Of mains and crosses

Bangalore is city of mains and crosses - at least the older parts of the city are. I remember reading a similar description about Malleswaram in one of the hand-outs that my fac-ad gave me during our first meeting. The mains and crosses are perpendicular to each other and their intersections are called 'circles' (local slang for the intersection junction) . I was always perplxed at seeing some of the mains being smaller roads than the crosses !

Today morning I was reminded of this puzzle that is Bangalore. I had to attend a function at 8:30pm in Rajaji Nagar. I was given a postal address - complete with a door no., block, main and cross numbers. One would have thought this would be sufficient information to locate the place. Having spent twelve years in Bangalore now, I should have known better.

I was driving around, in vain , through various narrow lanes marked with yellow stone boards having the main numbers. As the numbers increased, I thought I was in the right direction and then suddenly the numbers seemed to be reset to 1 !
Asking for directions at a couple of places resulted in nebulous responses - you know should-be -somewhere-there kind of general hand-waving.
I got a straight-in-the-face response at the third place I asked.It was a STD booth and the owner had just then opened the shop. He replied in a mix of fluent Kannada and English that just asking for a main and a cross is no good here. We have been living here for the past 40-50 years and still we don't know all the mains and crosses. It is best to have an associated landmark and ask for directions. The owner looked too young too have stayed 40-50 years anywere let alone Rajaji Nagar - I guess the we included the old man, probably his father, sitting in his shop.

But as I drove on I realized that this was a fundamental truth of this city. My lesson for the day - right there. I had a landmark alright, but it was very close to being absolutely useless.
A Ganapath temple. It was as bad as looking for a Manjunath in Bangalore (or Attilla in Budapest :-) - every street had a Ganesha temple.
I felt like the leader of the forty theives in the Ali Baaba tale - hoping to find a house with a cross mark on the door and on reaching the town, finding out that every house had the same mark !

Luckily I had a phone number which was thankfully answered and I got some directions over phone. I was even more lucky to actually make it to the place. As you may have guessed I did'nt exactly follow the directions as given to me - I had got them a little wrong. But alls well that ends well.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear couple of other guests describe their 'we-were-lost' stories - especially to know that they were 'lost' in spite of having spent 30+ years in the city !

That was when the 'landmark' truth finally dawned on me.