Every turn you take is a game of chance. You just may see the light of day or you may end up in a freshly dug out ditch full of potato-cracker wrappers. Sometimes, you will face a deranged, money hungry elephant pointing its snot-dripping snout at you. These are Dhaka roads. Every turn is an exercise in blood pressure elevation.

We complain, without benefit, of this network of connectivity that often leaves us completely and utterly disconnected. The roads are so bad, relatives living in distant areas are now considered mutually disowned. Every time we remember these once close relatives, the brain softly hums 'you're someone that I used to know'.

Yet, we have to travel, sometimes. Many areas are divided into blocks. Other areas are divided into numbers. And yet others are hyphenated with a combination of number, alphabets and hieroglyphics. Lalmatia doesn't follow the alphabet even though the blocks are supposedly arranged in sequence. Block A is everywhere and B is almost nowhere to be found. Blocks E and F are vast but G stays hidden under a tree. Cut that lone tree and Block G is gone. To confound matters even more, some of these blocks are referred to by names of some men long past like Zakir Hossain Road. It is also a block but no one is sure which it is. 

Dhanmondi loves to have old road numbers and new road numbers coexisting at the same point of time. Uttara is so massive and divided, last I checked, people needed VISAs for multiple entry. I have relatives living there I have not seen for years. I have friends living in Thailand and Malaysia I have met twice last year. At least GPS manages to pinpoint most of the roads although several times I have been shown a solid wall to be the mouth of an open road on the tiny screen. Don't follow GPS unless you want to have one of those Wiley Coyote moments where your walk into a wall with a picture of a road on it.

And then there is Old Town, the one part of Dhaka that is so full of alleys that even locals sometimes get lost. GPS is lost there. Alleys lead to more alleys that lead back to an alley you were lost in twenty minutes ago. I have been lost there many times. Each time I came out of the area, I felt like Tom Hanks in Cast Away silently stroking my beard that didn't exist before I entered the area. 

We voice our complaints on Facebook often, every day. The mayors have paid the same amount of attention that a cat pays to its owner.  Battles are fought online and keyboards have been destroyed in vain. The roads are a chaotic mess to remain for eternity as we cycle through the first four stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining and depression. Time to give in to the final stage and accept some acceptance. You can't escape.

I found it often helps to track the movement of people where you need to be. Facebook has several groups and pages that offer relevant information. Traffic Alert has excellent moderation so people mostly post traffic updates instead of desperately seeking for a solution to a cat bite. Although you will be treated to the occasional BMW/Mercedes badge on steering wheel when all you really want to see is the traffic ahead. GO-Traffic is an app that shows you the road conditions of Bangladesh based on info sent by users most of whom are situated in those areas. Both of these and other similar apps rely on users' interaction to evaluate and present data. It is a good thing people are always angry about the traffic because anger is something we love to share and give away. The bad thing is, most roads always seem to be clogged up.

To avoid clogged up roads, plan ahead for multiple exists. You look far, far into the road ahead and if you see traffic, you make a turn and use roads less travelled. You will soon find out less travelled roads. Eventually you will realise it is a futile exercise. You are a mouse in a maze with no cheese in sight. You really cannot escape, unless you walk. But why walk when gas is cheap and chauffeurs are a dime a dozen?