Uncle Ken and the Zigzag Way by Ruskin Bond

Uncle Ken always maintained that the best way to succeed in life was to zigzag. 'If you keep going off in new directions', he declared, 'you'll meet with more opportunities!' Well opportunities certainly came Uncle Ken's way, but he was not a success in that sense that Dale Carnegie would have defined a successful man...

In a long life to 'muddling through' with the help of the family, Uncle Ken's many projects had included a chicken farm and a mineral water bottling project. For this latter enterprise, he had bought up a thousand old soda water bottles and filled them with sulphur water from the springs five miles from Dehra. It was good stuff, taken in small quantities. But drunk a bottle at a time, it proved corrosive-'sulphur and brimstone', as one irate customer described it- and angry buyers demonstrated in front of the house, throwing empty bottles over the wall into Grandmother's garden. Grandmother was furious - more with Uncle Ken than with the demonstrations- and made him give everyone's money back. 

'You have to be healthy and strong to take sulphur water', he explained later. ' I thought it was meant to "make" you healthy and strong', I said. Grandfather remarked that it did not compare with plain soda water, which he took with his whisky. 'Why don't you just bottle soda water?' he said. ' There's a much bigger demand for it.' But Uncle Ken believed that he had to be original in all things. 'The secret of success is to zigzag', he said. ' You certainly zigzagged round the garden when your customers were throwing their bottles back at you,' said Grandmother. Uncle Ken also invented the zigzag walk.' The only way you could get to know a place well, he said, was to walk in a truly haphazard way. To make a zigzag walk, you take the first turning to the left, the first to the right, then the first to the left again and so on. It can be quite fascinating--- provided you are in no hurry to reach your destination. 

The trouble was, Uncle Ken used this zigzag method even when he had an appointment or a train to catch.

PART 2 WILL COME SOON...