Direct the Way

I am a pedestrian. I enjoy being one, and spend most of my free time getting to place A by foot, rather than by other methods of transportation. If its as far as GK, I'll take the bus.

Somehow, people seem to understand this, and I am regularly asked for directions on the road. Now its one thing if a nice motorist stops by and asks you how to get from there to wherever he's heading off to, If you are in a car, you have the luxury of not knowing where you are going. If you make a wrong turn, its not too much of a bother if you are in a fast moving vehicle.

Its not even that much of an oddity if someone is where they want to be, such as Safdarjung Enclave (Yes, some people want to be there), and want to know how to get to some locally demarkated region, such as B-4 Block. But it is quite another when you have other insane pedestrians asking you how to get to places that are aleast half an hour away.

One assumes that if you are on foot, you should damn well know where you are going. Wrong turns will lead you spending a lot of time retracing your steps, and this is just when inside colonies. Besides, pedestrian range is usually about 4 kilometers, this goes up to about 8 for dheet khacchar's like me, and falls dramatically to one kilometer for NieShit, who considered a 2 kilometer walk from school to my place a bit of a trek.
If you do not happen to know your way about a 4 kilometer radius, you need some serious rethinking in life. Even Manny would be able to manage getting around in Saket, if one put him on foot, and he's got the worst direction sense in the entire world.

Yet the other day, I had to assist a gentleman who wanted to make his way to Sarvapriya Vihar, when he was dawdling around in Sarvodaya Enclave. He had, of course, taken a wrong turn before IIT flyover. Congratulations sir. Have a nice long walk now.

In short, pedestrians, to be effective, must know where the hell they are going, otherwise they will end up as ineffective as Raman's comebacks (The best example of which has to be, and I quote, "Haan, haan, Bhavya, Bolte Reh"). Or indeed, the intercrap club.

That is all.