Hyderabad Nawab and other stories

I am going to die. I am a “How things work?” coordinator for Shaastra09. Right now, I am supposed to be setting questions. My co-coord is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be writing an article for “The Fourth Estate”. The Editor is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be setting some quiz questions for the incoming batch of freshers of my hostel. The Lit-Sec is going to kill me. Right now, I am supposed to be reading about ICA Technique. My Prof is going to kill me.

As some of you may know, I spent the last 7 weeks at Hyderabad for my intern. I am proud to say that I managed to gain enormous amount of knowledge and the foremost among them is that Loperamide and Digene are not Lays Chips. Don't pop in more than one. 4 days!! I greeted it like a long lost friend when it finally came. *I got shit-scared* :).Now those of you into whom I have filled a gross image, I apologize. But man, why the heck do they make Digene so tasty? It comes in vanilla, strawberry, mixed fruit flavour and what not. Those guys at R&D need to do some more market research.

The second most important thing I learnt was that it is definitely and by definitely, I mean D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y not a good idea to snicker when a huge gorilla in front of you in the bus is trying to tell his wife that he would likely to clean the toilet tomorrow over the phone. Well, for those who are not familiar with Telugu, there is a huge innuendo here. Find out. I wonder how the telugu version of “Tomorrow” is going to sound.

Hyderabad, for all things was a new experience. One thing I will tell you. Hyderabad is crazy. There are many crazy things I find around. Here are some five I can think of from the top of my mind.

• “Which Victoria Secret's bra are you?” quiz on Facebook.

• Joker. Pennywise is not crazy. He is just plain creepy.

• Fans of Twilight.

• Joan Baez' song “Diamonds and Rust” which stunningly reveals that Bob Dylan is an alien who is located somewhere between the earth and Alpha- Centauri. How do you make sense of “I heard your voice a couple of light-years ago.”?

• The poisonous nature of Dihydrogen monoxide, which is responsible for at the least 90% of all the diseases in the world.

IMHO, Hyderabad measures upto this level of craziness at the least.

For example, if I take the path-integral formulation of the routes of buses operating between ECIL-X road and Secunderabad, I will find that it is the same. I can draw a nice and cozy graph but No-Enthu-Da. Till I get enthu, you can be happy with this which has been directly lifted from Abstruse Goose.

Let me explain, to make the above point clearer. ECIL-X road is a crossroad from where my place was quite close. Now in any city in India(I have been to eleven cities and stayed for more than two months in six), between any two points, there will be many buses with the same bus number. Between ECIL and Secunderabad, there are five buses which have the same route, same starting and ending points and completely different bus numbers(16A, 17H, 250 etc.). Now if that is not enough, you stand at ECIL-X road and look at all the arms of a signpost installed there. On all the arms, it says Secunderabad. The funny thing is, it is actually true!! You can go in any direction and reach Secunderabad via totally different localities. All roads lead to Rome Secunderabad.

People drive like crazy here. Not the usual Bangalore craziness but life-threatening running-over-you craziness. Seriously. Whenever I tried to cross the road, I would freeze in the middle of the road, a tightness in chest and throat, my legs suddenly feel like paper and flashes of my whole life pass right in front of my eyes. I even remembered the name of the guy who used to sit next to me in 3^rd Standard when I was studying in Gujarat.

Digressing a bit(I have no clue why), I was trying to invent new mokkais for Mokkai Club during my intern when I a double-entendre flashed through my mind. “This Vacuum Cleaner sucks”. I laughed my head off when I thought of this. Now the more I look at it, the less funny it seems.

Another incident which still quells up my anger happened to me on the 2^nd day of my stay at Secunderabad. Those who are familiar with this place may know that Secunderabad has no malls. Being a n00b to this place, I had no idea about this. There is a McDonalds restaurant near my place. I asked the waiter, “Machan, are there any malls near-by?” “Of course, saar. Secunderabad very much developed. Go straight for 3 kms. You will find a nice mall.” I walk for 3kms in the sun, huffing and puffing and finally what do I find? A bloody Reliance Fresh mart!!

One of the best things that happened to me in Hyderabad was the friendship of the company's car driver. Man!! Was he amazing!! He was 50 years old, a graduate from Osmania with a son about my age and a daughter about 3 years younger. He was total timepass!! We kept on talking and talking and talking. Whew!! He had stud-English and I asked him, why he was working as a driver. His reply, “Well, I used to drive car for the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. He made me continue my education and I became a graduate through Distance-Education Programme. Later when the government fell, the new Congress Government sacked me from the job”. And then he gave me a wierd smile and I have no clue now whether he was serious or joking. Once he caught me staring at a girl and slapped my back and said, “Way to go, Sir!!”

I met another guy, Yadunandan, who had just joined the company from Symbiosis, Pune. We had a long, fruitful conversation on everything under the sun. It was nice to converse with a fellow who is vehemently opposed to whatever you have to say. :) I agree with him on one thing though. The whole new breed of Engineers, MBAs etc which includes both of us are bloody self-centred bastards.

One fine evening, a guy comes to the guest house, the caretaker David had gone out to buy some vegetables and thinks that I am the caretaker and starts blasting me because I was wearing an old almost-torn baniyan. I think he was the General Manager of the company.

Almost every weekend, I visited my sister's place which was about 35kms away at the other end of the city. The roads in Hyderabad are bloody awesome. In fact there are no signals between Secunderabad and Banjara Hills, a distance of nearly 12 kms. One thing I love about Hyderabad are the roads. Extremely well maintained. Anyway, every weekend I put my sister to a torturous regime of cooking food for my bottomless pit. Bechaari....

One weekend like this, I went to Hyderabad Central. It was worse than a flea market. I saw one lady buying two huge baskets of clothes!! Are there seriously junta so rich? My sister bought me a nice T-Shirt , took me to a nice restaurant and basically pampered me which may explain the 3 kgs which I have put on during this summer. If you remember it was 12kgs last summer. :)

Every weekend, I watched a movie. Transformers and HP6 sucked, but IMAX made it bearable. IceAge3 is Gawd, Angels and Demons was Masala Max, Monsters V/s Aliens was cute and I slept through most of New York. 3D-FX was a new experience and was AWESOME!!

I read nearly 30 books in 6 weeks. I finished with great relish the whole of Asimov's “Foundation” and “Robot” series of books, polished of 3 Jeffery Archer novels, 2 books of the Bourne series, fell asleep while reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", compared the movie and book versions of Mario Puzo's magnum opus, crashed off while reading “The Sicilian” by the same author, loved JD Salinger's “Catcher in the Rye”, read Jerome K Jerome's “Three Men in a Boat” again, waded through Vikram Chandra's “Sacred Games” and , highfunda-ed Shashi Tharoor's “The Great Indian Novel”, and finally gave up in between while reading “God of Small Things” by Arundathi Roy.

Now, I am back at the institute, the semester has already started, promising to be hectic. How many photos have I taken in Hyderabad after pleading with mom for an hour to lend me the camera? One, of the clock in the guest house. My mom has promised me that she will never lend me her camera or iPod again.

Quotable Quotes:

Randy Pausch's childhood dream was to work at Disney Land. My childhood dream is to have infinite amounts of French Fries to feed on. But what tops it all is Joseph Joseph Che-gkgjghjd-ara Che Guevara's (aka Jojo aka Evil Muggoo) childhood dream. To quote him,

“Machan I realized my first childhood dream this summer daw. I saw the source code for an Operating System at the most basic level.”

I rest my case. He is the biggest nerd that ever lived on earth.