Travel Diary

Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu!!

After a lovely holiday trip to mysore, myself, Ganesh and Rishi were returning to Bangalore in our car. The journey was very pleasant, slicing through the cool winds on a relatively traffic less mysore-bangalore road. As we were getting closer to the Bangalore city, suddenly Ganesh got a wonderful idea to reach back to our home at JP Nagar through a new bypass road to Hosur road and hit some meenakshi temple very near to Bannegata road. All our advice that when short on time, one must follow the shortest known route, even if it happens to be the longest route, fell on deaf ears and finally Ganesh had his way. So we left the highway and reached our last known own position and from there went straight inside a road which was still under construction.

And then the roller coaster ride began. We found ourselves in the middle of a dirt road under construction. We drove for a few meters and met a pedestrian and asked for direction. Ganesh suddenly realized that he was the Deve Gowda among us and rolled out his excellent kannada skills. All we could make out was just one word "chesthu" which he used frequently. Then the pedestrian gave us his direction " Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu". Armed with this invaluable piece of direction, we set out straight (since he had said straight leku) but could not find any road on our left to do the "left beku"!!

So we asked one more guy. The answer was same . " Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu"!! But only that he showed the exactly opposite direction of what the previous guy had told. So the path finders (me and rishi) decided that the first guy looked more educated and hence decided to follow his advice and took a left turn ( "left beku") and drove through what it seemed as Greenfield road. And every few hundred metres Ganesh would give out his Gowda build up and ask in his pure kannada chesthu chesthu and the only direction we got was " Straight Leku, Left Beku, man roadu, " Straight Leku, Left Beku, man roadu, " Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu". I said to Ganesh " Dae…I can hear the word Beku three times….so ….iva ellaram namma moonu perayum "neenga straight a poi left thirumbina …..you are a Beku"…nu solra da"!!

Finally one guy spoke hindi and gave us the most valuable advice. He showed us a tipper going in front and told us to follow it as it will take us to hosur road. We geared up for the chase and drove through mud and dirt to catch up with the tipper. The tipper driver saw a car following him and drove even faster. But finally we prevailed and reached the tipper and kept following him until he stopped to ask about us. We said we are following him to reach the hosur road for which he replied that he was going to the river bed to fetch construction sand!!! And then we realized that we were actually near a stream bed!! So we asked him for directions. Yet again the same reply.. " Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu"

I was cursing myself that "Ada paavigala…ippadi akku nimisha akku nimisha solli solliye one hour ayiduthu……innum hosur road kidaikala engaluku" . But finally we got out of that jungle (that time it did seem so) at 10pm to Bomanhalli, much to our relief. Thanks to ganesh, he took us to a good restaurant where we had sumptuous dinner and I hogged one Poli also. All is well that ends well. But I would never forget this line " Straight Leku, Left Beku, Akku nimisha, hosur roadu" ever in my life!!