Memoirs from Hyderabad

After graduation from ‘B’ I joined Deloitte and so came the dreaded college to corporate transition in my life. This was accompanied with my movement from Bangalore to Hyderabad. Whatever anyone says about corporate life, for me smooth transition with a number of great friends was what I got from it until now.  I am writing this post today when it is already six months since I left Hyderabad to move to Delhi and have just booked my tickets for a weeklong trip back! I have tried my best to capture most of the memories from my stay there. Well to put it in short what stand out from the stay is Yummy Cooking and Fundoo Drives.

Life at Hyderabad started with Room No. 105 of Luxor Park – The guest house room allotted to me by Deloitte. This was where I met Ashwin who went on to become an inherent part of all the fun I had later. From there we shifted to 202 GPRA lane - our first habitat in the city.

Well in Hindi they say “Pehle pet puja fir kaam duja” and so let us begin with the cooking part. The importance of this aspect is evident from the fact that we cooked on the first day at our apartment. First day of the flat involved a quick visit to the grocery store where we bought in the basic stuff. Luckily for us, the flat was furnished to the extent of utensils. We had an unwritten specialization for cooking – curries by Batty, biryani & tea by Ashwin and I always went in for (un)healthy snacks and of course khichdi.  Curries in our menu ranged from normal vegetables to matter-paneer and snacks included varied pakoras, uttpams et al. We also had developed an assembly line for making Parathas. In fact, anyone who visited us hardly could evade cooking – we believed taking the old saying to an all new level – “Feel at home”.

Few days into the flat, the wild life lover in our house got into action. Soon we had a new aquarium with seven pairs of new inhabitants. Further down the line we had a few rabbits and birds. They were all welcomed with much fanfare.

Well now it is turn for remembering some of the best trips we had with the group. Batty got his car and we all loved driving. So it was just an opportunity that we were on the lookout for. First of them came when Ravi came in to visit us on a weekend. We drove off to Himayat Sagar Lake in the city. The short journey was elongated in the maze of roads, highways and our ignorance. But finally we did make it to the place. Though this was a bit of a planned visit, the next two to come dropped in from nowhere.

One fine night we had a late night poker session ending at around 4 in the morning. It was already to wish ourselves a good night and too early for a breakfast. So we thought of witnessing sunrise from the expressway. Someone suggested and we – always ready to grab the opportunity – were behind the wheels. What we had in mind was a short time-pass and breakfast trip. And so we started with the drive and stopped by at the expressway for the awesome view of the sunrise. But soon our minds were looking for more fun and so we set rolling, without a destination in mind. A few calls to our friends – most of who had to be woken up on an early weekend morning – and we got out destination. It was the Nagarjuna Sagar dam and so we drove on. On way we stopped for a quick countryside breakfast and stuffed some snacks in the car. We reached the place by noon and drove all around the dam for a good view of the area. Then we went in for a boat ride in a special tumbler shaped vessel. After the ride we spent some time by the lake side and then set off on the return journey. We reached back by around 4 and enjoyed a late lunch.

Next in the list was the Vizag trip – Lunch at Inorbit that ended up with a dinner in Visakhapatnam. It was a long weekend Friday when three of us – Nirmal, Ashwin and me bored of the lazy morning went for a lunch at Inorbit – a mall in the city.  Over the lunch we decided that we needed a break from usual weekends and should do something different. What, I guess, started with a jest led to one thing or the other and we were soon heading towards Bangalore on the expressway when we took a tea break. Between the sips of the tea we were discussing the practicality of our endeavor when we realized that our cell phone batteries were drying out, we did not have a change of clothes and we were missing a key member of gang – Batty. Yeah he had some work and hence had excused himself from the dinner outing. Now it wasn’t simply possible to go for a trip without Batty with us – especially when we were behind the wheel of his carsJ. Soon we were on a reverse drive back to the Villa. Yeah we had moved from the flat to a duplex villa with Nirmal as our new flat mate.

Anyway, when we were back, Batty was still not over with his work. It took a lot of persuasion (for getting his company), emotional blackmail (of his importance to the trip) and assurance (of ensuring that he would be able to complete his work in time) to finally get him into the car. And off we were on our trip to Vizag – Nirmal’s home-town. Visakhapatnam was around 700 kilometres from Hyderabad and we started at around 8 in the night. After driving the entire night it was around 4 in the morning and Nirmal on the wheels when something felt weird and we had a flat tire. Fortunately for us, we had the spare and other instruments available with us. A quick change of tire and we were on our way again and the morning with is brought dense fog. It did slow us down but the view was simply marvellous  We reached Vizag by around 3 in the afternoon and freshened up quickly. Nirmal drove us around the city and we spent some time at the beach. We also undertook a quick tour of the rope-way to the hill top and then returned home. We had a quick sleepover for a couple of hours and then were treated to a home cooked meal which aunty had prepared keeping in mind the night-long drive ahead of us. We started by around midnight and reached Hyderabad by evening on Sunday. It was indeed a tiring journey but a wonderful getaway and surely going to be a memorable one for long.

Another of the weekend getaway was to the Ramoji Film City – a day long outing with Ravi. The place was built on the lines of Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Vast expanse of land and a huge list of shows & movies from there, it was surely a place worth visiting.

Well this was one of the last eventful things before I shifted to Delhi and life since then has been different. Not boring yet not as exciting as the one in Hyderabad. And now that I am visiting Hyderabad next week, it is only obvious that I am all anxious to be there!!