Lost in maze of parking lot

We love to believe that we of the old school are well-organised. We display those cupboards full of files of papers and bills from the beginning of our working life, all colour coded and alphabetised and arranged systematically.

So proud are we of our prowess that we forget that papers and files are not the only things that are colour coded and numbered and slotted these days. That's how, after a pleasant jaunt to one of the large malls that now dot our city, we suddenly found that we couldn't find our car. Like everyone else we'd followed the arrows and driven to the basement, parked in the first empty space and made our way up to the shopping floors.

Some hours later, our shopping list neatly ticked off, we got into the lift with a laden trolley to descend to the basement and load the car and go home. That's when we noticed that there were several parking levels with different names and colours and letters of the alphabet. What's all that about, we wondered, as we emerged from the lift and walked into this labyrinth of vehicles — and numbers and colours and boards saying Red A to N, Green 34 to 77, and so on.

We hadn't looked at numbers or letters or colours when we'd parked! We hadn't even realised that there were several parking levels! Now we rapidly went over in our minds how many floors we'd gone up when we'd got out of the car. Where should we go to look for our vehicle?

Sheepishly we moved from level to level looking for the one thing that we remembered from that mundane business of parking our car — the ramp and the staircase close by! But, of course, there were ramps at every level and staircases as well so that didn't help us get any clearer about the whereabouts of our car.

Doubts began to assail us. Would we find our car in one day? Could we get someone to announce on the PA system that it was missing? Was that the correct term? After all, it hadn't just upped and moved away because it got tired of waiting for us to finish our browsing!

Metal detectors

"There should be big signs to say that we should memorise our number and colour," we grumbled. But secretly I thought, would we have noticed and read those signs when we hadn't spotted the larger-than-life numbers that were all around?

Up and down we trudged. The young security guards got tired of seeing us pass three or four times through the metal detectors at every level and waved us away instead of checking us. There was no way that we could be a threat to them beyond outlasting their eight-or twelve-hour shift! At last, when it seemed that we'd been through every parking level and a few of the shopping levels as well, when we'd bickered and argued and were too exhausted to squabble any further, we decided to retrace our steps from the road itself.

"You wait here," I was told, but tired as I was, I refused to stay alone. Even if the car was found, would I be traced again in that maze?

Determinedly together for possibly one of the few times in recent years, we left the mall, our precious trolley still trundling along with us to the main road and then down to the first of many basement levels. We turned right — as we had in our car — and suddenly, there it was! A familiar registration plate. We'd found it!

Exhausted, relieved, we puttered home. Next time, we vowed, we could safely leave our shopping list behind, but we'd better carry coloured pencils and stickies to record and remember our parking slot!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.