On the way back home from the workplace or the other way round for that matter, the way forks into ways every minute or two. A considerable stretch of a straight road does occur only to find eventually another junction or diversion. The road is ridden upon regularly, everyday rather for life’s upkeep. I haven’t kept count of how many times and have become familiar. A normal ride up and down on the well-worn paths is interspersed though at times with a few exceptions. For no particular reason the ride’s course diverts towards alternative, less trodden paths. It’s a different sort of change of course, however, not occasioned by congestion or dust of the metropolitan city. What triggers it then every once in a while? Perhaps for a little bit of change or rather because of the whims of the subconscious mind, best left to psychoanalysis, it’s anybody’s guess and shall remain so. Thus even the familiar roads confuse. Or is it the case of the mind’s momentary lapse, a fluctuation leading to indecision and the poor and battered roads being held accountable.

Malcolm Gladwell in one of his bestsellers expounds the idea of ‘Don’t think but blink’ type of quick and split second decision making, arguing that by and large it is the mind’s quick decision making ability that keeps us going. It must be that blink moment diverting your path or rather has to be it, unless you want to be honked incessantly and jeered at in the middle of the road. Not too bothersome dilemmas these occasional back-home bifurcations and trifurcations, are they? They get you home anyway in all likelihood -- a minute, a half or an hour sooner or later. The hardest dilemmas lie within though while at home or workplace, the occasional navigational two mindedness in between them in comparison seeming nondescript. Robert Frost’s lone traveller could not take both the roads. Faced with uncharted territories ahead, we to the best of our abilities halfheartedly decide if a shot in the dark makes all the difference.

The third stanza verse ‘how way leads on to way’ of Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ holds partially truth having also had chances at rectifications and restarts after what had seemed like some implacable steps. Some roads have already been trodden upon though for good, bad or the mediocre and having come a long way, it might be impossible to get to the initial vantage point and start all over. Nevertheless, the Frostian dilemma has kept life going.