Departure Hyderabad... Destination Anywhere

It's almost 2 months since I moved out of Hyderabad and I finally have the urge to write about my life there.... for 2 and a half years , we've had a 'love and hate' relationship going on, but as I made preparations to leave the place ,I realised that I was going to miss the place!

It started of on a bad note.... I had roommates who believed that the world ran on the rules of 'saans bi kabhi bahoo theee' and their only passtime was sharing bad experiences about ex's and indulging in never ending beauty rituals... and i never saw them looking any prettier...!!!

I was living in a place called 'Masab Tank'... a place full of a lot of "local" hyderabadis who gave me the creeps... It was a conservative-muslim dominated area with women all the time in burkhas, that i started feeling exposed in my regular clothes....

I had great company at work, but no one to hang out with - for the first time in my life, I understood what being Lonely was.

I would have probably had tons of friends if i had accepted all the 'Do you wanna be my friend' offers that I got...Unbelieveable stuff!!! The scariest was when a negro-ish guy followed me up my flat stairs and when i thought he was goign to rob me, pushed a chit with his phone number on to my hand... During my most bravest, I had a 10 minute conversation advising the guy that one should not "make" friends this way!
And yes ... it is a very women unfriendly city... with men who stare so hard that their eyeballs might pop up of and with crazy jerks who get sadistic plesure out of spitting paan on women...


All I wanted to do was run from the city... but my stubborn half wasn't going to let the city run me out..

I moved houses...my next apartment was a gift from heaven - spacious , 3 bedroom with 3 bathrooms, balconies all around the house and in a posh locality for a killer rent! Along came a cool roommate with whom Ive had some of the longest conversations , the most vicious bitching sessions , tons of friends seasons, dominoes pizzas and garlic bread..

For the first time in life, becoming friends was not something that just "happened" ... For the first time , my closest friends weren't from my peer group... For the first time , coffee invitations were for just having coffee.... For the first time, my bestest friend was me.... and for the fist time i learnt to spend time with myself....

Snapshots ill cherish....

-Running till i lost sense of everything

-Working like crazy for the first one year... the best of me showed up only when the rest of office had left.

-Crying over books and discussing them for the better half of my work day

-laughing like a kid over nicknamed collegues and their eccentricities and concocted situations...

-trying new ways of optimal cooking

-lunching at cafe odyssey, hitting pubs on ladies nights , nail painting at imax , coffees at coffee day , and ofcourse eat street on a working day

-endless window shopping at shoppers stop , hyderabad central and shilparamam

-riding a fiero on the necklace road and wind 125 on kbr.... i touched 80 once :D :D.. riding bullets ( as the pinnion rider)

-driving along the necklace road late in the night, and watching the dark water garlanded by a string of light..

-just sitting by the lake and watching the water with my closest...

-climbing the Golconda and transcending time with the sound and light show... i've sat through the show for around 6 times in 2 years!

-watching Indian Ocean perform on secret lake.... if ever there was a place destined to be a stage...

-Sunday evening Chai at the park by the airport

-getting mehndi at vengal rao ark on sundays

- working with the lesser privileged kids ... the look of happiness that your presence brings to them .... it made me so ashamed that an act out of selfishness could mean so much to some one else...

-Salsa classes at oracle... and ofcourse dancing till the dj dropped at every party, every dance floor

-lounging on my balcony and sighing over the bright red gulmohars

-Just the sight of neon lights, huge hoardings and lit showrooms as i came home from a long day of work used to be filling..

It was a life of independence, of total abondonment of sane thoughts, of metomorphised beliefs, of passion and thorough coldness, of hapiness , of sadness... kind of a liberated existence....

Cycling along Clyde....

I had heard so much about Scotland and it's highlands and I was adamant about seeing it... Despite being time constrained, maam's managed to figure something out and we were on our way on Friday to Glasgow...... The early morning Scotland landscape was beautiful... Undulating hillocks, lush green meadows , white fleeced sheep, brooding forests , a dark blue sky lit by a hidden sun...... I was tired of "sight seeing"... And desperately wanted to see the Scottish highlands.. I had spent a good part of the "yesterday" looking up Clyde valley and firth of Clyde and was sure they would hold a path to the highland beauty......

Half an hour of figuring out hostels, a bargain for a 1 pound shower, an European breakfast, a long queue at the info center, a handful of maps and an address to a bike rental, misguided directions, almost an hour of searching, almost a decision to give up on a cycling adventure and atlast a 15 pound deal on 2 bikes...We were good to go.... The guys at the rental marked a trail which we started on... But it was too much by the city, and quite disinteresting when we hit on the bicycle trail to Loch Lomond.... Ofcourse, 15 miles seemed daunting , but I was grabbing any chance I got to get out of the city... We cycled along the firth canal to rolling greens and then to Dumbarton - a length of 11 miles......

A stop at Dumbarton for lunch , with every single part of my body screaming out ... Realization struck... Cycling another 4 miles was going to be difficult plus we needed to return the cycles..... A disappointed us returned back to Glasgow by train.... Not ready to give up, I dragged my friend to the busstop to enquire on buses to lomond.... The girl informed us that the last bus to the loch was leaving... A crazy impulse, 2 tickets , an unhelpful driver and a nail biting ride not knowing where we are going to get off or how we are going to get back, a guiding angel in the form of an old lady who lived by the lake, stop at Luss, a 5 minute walk....... And the beautiful Loch Lomond stretched out in front of us....

















a quote from a friend who recently visited scotland "just saw loch ness.. now i am ready to die!!!"