Want directions??

India has been a place of spirituality for many westerners. They travel to this land to find peace and direction in their lives. Whether they find peace or not is secondary, but directions they will find many! For a traveller who has roamed around the sub continent would tell, you would seldom lose your way, as your never far away from a living, air breathing GPS.
We Indians have unlimited enthusiasm for giving directions. All we need is for a place name and a question to fall into our ears, and we will become cartographers the next instant. The beauty of our directions is that we do not tell the travellers just the route, but also the places he will see while taking that route, sign boards, buildings, circles and traffic signals. We overload the traveller already heavy backpack with so much info that he is almost hypnotised to take the orders. But do we stop there? No, we won’t. We might be Indians but we are Humans before that, so curiosity does take over us and in the myriad of directions we give, we manage to drop a question or two on where the traveller is coming from or where he is heading next. Sometimes when we our enthusiasm sky rockets we also tend to be city guides or travel agents, suggesting places for the wanderers next step.
Personally i feel a sense of pride in this quality. We don’t want people to lose ways and spend their travel in gyrating alleys and by lanes! From whatever little of India I have seen, language is never a barrier. The directions, though mostly vocal, are adorned with hand movements, gestures and sometimes even sounds. As I said before we are never far from a helping hand.
The thought does cross my mind, where I feel whether this quality is Indian or is it Human? Is it the same in the sign-board filled streets of the “developed” west? For now let it be Indian, once I travel the world I will tell you whether it is an intrinsic human quality or not!