Tuesday, April 11, 2006

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....

3 comments:

Meera said...

Lonliness is one thing.. solitude is another.. life hardest lessons are learnt when ur alone and they are probably the gifted moments u cherish forever. :))

Sriram said...

Seems like you ve had a total blast. Enjoy maadi. How is the life in Chennai now compared to your stay in Hyd?

Sriram said...

too busy to update??