I got lost. again.

This week is mid-semester break, so we have no classes. We were allowed to travel the country in groups of at least two. Most of the class went North to the Himalayas and the Ganges, but I wanted to go to a city, so I accompanied my classmate Brendan to Pondicherry, a city with heavy French influences in the southern state of Tamil Nadu that he really wanted to see. It is the home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as well as the international township of Auroville, both of which draw huge numbers of foreigners. Other than those two main draws, Pondicherry, undoubtedly a pleasant city to live in, has little for tourists to do.

On our fourth and final day in Pondicherry, we checked out of our hotel at noon but our bus was not scheduled to leave until ten and a half hours later, so we left our stuff in the hotel's storage room and headed out for one last day on the town. Nadeau and I decided to split up and meet again for dinner. I milked as much time as I could out of my visit to Coffe.com, a cute little coffee shop, but when I felt I had overstayed the welcome I had earned by purchasing a 20 rupee (40 cent) bottle of water, I decided to check out Bharati Park, a large park that we had passed while walking around on each of our previous three days in Pondicherry. In order to make sure I had a proper sense of direction, I walked first to Daily Bread, the restaurant where I had agreed to meet Brendan for dinner. From there, I walked in the general direction of the park. I paid very close attention to the path I took and was delighted to find the park on my right hand side after only having to turn left once at a tall-building that I had carefully noted in my mind. Not only had I avoided getting lost on my way there; I was confident in how I had gotten there and was sure that I would not need to walk in circles to find my way back.

The park was great! Since it was the middle of the day on a Tuesday, it was relatively uncrowded, so I enjoyed the book I had brought along in peace. It had taken me about ten minutes to walk from Daily Bread to the park, but, to be safe, I put my book away and headed back at 5:10, twenty minutes before I was scheduled to meet Brendan. I turned left on the street that bordered the park from where I had first seen it and started walking. I immediately became aware that the street I was walking down did not look like the one I had walked up to get to the park. It was starting to get dark now, though, so I wrote this off. I had made a careful mental note of the route I had taken to get to the park and I was sure that I was now returning the way I had come; my memory of the shops on the street was clearly the faulted one. I kept walking, looking for the tall building that would be my cue to turn right. It did not come and soon I found myself passing cobbled streets full of children speaking French to each other. Upon closer look, these mostly-light brown haired students were French students speaking French to each other. I looked at the buildings around me. Many of them were adorned with simple archways and sunken back windows: I had fallen into France. No, I definitely had not walked this path on my way to the park.

Despite being absolutely sure that I had turned the right way to get back to Daily Bread, I had to resign that I was now absolutely lost. I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, trying to look as though I knew what I was doing, when I ran into Rue Surcouf. There! That was a name I recognized. Unfortunately, it was a name I recognized from having eaten at Kasha ki Aasha, a small boutique/cafe that set on the end of it, a couple of days earlier. I looked down at my watch. 5:25. Hmm...well at least I knew where I was now: good two kilometers on the side of the park opposite the one I needed to be on. Beautiful. I increased my walking speed and headed off in the direction of Daily Bread, finally right about where I was headed. 5:30 passed and I was still six or seven city blocks from the place on Mission Street where I would turn onto Nehru Street, walk a block, then turn onto Ambour Salai, walk a block and arrive at Daily Bread. At home this wouldn't be an issue. I would call Brendan, tell him I was going to be ten minutes late and continue on at a leisurly pace. I was not at home and this was not an option and Brendan is not the type to assume that everything is hunky-dory when someone does not show up on time in an unfamiliar Indian city. I increased my walking speed again; I was now close to running, earning myself a lot of confused glances from other passers-by. Pondicherry's advertising slogan is "Give Time a Break". People do not hustle to get places in Pondicherry.

Finally I got to the Bata shoe store, my cue to turn left. I was nearing the end of the block on Nehru Street that separates Mission and Ambour Salai streets, when I saw it. It being a beautiful orange cloth purse. The zipper on the purse that I had gotten in Hampi a month and a half earlier had broken just that morning. This purse was calling to me in its radiant orange beauty. I was now less than a minute away from Daily Bread. I looked down at my watch: 5:07. I considered ignoring the purse and continuing on to save an undoubtedly anxious Nadeau from worry but ultimately decided the purse was worth rounding out my lateness to an even ten minutes. I wanted the purse for 100 rupees (2 dollars), but I had only managed to get it down to 120 when my allotted two and a half minutes for buying said purse were over. I decided that, in the scheme of things, forty cents wouldn't kill me and bought in anyway. I rushed up to Daily Bread just as the time on my watch switched from 5:40 to 5:41. As expected, Brendan looked anxious. It's funny because at home, being ten minutes would be no big deal. If Brendan had been worried, he would have texted or called me to make sure I was okay and life would continue. Amazing the kind of security just having a cell phone provides. Anywho, I apologized profusely, telling him I got lost (8/11 of the reason I was late, anyway).

Which brings me back to my original point: I am positive that turned the right way out of that park and yet I ended up going exactly the opposite direction of the one I wanted to go in. I have thought for a while about how this could have happened and have come up with only one possible solution. God knows that I am directionally-challenged. He knows that reversing directions causes a lot more strain on my brian that it should, so, he keeps a close eye on me and, on the rare occasion that I do correctly reverse directions, he flips the world so that I am still going the wrong way, ensuring that the "directionally challenged" label will stick with me for life. It really is the only plausible solution. Glad I got that one sorted out.