Walkabout

My first day to work from my new home. I feel like a primary school kid going to school on her own for the first time. Many people gave me advice on the types of transport available, where to alight, what to look out for, etc. I managed to catch a lift from the apartment owner to work in the morning. Coming back, I had the options of hailing an auto, taking the public bus or walking home.

The evening was cool after an earlier downpour, I decided to take a leisure walk back and at the same time I can also estimate how much time it takes to commute by foot to work. Though it’s already dark and I have not gone back on my own before, I’m pretty confident of the way back as I have been to my new place by car three times and I had identified some landmarks and turnings. On top of that, I know the stretch of main road quite well too.

I had estimated the walk should take about 30 minutes and I checked off landmarks as I go along. However, it was more than 10 minutes after the last landmark and I have not yet reached where I was supposed to make a turn. Also tired after a day at work, I thought to myself, this is too much of a walk home everyday. I continued walking, looking out all the time for the turn, until the rows of shops ended, the crowed thinned and the road turned quiet and sparsely lited on an uphill.

The surroundings did not look any familiar at all. I do not remember going on an uphill when I traveled there by car previously. I checked the time, 45 minutes had passed since I started walking. Instinct told me to turn back. I traced back the route I took til the last landmark. From there, I started afresh and just 100 meters ahead, I saw the turn. I let out a sigh of relief… I wasn’t prepared for a walking excursion and an additional 2 kilometers on the same busy noisy road drained me mentally and physically. One crossing, one more right turn and I’ll be back in the house.

Things did not turn out as expected. I missed another small turn on my way in and all the right turns either led to a dead end or construction sites. I ended up walking back and forth the estate a couple of times, before I finally decided to ask a security guard outside one of the houses for directions and he pointed me to the correct lane.

As I try to locate the house, I actually walked past it unknowingly and luckily Ranjit who was in the driveway called out to me when he saw me walking past the gate. That saved me another few hundred meters.

It’s not all that bad for the day. At least, there was a delicious home-cooked dinner waiting for me…