Is it possible to get lost one fine morning, driving down the same road that one has been taking to and from work every single working day in the last six months?
Seems like it is.
I DID get lost today! And it was around 10 AM in the morning!
No, I wasn’t sleep-driving and No, I was absolutely not having a hangover. It isn’t New Year’s eve yet.
Not that I ever get drunk and have a hangover. For that matter, I don’t drink at all. Rather, I can’t. Something to do with my system never being able to metabolise alcohol so that I just end up falling asleep for the next 14 hours straight. Naturally, I have never been able to figure out the pleasures of drinking!
Anyway, coming back to the point.
Yes, I knew the fog was bad. (Didn’t you notice the pictures on Shadow’s Post yesterday?) But I never imagined it would be THIS bad.
As soon as I braved out of our colony gates, I suddenly found myself in this never ending, all encompassing white blur! How was one supposed to drive when you can’t even see three metres ahead of you?
The headlamps were useless. Not entirely of course. They would, combined with the distress lights, help others spot me. But that didn’t serve my purpose. I needed to spot others!
It was daytime..late morning in fact. And I almost missed the sharp right turn outside our gates and crashed into the thick hedge outside the school next door!
Alright. Slow down!
But now what? No car in sight to follow. Or worse,was there a car/bus/lorry right in front of me that I couldn’t see?
I tried to map the road in my brain. Come on! Of course I can do this, I told myself. I know this road like the back of my hand. (To tell you the truth, I don’t know the back of my hand that well. Why people refer to this phrase I could never fathom but it repeatedly kept coming back to me as I struggled to find one familiar landmark!)
Anyway, I did know this road perfectly well. Every curve ahead, every uneven bump, each tree at the traffic lights. I certainly could find my way to the highway and then there would be heavy traffic that I could follow.
I don’t know where exactly I took a wrong turn but I could sense I was lost in the maze of those identical roads in Dwarka. Visibility was down to just my car bonnet!
I don’t think I will ever blame those airlines when fog delays their flights. Even with the best of navigation systems it would be terrifying to take off a huge trans-ocean liner when you can barely see your headlights! (Do aircrafts have headlights or are they called something else? Well, never mind)
For one quarter of an hour, I navigated those (un)familiar roads solely helped by gut instinct and primitive sense of direction.
Wasn’t I glad when suddenly, to my left, there was traffic!
AH! I was entering the familiar high traffic zone that I always dreaded, cursed, and complained about. The stretch of about 3 kilometres which invariably messed up the average mileage of my car.
But today, I couldn’t have been happier to see the traffic crossing which always meant the start of a bumper to bumper row of cars moving at 15 km per hour!!
Guess whoever said there is a meaning and purpose in everything was right.
Today I understood the greater meaning behind traffic congestion!!
