LOST AND FOUND

What happens when you live in a city for almost thirteen years, and you still thank god for the day GPS was built? Hang your head in shame that’s what.

I used to think, think being the operative word that my directional capabilities rivaled that of batmobile on autopilot. There was a belief in my system that booted and rebooted itself into the bloodstream till it became a reality in my mind,self belief in directional capabilities.

If you keep the city I live in as a mathematical symbol, it would best be a circle.

Say the circle was concentric to another circle, and filled in between with a large cobweb,

And as arachnophobia is a bona fide defined fear,and we shall discuss the dangers of creepy crawlies later for the moment we shall send the spider to play politics, while we figure out the system.

On the outer diameters my vehicle,or Elvis as I lovingly call my old boy, we run along just fine, zipping mindlessly past the rearview’s of sedate travelers, moving with a surety and motion full of swerves,all maneuvres of the very knowledgeable.

As we glide deeper into the city circle, we do not loose our edge,the confidence is I agree not at the peak,and as the web keeps spinning roundabouts with four extremely similar exits at us,the stage from confidence to self doubt to frantically whipping out the GPS is traversed in a nano second.

When it comes to admitting or self realization that I am stumped,its usually situation dependent for example if I kicked your shin under the table of twenty people for a slight that I absolve my personal responsibility off and put you on stand ,I can guarantee my angelic smile will easily pass your accusatory scanner as you move on,this LOST situation is not an external calamity but an internal emergency due to genetic shortfall,so I quickly do a mental hands up and hand over to technology, mentally berating the errant navigational gene that passed on to my brother but decided to take the lazy day off when it came to me.

As it happens,the technological marvel in question is my super ultra smart phone which in terms of technology is practically comparable to an octogenarian in all of its two years of life, in a cranky mood.How the quality of Korean products or maybe made in china is deplorable, is a money draining topic you and I could discuss with long faces some other time.Right now we shall just mourn the functional loss of my phones abilities. Mourn its ‘age old’ right to vibrate at all the wrong moments,(not pleasurably so I must add,just a deathly shudder) signaling its will to shut off and restart in its own time.That usually happens when it decides it has been overworked,or when I decide its time to switch on the GPS.whence my lovely yellow beauty decides its life is too low on power to sustain such a drain on its functions .Even as I stare in disbelief, yet again ,at the flashing battery that is ready to die,it again gives its warning vibration shot,before blinking me down.

I tell my friend from out of town with a phone in its teens to utilize her shiny new jazz of a gadget to get us to where we wanted, and yes I do try and be a little sheepish about it.She is an out of towner and I am the directionally challenged guide.(there I said it)But what shame in admitting you need another helpful phone.

Armed with the latest technology and My internal homing device working on the familiarity bred by studying your college degree in the vicinity of the area that was our destination for the feast,got us swiftly till the point where I handed the baton to my friends shiny dependable new device,for the final few kilometers. According to my approximation we were ten minutes away.

How even after half an hour we were talking to a nepali clueless guard,is something I have been told  that occurs when you depend on technology too much or Murphy decides,it's just not your day.

In attempt One at a direct approach, we entered a govt. housing society and not that we were judging the food standards by the look of the colony, maybe the epicurean standards of the cities highest rated restaurant was all for its home cooked ,served hot,experience on the roof top,with domesticated street dog at your feet.

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But even in all sensibilities looking up trying to figure which rooftop,and coming up to a blank with all shirts and kurtas hanging out for drying,hinted at either abysmal décor standards which were wickedly aiming at ‘Homely’orrrrr we were in the completely wrong place even as the GPS mimed "you have arrived at your destination."

Definitely not at the right place , we got down to good old, roll down windows and ask 'bhaisaabs' for direction,but I guess the genteel helpful race of 'bhaisaabs' is also a dying breed.'bhaisaabs' directions were either to his house or maybe just a local colony darshan, because ten minutes and four lefts and two rights later we were chatting with our lost Nepali guard at a locked up dead end, who’s most helpful information was turn around,which we did,only to find ourselves on the other side of theNepali guard's gate in say another ten minutes.

Attempt two, three, four, I have even lost count, saw us do a lot of doubling up,but the humour levels in the car minus the testosterone were relatively upbeat lacking the sexist jokes on ‘lost chicks’. Suddenly to our left we crossed a temple and god must have taken pity on our growling stomachs and found us a good guide who said straight ahead in 200 mtrs," you cannot miss". 

And that’s how we found ourselves eating chicken tikka in a place that is out of the box.

Sitting down on a  highstool,under the night sky,surrounded by the youngest most buzzing crowd in the city,we had arrived.

Biting me back to earth, besieged  by mosquitoes I curled my exposed legs under me, awkwardly balancing in my fight against possible malaria(I left my faithful repellent in the car,or you could not put it past me to lather my self up, all sweet smelling, in front of this genteel crowd)

We reached home in one shot, thanks to my short term memory in retaining directions working in top condition,I am home tonight, but keep your DPS(dad positioning services)on speed dial,a good old paper Map,for your girl scout moment.

But if you are with your blinkers on,staring at your sleepy phone and  god forbid were the spider to arrive and  invite you into its parlor,and you are without trusted friends with a Big Moose built I would suggest do your polite refusal with pepper sprayed confidence,stay glued inside you car seat, do not step out and make an equally speedier,footloose exit towards the lit part of the circuitous web, or dial 100(if the battery sustains)

 I would love to tell you its a furry little spider or fluttery mosquito lost on its way home with an equally stunted directional gene,But watching the piling newspapers burdened with tears of young girls dead, its a chance that I would recommend you don't take and trust that you don't place, as I am afraid the mosquito repellent is just getting ineffective in the fast mutating carnally ridden desires that ,diversify ,amplify and become more horrifying with every illicit orgasm.