Directions - WE

During school days, I am sure everyone had their favorite teacher/sir, their favorite subject, their favorite sport, favorite book etc and similarly also had their most hated teacher/sir, most hated subject, most hated sport, most hated book etc. Am I right ?

Since my childhood days, I loved Maths subject with all those formulas, algebra, geometry while hated Social Studies alot. That History, Civics, Geography and what not. Why should I know, what people did some 100 years back ? Why do I need to know about Government positions and their powers when I never get to use that knowledge in day to day life? Why should I study about some foriegn land, when I stay in Dharwad? I mean, why torture students with this boring subject, SST !

Since I always hated this subject, I was weak with Geographical directions. I never understood, which side is South, which side is West and what side is South and which is East. I use to get confused as, sometimes, they use to say, we stay in South side while some other times, they use to say, we stay in North side. I was like, make up one mind folks !!! (Btw, my schooling was in Vilas school located in Dharwad City, Karnataka)

Later on, I came to remember & know clearly one thing. Upside is always North as this was the only direction which use to be given in most of the maps. Based on North as reference, other directions must be derived. So one thing was clear, North is UP, Jammu & Kashmir. So obviously, I came to know about South direction, which must be exactly opposite to North, i.e., down. This understanding was during late VIII standard or IX probably.

Now I started to realize why in my school few people use to say, we stay in North sometimes and other times in South. Any wild guesses??? The thing was, I never concentrated on the reference with which they use to tell. Actually, Dharwad is situated in North Karnataka, while Karnataka is situated in South India. LOL. I use to get so much confused, when people use to say, we stay in both these directions without understanding the reference in which they mention it.

Later on I analyzed myself and came to a conclusion on remembering East and West this way :-

I observed West-Bengal in the right side of the India map, thus concluding, right side is West and obviously left side must be East. I believed this theory literally till end of my engineering.

Then later, in some heated contradiction, I realized, West Bengal state is actually in Bloody EAST ! I was shattered inside realizing this fact. All these years, I believed West Bengal is in West & hence its name but it was not and that was some really hard truth for me to realize & digest that West Bengal is in East India.

Then from that time, I finally came to know that Right side is East with Bihar, Manipal, Assam, Sikkim etc while West is Left side including Gujurat, Rajasthan etc. Till last week, i use to remember these East and West directions as, opposite of West Bengal (right side) is West while opposite of West is East. Confused ?????

So last week, one my close one told a simple way to remember this East and West directions when we were arguing as in what directions does our earth rotate. East to West or West to East ? We were deriving the direction of earth rotation based on sun rise and sunset. On a tangential note, you won't believe that I got to know about sun rising and setting directions very recently. Oops !!!

The simple way to remember these west and east directions is with the word "WE". W is in the left side while E is in the right side so does West and East. From past 1 week, I am no more confused or won't take must time to tell which side is West and which side is East based on this simple word "WE". I can even quickly recognize, North-East, North-West, South-East & South-West direction as a bonus.

PS: BTW, Sun rises from East and Sets in West. Reverse of WE :)