Left, Right?

The best part of watching people give directions?

“My GPS says, ignore the ‘No Entry’ on your right, then drive through the pile of garbage lying in the middle of the road, climb over the debris just ten metres on your left and you err... may have arrived at your chosen destination!”

Personality types rising to the surface.

No-nonsense ‘Arrows’ will snap: Take the third left off Thadinginathom Salai, take first right – third house on right.

The ‘Hem-Hawers’, however, prefer confusion: Down Big Fat Crowded Road (the name’s forgotten), left after the provisions store...no, saree shop, no, tea kadai, that’s right, no, I mean left... one, two, three, third left, yes...thennnnn go downnn maybeeee (Note: such indecision on the ‘direct’-er’s part makes the asker nervous), two, three or six houses... turn right, our house is (yep, the speaker is giving directions to His Own House) is on theeee (here the speaker goes silent, eyes tightly shut for greater concentration, and semaphores wildly with both hands), left, no, right, one, two, three, third house on the right... (finally breaks off exhausted, while asker rethinks the whole concept of socialising).

Of course, there are other factors that can cause problems – changing cityscapes, disappearing landmarks, sudden one-ways, those little by-lanes, so easy to forget, rendering even the most detailed directions useless; and those delightfully individual interpretations of terms like ‘behind’, ‘adjacent’, and ‘diagonally opposite’. Obviously, understanding directions is as much an art as giving them.

But that’s another story.