Ferry services closed. Buses off the roads. App cabs cancelling one after the other and yellow taxis making a killing.

Commuters had a harrowing time on Monday.

It was a nightmare for those who reached Howrah or Sealdah stations after
train services resumed in the morning.

“We reached Sealdah from Darjeeling early in the morning and couldn’t find anything. I had my parents with me and we didn’t know what to do,” said Apurba Kumar
Hati, a bank executive from Selimpur.

“I paid ₹650 to a cab to drop us home from Sealdah station.” Selimpur is about 7.5km from Sealdah.

The pre-paid taxi booth outside Howrah station had a few cabs in the morning. Several passengers walked down the Howrah bridge looking for buses and cabs battling the wind and rain.

“I had to reach Science College in Ballygunge for my research work. There were no buses for almost an hour,” said a Jadavpur resident who had gone to Chandernagore and took a suburban train on Monday morning to reach Howrah.

Train services in the Sealdah South section were hit for several hours in the morning with the Eastern Railway cancelling several trains connecting parts of Laxmikantapur, Diamond Harbour and Hasnabad.

The ferry services connecting Howrah and Hooghly with Calcutta remained suspended because of the weather.

“The Hooghly is too turbulent. A decision has yet to be made on when services will resume,” a transport department official said on Monday evening.

Several private bus operators said the staff did not want to bring the vehicles out on the roads.

“The drivers were wary of the strong winds,” said Pradip Narayan Bose of the West Bengal Bus and Minibus Owners’ Association.

Government-run buses on several routes, too, were missing.

Several yellow taxi operators said waterlogged streets forced them to be off the roads.