At 8:15pm the entirety of Manik Mia Avenue, the widest road in the city, was unusually choked with traffic. The rain had stopped but a sweltering heat rose with hundreds of stranded vehicles emitting fumes. Impatient motorists honked incessantly. Many turned off their engines and helplessly looked around. Frustrated passengers got off the buses and started walking. Some engaged themselves in altercations with bus helpers while demanding a refund on their incomplete journey.

Realizing that the situation was beyond anyone's control, a fire service ambulance, transporting a patient switched off its siren after 15 minutes of desperate wailing. The ambulance attendant said that they had picked up the patient from Gupibagh at around 6:30pm for National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar.

"The patient had a heart attack in the afternoon and referred to NICVD, we do not know when we can reach the hospital," the attendant said. Inside the ambulance a relative of the patient wiped tears from her eyes as she recited verses from the Holy Quran.

To make things even more chaotic, dozens of rickshaws now slowly pushed their way on the wrong side of the road trying to find a passage towards Khamarbari. The number of rickshaws slowly rose to the extent of crating a Gordian knot in front of the NAM flats.

At the Manik Mia Avenue-Mirpur Road intersection a perspiring traffic policeman struggled tirelessly to man the failed traffic lights.

"What can I do, there is no electricity for half the day and the lights are off, my colleagues have abandoned the intersection in frustration," said the visibly tired constable.

At 9:05pm a single traffic sergeant constantly shouted warnings to defiant motorists at the intersection of Road 27, that represented a traffic nightmare. Motorists, unable to spot the sergeant in his raincoat in the light-less street, pushed forward from all directions just to turn things bad to worse. The poor sergeant trying to bring some order to the anarchic situation soon gave up and took refuge at a nearby shop.

At 9:30pm decibel level broke all laws inside the so-called Dhanmondi residential area with almost every household switching on powerful generators to escape from power outage. Security guards, chauffeurs and domestic workers gossiped outside each apartment block. A huge traffic, comprising rickshaws, push carts, lorries, rickshaw vans, bikes and honking private cars built up at the Road 32 bridge.

"I have never seen anything like this in my life, I live in Shankar, we have no water no electricity at home and my children can no longer study in the evenings," said Mohammad Rashid, a professional chauffeur for twenty years and father of two children aged ten and twelve.

"It took me more than an hour to come from Road 4 to Road 15, hardly a kilometer away," Rshid said.

At 10pm inside a narrow and dark lane of Shankar, Rashid's children and his wife sat on the road with several other families of the neighborhood. The rented accommodations of Rashid and many others like him in the locality did not have much ventilation. With the frequent power outage they were hand in hand on the narrow street with their children frolicking.

"I am really thinking of returning to Brahmmanbaia with our children, here we have no water, no electricity, no gas and I am really concerned about my children, who have not had a bath for two days," said Keya Begum, wife of Rashid.