Giving and taking directions..!

By Robert Clements. Dated: 8/15/2017 12:42:54 PM

I remember getting out of my car somewhere in Washington D.C. and asking a youngster loitering on the road for directions to go towards Maryland.
"Go straight brother," he told me.
I got back into the car and told my brother what the boy had said. My brother promptly reversed the car and drove in the opposite direction.
"What are you doing,?" I asked.
"I'm doing the opposite for what he said," said my brother, "I could make out he was giving wrong directions."
"Why?," I asked.
"No reason," replied my brother, "some people just love doing it."
How is it over here in our country?. Not very different, I am afraid.
How often we ourselves have given wrong directions to someone, rather than saying we don't know. Unlike that American in Washington, its not that we are doing it for fun, but its just that we don't like to admit, we don't know.
How can we not know where Kailash Apartment is? After all, we were born and brought up in Mumbai or in Pune or in Goa. We've spent every bit of our lives getting to know every lane, road and gully, so if we don't know where the building is, the building just does not exist, or … if it does, it must be ten blocks away and we send the seeker packing in some vague wrong direction.
It doesn't worry our conscience that after reaching there, somebody just like us will send him right back to where he started and at the end of the day, tired and confused, he goes home, a victim of wrong directions.
……and then there are those who never seek directions. They drive their cars, or walk, from street to road to gully, round and round, lost. But never, oh never will they stop to ask someone ….. it is far below their dignity to do so……and hours later, confused and lost and tired, they also go home, proud though, that they never had to ask………
…….there's this friend of mine, who got of a bus in Madras and asked for directions.
"Straigggghht it will be," said the man.
"Lonnnnng it will be," he continued.
"Blaaaakhh it will be," he ended.
It was only later that my friend realized that the straight and long and black was the black tar toad, and the longer the vowel was stretched, the longer was the distance to be traveled…….
……………….what I would recommend is a compass and a city map…………!
bobsbanter@gmail.com

 

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