Asking for directions in Delhi: the holler

It's hard to get around in India. Yes, Google Maps just launched an amazing version of their service, meant for cell phones, which is as good as GPS. But perhaps because connectivity is low and people don't really understand how computing works, it hasn't caught on.

The best way to find a place is to lean out the window and holler at a passer-by. Which has led to an entire literature of cocktail party conversation about exactly who, when and how to holler.

For example, streetside fruit vendors and barbers are good people to holler at, but auto drivers are the best. People who are rich (in nice cars and suits) usually don't have a clue, although they have very nice manners.

In my experience, cops are ok if you're in a crowded place. If you're looking for a specific address in one of Delhi's labyrinthine residential colonies, where the numbering system follows neither logic nor chronology, you're best off asking one of the many security guards. Why? Because come tea-time, all the guards get together and exchange gossip about their buildings, with the positive externality that they all know each other's locations and the negative externality that they all know your business.

Getting hollered at, however, is a unique honor. In our familial culture, when someone hollers at you, it means they're putting their faith in you, it means that their well-being has become your responsibility. Which is why I was in such a jam a few weeks ago.

I had just hopped into an auto when a car pulled up alongside us.

"Where's Scindia House?" asked one of the men inside, in Hindi. The auto driver scratched his chin, then turned to me.

"Where's Scindia House?" he asked. Now, on the Richter scale of daily life, this event - an auto driver asking ME for directions - rates an earth-shattering and epic 10. Like lightning, such an opportunity only strikes once. I puffed up with pride and responsibility. The men in the car waited politely.

"Well..." I said, and then all the air left me. I was like a punctured balloon. See, the tragic fact is that I wasn't quite sure where Scindia House was. It's a local landmark but I've never been to it. I knew roughly that it was on Janpath, and that it lay somewhere north of my current location. "Straight ahead, to the left," I said. I was pretty sure that's where I'd seen the "Scindia House" arrow pointing to one of those underpasses that allows pedestrians to cross under the street.

"It's there," said the perfidious auto driver, pointing in the opposite direction. The men in the car looked torn.

"Eh bhaiya, what are you talking about? It's straight ahead," I told the auto driver, feeling as if my honor had been questioned. The men in the car looked even more hapless. They rolled up their window, nodded politely. They went in the direction I'd indicated, but I can't take too much credit for that since it was a one-way street.

And that's how I became one of those people the tourists warn you about. See, these cocktail party conversations about the holler always begin with one person saying to another,

"I love how Indians are so helpful and communal, they'll take so much time just to give you directions," and with alcohol and time devolve into,

"Why the hell do those bozos give you directions when they have no clue where you're going??" Friends, for a long time, I could not answer this question. I too wondered. Why couldn't they just say 'I don't know' if they truly didn't know? Surely that would be easier?

Consider the epic tale of a girl I recently met. Along with several girlfriends, she had gone up to Manali for a vacation. Now she'd read somewhere (a guidebook, a blog, a signpost) that Manali is home to an amazing bakery known as "The Chocolate Log." She was determined to visit the Chocolate Log. For nearly two hours she and her friends trooped through the hill station's beautiful streets, lungs burning from the thin air, growing steadily more dejected. Every time she queried a local as to the whereabouts of the Chocolate Log, which, like a rainbow, seemed to recede the closer she came to it, the local would enthusiastically point and give her directions. "Straight ahead," he'd say, or "Take a right at the golchakar where all the rickshaws are."

At last, she found herself in an Internet cafe. She Googled the Chocolate Log and called their proprietor.

"Where are you located? I've walked all over Manali!" She exclaimed.

"Manali?" said the proprietor, bewildered, "Why are you in Manali? We're located in ____." Yes. The Chocolate Log was not even in the same state.

People like us, who give directions when we are not entirely sure where you are going, deserve at least a smidge of sympathy. See, the thing is, we're not sure where you want to go, but we are sure that you want to get there. And in a country with no maps and few street signs, where the roads change daily and are often blocked off, sometimes a hunch is all you have to go on.