Hide and seek

I want to know why cities are laid out the way they are. Why one-ways always lead away from the direction you want to go in. Why they change direction overnight just when you’ve managed to crack the code. Why U-turns are so few and far between and always creep up when you’re on the extreme left of the road. Why house numbering systems are so virulently illogical. And why a right turn is not allowed just on the street you want to turn into. Having arrived there, need I add, after a long, befuddling and frustrating journey.

As you can see, it has been an unrewarding day.

And this is an ode to all those who have ever set off in search of an unknown address in our maliciously designed cities. May the force be with you. There are many, many tricks our city planners have up their sleeves to lead you astray.

Take, for example, the odds-and-evens game. You will usually encounter this if you are hunting for house number 55 and find yourself in front of number 54. That’s when you hear your malicious city planner say ‘gotcha!’ Because – of course! – this is the ‘evens’ street and number 55 is on the ‘odds’ street across the road. For victims of this game, there is consolation in the thought that there are worse plights. There is, for example (shudder) the-road-ends-at-the-house-before-the-one-I-want scenario. How roads can end just before any house you are looking for is beyond me … they are obviously designed to alter themselves in accordance with (or in opposition to) the needs of any house hunters in the vicinity.

Then there is the skip-an-alphabet game, especially popular in Delhi. If you happen to be looking for P-55, you can be pretty sure that P does not exist at the place where it is supposed to. This is where O ends, that is where Q begins … shouldn’t P be somewhere right here? Aaaah, you poor naïve thing. There is no explanation for this, but P is located right after K, in a completely different colony.

As a child I lived in a house in the unfortunate block P. No one could ever find their way to my house because it was the only block that was an aberration in the otherwise neatly alphabetical sequence. As a result I had very few friends. Kids who couldn’t find their way to my birthday parties imagined I had played a nasty prank on them. When I was older, of course, I learned how to use this unfortunate location to my advantage – but the trauma of childhood never does fade.

And, of course, there is the renumber-the-houses game, especially popular in Bangalore. Stunning in its audacity, this one is designed to outwit the few talented house-finders who do manage to get past previous obstacles. If you happen to successfully find your way to house number 1274, you will in high probability find yourself face to face with an elderly lady who looks quite different from the person you were expecting to meet. Isn’t this 1274, you ask in bewilderment. Yes, she says, equally puzzled. Until light dawns and she asks – “oh, but are you looking for the old 1274 or the new one?” This, you see, is the new one. When people give you addresses that go ‘old 75, new 11’ disregard them not. There is a hidden message there.

I know there is a meaning to this, which will dawn on me some day. Meanwhile, I am becoming skilled at the game, having abandoned the alphabet, numerics and logic in favor of the best direction-finder of them all : instinct.