And I'm lost... again...

Have you ever observed how some people appear to be born with an incredible.. almost unreal.. sense of direction. They always seem to know of multiple paths between any two points in the city... Path A if time is at a premium, Path B if you want to aviod traffic, Path C if you want to put your tyres, shock-absorbers and yourself through minimal pain, Path D if you want to have good food on the way, Path E if you want to go through MG Road... and so on. There was this story-with-moral that I'd read as a kid that renders itself to the context at hand quite well. The story goes something like this. "Little dude has a pet cat. Dude and cat are best friends. Cat disses off dude. Dude desides he's had enough of the stupid cat. Dude takes cat for long walk with intention of abandoning it. Dude leaves cat under a tree and bolts. Dude runs hard and fast and realizes he's lost. Dude, much distressed, sits by the roadside and sheds copious amount of tears. Short while later dude sees cat passing him by. Dude follows cat and reaches home. Dude, much relieved, sheds copious amount of tears. Dude and cat best friends again." The afore-mentioned gang is much like the cat in the parable. You could leave them blindfolded in a dark alley in some God-forsaken corner of the city and realistically expect to find them answering the doorbell when you got home (unless, ofcourse, they got mugged in the dark alley and ended up in the nearest hospital with the same amazing speed). As I said before, almost unreal, like something straight out of a Stephen King novel.

At the other end of the spectrum is this small set of people who seem to be hopelessly cartographically challenged. Normal in every other respect, but filled with an unreasonable dread at the prospect of having to navigate to the neighbourhood grocery store. And anything more than that is a project by itself requiring careful planning down to the minutest details involving temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, alignment of the stars etc., lest something go wrong and they find themselves on a road they hadnt planned to be on. Now life would be totally awsome (for me atleast) if i were a member of the amazing-direction-sense gang, but I'm quite clearly not. My idea of a successful excursion is taking my bike for its periodic servicing to the friendly neighbourhood service station navigating through the maze of one-ways that so inconviniently exist between my workplace and the service station, and getting it back post-servicing without making more than five wrong turns in either direction. This ordeal I got to repeat every couple of months and it never gets any easier. Through much soul-searching and plenty of experience I have realized that it would probably not be possible for me to gain admission into that exclusive club of "Navigation-Supermen" even if I devoted the rest of my natural life exclusively to that pursuit... besides, it would be totally lame to do so and I'd probably go down in the history books as the stupidest human that ever lived, which is really not quite the way I want to be remembered. And as I discovered on my recent trip to Hyderabad, the city I had spent the better part of my past 25 years in, my particular shortcoming does have its advantages. It was like visiting a whole new city, complete with all the thrill that accompanies such an experience 8-) .. until later.. cheers