The Maze

Got up in the morning and glanced outside - it was 7:30 and it was quite dark... There were dark clouds looming and I did not have to be a weather forecaster to know that it was going to rain today!

I used to walk down the street but today that would not have been such a good idea. So I decided to take the alternate route that I had always avoided - the Skyway

Skyways are interconnecting covered bridges that connect first floors of different buildings in Downtown and form a network similar to a network of roads through which one could walk from one building to another. The skyway is centrally airconditioned/heated as the case may be and therefore is technically weather-proof...

I do not think many cities around the world have skyways - for one no city in India has it. Reason: they don't need one at all...

Necessity is the mother of Invention. In winters, temperatures drop to -30 degree centigrade and sometimes exposure to upto 7 minutes can lead to frostbite... This forced the people in this state to come up with this innovative idea of connecting nearly the entire downtown with skyways, so that people could come to work without standing in the cold for too long!

The reason I avoided it is that skyways are extremely complex - they zig-zag a lot, go right through shops, buildings corridors and the people relatively new to the skyway can get highly dis-oriented in it. For example: My office is dead straight from my house by road but by the skyway I have to take nearly take 15 turns and go through 8 - 10 buildings before I reach work....

Whether I like it or not, this is going to be my road in winters - so I better figure it out fast, else I may end up going around in circles in this maze!!