When following pretty young girls can be good

Even in the small town where I grew up, I never liked to be in the middle of crowds.  It was the dislike for the crowds, on top of the agnosticism then,  that kept me away from the local temple where the annual celebrations brought the world's population--well, it seemed that way to me!

In the US, after living in small cities except during five of the nearly twenty-five years there, the only reason I mix in with crowds is when I am a tourist.

Which is how I ended up at the busy intersection across from the T-Nagar bus terminus in Chennai.

I had gone for a walk from home, and it seemed like with every step that I was taking, there were a hundred people coming from nowhere.

By the time I reached the insanely crowded and commercial Usman Road, I had to dodge my way through narrow gaps that I needed to aim for among the people.

These are the kind of crowds that some of the students in my classes simply cannot even imagine--after all, they come from towns with populations that are in the hundreds, not even in the thousands.

When I reached the bus terminus, I wanted to cross the road.

Now, I was stuck.  I do not have the street smarts to simultaneously watch for traffic that could come from any direction at any given time, and to make sure that I would not step anything that I would not want to.

I spotted three young girls--perhaps in their late teens--who were casually walking as if there were no crowds nor traffic.  And giggling away!  It seemed like they would cross the street where I wanted to. I tagged along.

They stepped on to the road when I would not have dared to--right in front of two autorickshaws.  I followed two steps behind, worried that the auto would dodge the girls and knock me.

The whole thing, now as I replay it in my mind, could be straight from a Road Runner cartoon, or from a Tom and Jerry chase.  The girls didn't even pause to consider the monstrous transit bus that was coming our way, similar to how the roadrunner wouldn't even care for the contraptions that Wile E Coyote would set up along the road.

I had found my leaders and I faithfully followed them.  The monster bus came nowhere close to me!

After reaching the other side, I quickly overtook them and kept walking.  Soon I was stuck behind a wall of humanity that wasn't moving.

I then spotted the girls once again ahead of me.  How could that have been possible?