Hyderabad Diaries

I’ve never needed any convincing on the advantages of e-ticketing for rail travel. The only reason that I hadn’t traveled using an e-ticket was that I did not have a printer handy at home, which meant an added effort of going to a net-cafe for the print out of the ticket.
But then in the current instance, I get invited to Hyderabad and I’m required to travel at very short notice, which meant absolutely no time was to be lost in making a decision.
A quick check on the railways site indicated the possibility of an RAC ticket. This also meant that it could soon become a Waiting List ticket if I did not act promptly.There was a serious risk that the time lost in reaching the railway station and joining the serpentine queue could almost deny me a chance to travel.
This is the context in which I sign up once again on the IRCTC website. My previous sign up had become invalid because my very valuable yahoo email-id had long been lost to phishers :(
It just felt so very nice, to get a ticket like that, clicking away at a few links, not needing to step out of home queuing up and sweating it out. And soon I was out getting a print of the ticket and there, I’m all ready to head to Hyderabad.

They have now introduced a Side Middle Berth between the traditional Side Upper Berth and the Side Lower Berths which neatly adds nine extra berths to a sleeper coach up from seventy two earlier to eighty one now. An ingenuous use of space for capacity utilisation!! I was much impressed.

On paper, both Hyderabad and Bangalore are comparable cities. Both are rapidly growing Indian metropolises, IT capitals, state capitals and south Indian cities with comparable size of populations. The similarity ends right there...
Bangalore is infinitely more cosmopolitan and in a sense more elitist. Hyderabad perfectly fits the description of a large overgrown Indian village. Unruly traffic, bad roads, people relieving themselves on the road in unacceptably large numbers.
My friend VG remarked in jest that Hyderabad wants to stay just the way it is, any attempts to modernize and transform it on the lines of Singapore will quickly see its political executive getting voted out of power. So he reasons, Hyderabad should have dirty pavements, potholed roads, chaotic mismanaged traffic and people relieving everywhere making it both an eye-sore and an olfactory challenge.
To my great disappointment, over the next few days I was to learn that is no such thing as pretty girls in Hyderabad either!!

My friend and his family were extremely hospitable. That in part offset my disappointment with the city.

If I had bothered to visit the Golkonda fort in my two previous visits, I would have got two extra marks in this year’s civil services mains!! (Golkonda Fort was one of the two-marker questions in the 2008 Civil Services Mains General Studies paper)
But during my earlier visits in 2003 and 2005, I was not an Aspirant and could care less about and old dilapidated fort. !!
On this visit however, the Golkonda fort was a priority. Forts, palaces, museums, tombs and the like fascinate me these days. I visualize myself living in the days when the forts and palaces were in their full functioning glory and imagining myself as the Sultan/Diwan/Nizam/Maharaja/Shehanshah gives me a weird vicarious sense of adventure and excitement.
The hour long sound and light show at the Golkonda fort was a bit too long for the lay visitor. In the first twenty minutes, people sat dazzled and enthralled by the multiple colours lighting up various parts of the towering fort as the booming voice of Amitabh Bachchan narrated the glory of the Qutub Shahis, their campaigns, conquests, romances and love life. The last twenty minutes were characterized by restless murmurs and catcalls as people's attention spans were breached by then. The golden rule always holds: keep it sweet and simple. The layman is just not interested in such intricate and tiring details complete with ghazals!

Arguably, the most neglected and ignored architectural symbols of any city, is the Charminar in Hyderabad. It serves more as a traffic island than as a respectable edifice erected to commemorate/celebrate any occurrence in history.
I was nevertheless thrilled and excited just being there. I could do without the maddening crowds, bumper to bumper traffic and blaring horns around me though. A visit to any place is not complete without a photo-op near its symbolic architectural structure, however unpleasant being physically present there actually gets.

One cannot do justice to the artifacts on display at the Salar Jung museum in a day, me thinks an enthusiast could take up to a week to fully appreciate the same. It’s a mind boggling collection and it’s bewildering to think that these are just the private collections of the Nawabs of Hyderabad. I can’t even imagine the fabulous wealth they must have enjoyed. As on my previous visit to the museum I had to rush through the last several display sections due to paucity of time.

Jowar, ragi, millets etc were various kinds of cereals that one became aware of as part of geography during school days. One had not seen these it or tasted it.
So I was pleasantly surprised to be offered jowar roti. So that was a first time.
I can’t possibly do enough justice to the brilliant culinary skills of my friend VG. I wonder why he chose to pursue engineering and management degrees. He is simply such an outstanding and marvelous cook and could easily have made his millions in Hyd as a celebrated chef considering the culinary traditions of the city.

A week passed by and before I realized it, it was time to head back to Bangalore.

Now the return tickets weren’t just available during the holiday season straddled between Christmas and New-year. Hence I booked two e-tickets, both of Waiting-List status hoping at least one would come through. Hours before the departure from Kacheguda, the WL status to my great relief gets converted to RAC.

Getting to Kacheguda railway station is a serious pain because of its distance from Hyderabad city. I did experience this pain during both my previous visits, but still thoughtlessly booked the train from Kacheguda yet again.

The train left KCG on time at 2115 and from 2130 to 2300 hrs I was engaged in a conversation with the young lady who sat facing me at the side lower berth. I think we talked a little too loud and a little too excitedly to win the disapproving looks of the conservative young couple and their noisy children who wanted either of us to shift to one of their confirmed berths situated somewhere randomly in the train. I wonder how they actually expected any of us to budge when we both were visibly having such a good time. Before we retired for the night she gave me a verbal assurance that she would apply for the civil services exam as soon as she reached home.

The Indian Railways is evidently not used to getting thank you mails.
I had e-mailed them regarding the cancellation of my other e-ticket. The online cancellation request was accepted but it took a while for them to credit my refund. Once the refund was received I sent them a thank you email, to which they replied that they had already refunded me and attached the details of the transaction and asked me to cross check with the bank once again! Some of the ways with the govt. organisations never change!!

Time to work again?

Back in Bangalore after a 20 day stint in Kannur, and I realise yet again that for some strange reason it is extremely difficult to do any serious study when I’m home! I believe this is true for most people; which is probably why a large chunk of people head to Delhi for civil services preparations year after year. More than the quality of coaching it is the ‘away from home factor’ and the complete freedom and ‘me- time’ that it gives which helps a great deal. A six month period of quiet contemplation and strategic planning (devoid of poky neighbours, well wishers and anxious parents worrying about their qualified and ‘unemployed’ neighbour/friend/daughter/son) should indeed help.

In these tumultuous times of worldwide financial misery, finding a job is not exactly an easy proposition. More importantly should I be working again so soon? Should I not be preparing for the interview? I jolly well know how it is going to be once I start working. 11 hours in the office and 3 hours on the road commuting! That would leave me hardly anytime to read the daily newspapers, forget doing any other serious reading with the interview in mind. Therefore, choosing to work in these few weeks has the risk of being under-prepared if and when the interview call comes.

So how about a part time job? Hmm…that indeed is worth considering :-)