.30 pm, only to return home exhausted and ready to collapse into bed before repeating the cycle the next morning.
I lived this routine for nearly two years without realising how much of myself it was consuming. One weekly off would disappear into recovering from exhaustion, while the other was often spent travelling again — meeting friends, attending family commitments, or simply catching up on errands. Slowly, the long hours and endless commute chipped away at my hobbies, fitness, rest, and personal time, until burnout no longer felt distant. Yet, I was still among the more fortunate ones. I had a family who helped ease parts of my routine. Many working persons across the city cook for themselves and their families before or after long workdays, and endure hours of commuting through traffic before returning home drained, with little time and energy left for anything else. For them all commute stress is a way of life.
The travel, in fact, exhausts them even before their work day begins. SK (24), a caregiver from Chennai, takes three modes of transport to reach work. She uses her two-wheeler, then takes a metro, and upon reaching her destination she avails either a share auto or an auto, or sometimes relies on hitching a ride with a friend, only to reach work. This routine, she says, takes her anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour. “Just waiting for each of these modes of transport itself is exhausting,” SK shares.
For Sumathi (57), a janitor, a normal day to work entails an hour-and-a-half of travel in the morning, and at least two hours in the evening. But the drill begins at 5 am. She wakes up, cleans, cooks two meals for her husband and herself, washes the utensils and clothes, showers, and offers prayers before heading to her place of work. “I travel from Pattabiram to Ambattur Industrial estate. I walk 15 minutes from my house to the bus stop, travel an hour in the bus, and then from Ambattur Estate bus stop, I walk another 10 minutes to reach work,” she says, adding that on most days she has to change two buses. “65C and 71E are direct buses. I don’t get these buses daily. Most days, I change buses in Avadi and the buses on my route are very crowded as well. Sometimes I stand in the bus for the whole hour. It is difficult to travel that way, especially during summer,” she rues. On such days, Sumathi admits to arriving at work extremely tired.
The exhaustion doubles down on people, specifically during summer months, with the rising fear of dehydration and heat stroke in Chennai. It is precisely this reason that forces Nilesh Subramanian (33), a data scientist and cricketer, to reach work earlier than required. “I have to reach my office only by 10 am everyday. But if I have to leave home after 9 am, the heat and humidity becomes unbearable and the traffic due to metro construction pushes my regular commute time of 30-40 minutes up by another 10 minutes,” he says. On days when he trains for cricket before work in the morning, the exhaustion surfaces evidently. “When I have my training, I wake up by 5.30 am, finish training at Meenambakkam, freshen up there, and go straight to work. My commute from Meenambakkam to work (RA Puram) takes an hour in the morning. That commute exhausts me more.”
SK insists that more than the physical exhaustion, which could be seasonal, the mental exhaustion persists year around. Deepti Chandy, Therapist & COO, Anna Chandy & Associates, reasons that most individuals function within a window of tolerance — a mental “green zone” that supports emotional stability, presence, and rational thought. “Daily travel stressors such as noise, and traffic congestion directly strain the nervous system. As a result, many professionals arrive at work already dysregulated, experiencing irritability, mental fatigue, and exhaustion.” The heat, Deepti believes, is only an added stressor.
Yet another stressor is Chennai’s bad roads and the lack of driving discipline. Taarikaa Alahari, an IT professional who drives an hour-and-a-half one way from Anna Nagar to Tidel park, says, “The traffic and the people driving with zero road sense stress me out the most. Some drivers take turns when you don’t expect it and there’s not a single day where I don’t think ‘how do they have a license?’”
Deepti expands on the psychology behind road rage too. “A reduction in the window of tolerance may lead individuals to enter a state of hyper-arousal, which is characterised by increased agitation, hostility, and heightened reactivity. Road rage frequently manifests from this condition, occurring when the nervous system is dysregulated and emotional resilience is diminished; consequently, individuals become increasingly susceptible to disproportionate reactions toward minor triggers.”
The stress that comes with commuting long distances everyday also seeps into people’s weekends. Many of them disclose avoiding social gatherings altogether, to reel from the week’s weariness. SK shares turning down so many plans to catch a movie, grab dinner or just dessert, owing to the exhaustion. Work aside, household chores also await her daily, a reality for most Indian women. “I lack a social life because there is no battery nor energy left.” Taarikaa, who is also a fitness enthusiast, says that she refuses to go to the gym on days she travels to work. “I am simply too tired to do anything before or after work,” she adds. Nilesh, who juggles both weekdays and a tight weekend schedule, too relates to this and explains it through math. “In 24 hours, I sleep eight hours, work for nine hours, spend almost two hours commuting, leaving only five hours. Even in those five hours, if I have training for an hour or two, I only have two to three hours. I spend those couple hours eating dinner, breakfast, and simply recovering — both mentally and physically.”
For all of them, the nervous system slips into a state of under-activation leading to a mental “shutdown,” and this is also classified as hypo-arousal, Deepti informs. This is another way in which dysregulation presents itself, she says, adding that it is “marked by physical fatigue, mental fog, and a sense of lethargy.”
If they have to beat lethargy and squeeze in hobbies that bring their mind some peace, it would force them out of bed earlier than usual. Sumathi, for instance, discloses that only performing puja brings her peace, and it has been the only hobby that she could afford in this lifetime. “I just like doing puja. Especially on Fridays and on festival days I wake up by 3 or 4 am to perform a hearty puja.”
A knotty problem
The solution, for almost all of them, is not in moving closer to work. For Taarikaa, the comfort and familiarity her locality offers is greater, but what also rules over it is how after marriage, a move closer to her work wouldn’t be convenient for her husband and his family; especially since his (her husband’s) work would force him to travel the distance. For Nilesh, it is the financial aspect that is restricting him from moving closer to work. “Rent in RA Puram is costly. I would rather travel to work to save money.” Sumathi, who lived in Ambattur until nine months ago, says that she was forced to move away due to a year-on-year rent increase. “I would rather travel this distance to work so I can make my ends meet.”
SK meanwhile, believes that a move, away from her family, would disturb her mentally. “Without them, I would lose my very core.” Even if she were to suggest a move for the entire family, she believes that the idea will be shot down before she were to formulate her thoughts. And so for now, she spends an hour or more commuting back and forth. She confesses that with every passing minute, she thinks about how there is one less minute ahead to reach home, where the comfort of her bed awaits her.
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