The Desert Prince

Im one of those people who have an intuition rather than a sense of direction. which is why going from point A to point B, there is no gaurantee that I will get there by the most obvious route. This is all a round about way of saying Im hopeless at finding my way around but I insist on adding that I generally dont mind getting lost especially if Im in a new place. This theme is siginificant because in the last 11 months I have been in four different cities spanning both hemispheres (thats a whole another blog). After this circuitous journey I have arrived at a small town called Tempe located in Arizona. Getting lost in Tempe is not the same as getting lost elsewhere because firstly, it takes a special kind of stupidity (the kind I happen to possess) to get lost, simply because of the ridiculous size of this "town". There are farmhouses in Delhi bigger than this. The second reason is that if you are lost enough you may never see home again ... this is the Arizona Desert. They have to make there thermometers longer for this place in case they run out. to ge to the point, I recently accomplished this feat ... I got lost in Tempe (or out of Tempe as we will see). A short account of my heroic journey away from and back home follows ... So my department is located in "downtown" (yeah right) Tempe. To get from there to my apartment is a task that a chronic amnesiac suffering from dyslexia can accomplish without breaking a sweat ... but I insist on accomplishing greater things. I set out from my department having a general intuition about where to go for my house ... and promptly take the wrong turn. After cycling (oh yeah ... I was on a bike thank god otherwise it was over for this blog) 5 minutes I end up on some main road which I thought was the correct one because all main roads here are dusty and flanked by featureless box hut type buildings which say things like "Nuevo Cooling Palms Motel" and you cant tell one main road from another (or I cant) ... and another thing..they all have cars going really fast in both directions. anyway... So Im cycling down this road and after about 15 minutes I start to wonder (it takes about 10 minutes total to get to my apartment). I have no option but to keep cycling because there is no where to turn and going back is not gonna help. So I go a little further but now the landscape is more unrecognizable. The road is wider, right up ahead is some kind of highway with cars going even faster and the little hut buildings have disappeared to be replaced by large storage godown silose kind of strucutres. There is a little panic at the pit of my gut but nothing a strong man like me cant handle. With great deliberation ... I turn back ... and make a mental note that Im lost and therefore likely to be out for a while and if I see a store or gas station up ahead I will buy a drink because I can now distinctly feel the heat (some 110 F ). The heat ... its a simple four letter word but I cannot express in these Arial font words how intense and blazing it is in Arizona. It knocks the living sense out of you. So... in this heat ... I cycle in the direction from which I just came and knowing that this is no help I take the first turn into some area that looks "residential like" so at least I will have the illusion being somewhere "close to home". So far ... Im lost ... but this is where people who are close to being normal ... STOP AND ASK SOMEONE ... but not me ... I start taking turns at random ... every intersection I come to I take the "most likely" turn. After about twenty minutes of this Im utterly and completely lost and miraculously at some completely different, unknown main road. Now, Im in the kind of place about which I cant even say "I think I've been here before". Im panicking ... so I cycle faster and faster, the sun beating down on me and the hot, burning wind blowing into my face. There is a bus stop and I (now Im in complete automatic mode) stop and ask them. "Me no no Aungle" ... he doesnt speak English....damn him. I ask the other woman ... she's like "you wanna to go to Tempe or you wanna go to Mesa" ... there is a sinking feeling in my stomach. You see ... Mesa is a whole another town ... which meant I was now lost "at another level". The woman says "coz when you cross over from dis road yer in Mesa" ... there is silence. After idiotically gaping both ways down the road...I summon up the strength to say (with the smallest voice I've ever spoken with) "uhmm....so how far do you think Tempe is?" .... "bout 3 or 4 miles Id think". I think to myself..."Im dead". Im in a completely unknow place somewhere in Arizona miles away from home with just a cycle. Now, not having the apetite for any more experimenting I asked her for detailed directions much to her annoyance and start cycling once again. Now Im cycling no longer with the mad panic, my movements are more deliberate and planned. My temples are throbbing though, as the blood rushes to the head, Im panting, the heat is worse than ever... but I keep going and I keep going ... the strength was slowly leaving my legs and I was nearing dehydration and the heat of course would not relent. I stopped and rested and cycled again and again rested...after about an hour (or seemed like an hour) finally I got back to the university (exactly where Id started out from) ... got home by asking directions at every turn. Got home, threw on the AC, spent some two hours in the shower ... I just let the water run ... came out and wore the min possible clothing decency would allow and collapsed on the couch ... face red and head spinning. As the AC kicked in and I cooled down a bit I kind of thought of myself as Charleton Heston in the Ten Commandments ... as he lay totally spent and passed out near the well in the oasis. I dont need to mention that I now know the way to and from my lab as if I'd designed this town myself. But I have learnt it the hard way. But I do feel wiser now I must admit. The title of this blog btw... is inspired by a song that one of the local rock bands in Delhi sing ... but that song is called "Desert Princess" and needless to say has completely different implications.