The other day the weather was good, and we decided to walk after lunch instead of meeting in a café in the evening. I met Jigneshbhai and Swami just outside their apartment complex, and we decided to stroll along towards the park nearby.
A car slowed down next to us while we were walking. The man rolled down the window and asked Swami, “How do I get to Krishna Kuteera restaurant?”
It was a five-minute drive, and Swami gave him the directions. But after he drove away, Swami looked at us and asked, “Who asks people how to get somewhere these days?” I was also surprised that somebody actually stopped and asked us for directions to get somewhere.
“In the age of Google Maps and GPS, isn’t it irrelevant? I am not sure why this guy didn’t check his phone for directions?” Swami mused.
“Maybe his network was down,” I remarked.
“Or maybe his phone got lost. Or discharged,” Swami smiled.
“Or maybe the location didn’t turn up in Google Maps?” I gave another possibility. “Sometimes, even Google Maps can’t find a few places.”
“Come on, Krishna Kuteera is a popular eating place,” Swami disagreed. “Maybe there was something wrong with his eyes. He was older than us, maybe he didn’t carry his glasses..”
Jigneshbhai felt amused at our various hypotheses around why he asked us for directions. He looked at us with a smile. “Sometimes, people get lost and need to talk to someone,” he said.
Swami and I kept walking, taking steps in unison. But we weren’t sure if our wise friend was done with his talking.
“At least he knew where he wanted to go and only asked how to get there!” Jigneshbhai added, and we knew he was on to something. Both Swami and I looked at Jigneshbhai with eagerness.
“Most people don’t know where they want to go,” he started. “And even if Google Maps tell them that, they don’t know whether they should,” he added, leaving us scratching our heads.
Swami and I continued to talk in silence, trying to digest both our lunch and what Jigneshbhai had said. We reached the gate of the park and walked inside taking a seat.
Jigneshbhai followed us and sat on the bench next to us.
“The how-to questions are getting easier to answer. Now, we don’t need to ask anyone how to get somewhere,” he said and took a pause.
A street vendor carrying a can of tea and coffee approached us and Swami ordered three coffees for us. “The coffee here is good. It is better than our café or even Krishna Kuteera. We have to have it, especially in the weather today,” he said with a confident smile, handing us our cups.
Jigneshbhai continued from where he had stopped. “But the whether-to questions are getting tougher to answer,” he added.
“Like Swami knows, for sure, whether we should have this coffee here,” Jigneshbhai explained. “No Google Maps or AI can decide whether to have the coffee in this park,” he said.
Swami looked at me with evident pride as he took Jigneshbhai’s statement as a compliment.
Jigneshbhai smiled. “How to get there is easy now.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “Deciding whether to go… that’s the hard part.”
***
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