How to say 'GPO'A lesson in 'Inglish' (Indian English)

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

The activity of Lucknow's streets slowly dwindles as the shops thin out and the produce-laden carts become fewer and farther between. I begin to suspect I have gone astray. I know I have when I come to and cross the Haidar Canal, a thin line trickling across my map, way off the path I had intended to beat. Women stand knee-deep in the scummy water, soaking sheets and thrashing them clean on the banks, leaving the concrete marbled with trails of soap suds. Higher up on the banks, sheets and saris are stretched out alongside shirts and trousers, baking dry in the sun.

Two rickshaw men stand idle at the side of the road. They watch me approach, exchanging smiles and whispers between themselves like shy schoolgirls. I generally don't like to travel by rickshaw unless I have to; but I have walked a long way, can't face the prospect of turning round, walking back, perhaps getting lost again.

"General Post Office?" I ask the first rickshaw man, enunciating the words as clearly as I can. The GPO, in the heart of the Hazratganj area, is about the only real landmark in central Lucknow, a tall clumsy building set in large grounds, with a statue of Gandhi outside. My guesthouse is only a stone's throw away. For all my care, however, the rickshaw man doesn't understand me. He gives me a blank stare, a forlorn shake of the head. I try the second one. "General Post Office? On Vidhan Sabha Marg?" The same blank look. He shows me his tumbledown, betel-stained teeth, a hopeless, helpless grimace.

"Where you are wanting to go?" The proprietor of a nearby shop has come out and over to us, intrigued, perhaps, by the spectacle. Lucknow is far off the tourist trail, and a white face is a rarity, meaning English isn't widely understood. "I am speaking very good English," the shopkeeper boasts at once. He is wearing simple homespun clothes, the material bulging out in front, a fleshy advertisement of his prosperity. "You are coming from which country?"

I tell him. I tell him where I want to go. It is as exotic and unfamiliar to his ears as the rickshaw men's. In desperation, I show him my map, jab a finger at the icon of the GPO in the centre. "The General Post Office," I say again. "On Vidhan Sabha Marg."

He takes the map from me and scrutinizes it, asking me to show him again where I want to go. His face becomes a mess of lines as he tries to make sense of it. Finally, his confusion dissolves. "Ah," he says. "Jippy-oh you are wanting?"

A string of cliches spring to mind to describe how I feel: a complete and utter idiot; every inch a fool; like kicking myself. Why hadn't I simply called it that in the first place? I have grown so used to speaking slowly, simply, uncontracting my natural contractions in order to be understood, that I am now doing it without thinking and going to extremes. "Yes," I admit, "I want to go to the GPO."

He hands me back my map, gives the rickshaw man instructions as to where to take me: "Jippy-oh, jippy-oh." The rickshaw man has already got it.