Today we had to attend a wedding. The venue was a forty-five minute drive from our place. It was a lovely morning, cloudy and grey. It had rained the night before, but wasn’t raining just then.

Soon we reached a fork in the road. We took the one to the left as instructed by Mother Google as also confirmed by a friend who was traveling with us. But when we were some distance in, at least half a kilometre, we were stopped by a huge board which said ‘Take Diversion. Road Closed for Repairs.’

Huh?

There was no arrow indicating which was the ‘diversion’ to take.

Indian roads are full of Good Samaritans ever ready to stop and give you instructions. There was a movie in which the famous actor Mohanlal whose character is half drunk, and on his way to his friend’s house, keeps telling his driver, ‘Chodichu chodichu pokaam!’ (we’ll keep asking as we drive along kind of thing). That just shows how ‘chodichu chodichu’-going is what we Indians do as a rule. Till Mother Google came along, muscling into their territory.

Believe me you, the L&M is someone who would rather do the ‘chodichu’-going than ask Mother Google, though to be fair he is slowly switching loyalties and grudgingly taking Mother Google’s instructions. Anyway, in this case it looked like MG hadn’t yet been notified of the closure of the direct route, so asking around was our only option.

So we stopped and asked a man on a bike who was sorting through some papers. He happily, and helpfully, pointed in the direction we had come from. Go back to the fork in the road and take the right one this time. Well, what we had taken originally, the left one, was actually the ‘right’ one, but since it was under repair, the right one had now become the right way to take, if you know what I mean.

So back we went all the way and took the turn to the right at the fork, the one which was actually wrong, but had (much to its delight I bet!) become the right one when the left, which was really the right one had become indisposed. Confusing? Yeah, I do that to people. Anyway, from then on, all was well. We were after all on the right way, albeit a roundabout one. It just took us a few extra minutes to reach our destination, but reach we did, on time too.

What I want to ask at the end of this winding and rather useless post is, why, just WHY THE HECK, would anyone put the information to take a deviation AFTER one has taken it and travelled some distance? The ‘Take Diversion’ board should have been at the fork in the road, right?

I wonder whose brain came up with this excellent (not) idea to keep it just where the work was being done? Why did it not occur to ANYONE AT ALL that people would unnecessarily be inconvenienced? What is the purpose of making people go down the wrong road for quite some distance and then asking them to take a detour?

Sigh. I am guessing no one is ever going to tell me who these geniuses are. It might be all for the good actually for who knows, I might get the urge to throw a brick at them. 😉

©️ Shail Mohan 2024