Hyderabad Diaries-Part 3

Hello! Lets move on to part 3.

In April 2013, a mail came, which pulled me out of the depression. My joining letter at TCS. Guess the location? H-Y-D-E-R-A-B-A-D!!!

Life is good at times! ;) I was fed up cursing myself and wishing life would be different and wishing that I was the girl who could make my parents proud and not the useless person who gave up her job to pursue M.Tech. And the mail came as a blessing and I decided to go work even though I did not want to be an independent working woman!

Packed my bags and on May 12^th afternoon flight(Note the point: FLIGHT..Kurach rich familyaa) we set out to Hyderabad. Evening we reached Hyderabad and we visited Suresh Maman’s family and then at night about 10, I entered Manjeera Diamond Towers.

We were allotted a 3BHK and it was just Wow! Ours was an all-Keralites flat with all familiar faces and my roomie was a real sweet girl who was older than us but was equally fun loving.

In a way, Hyderabad ILP was a small version of heaven on earth J Though I was not very happy thanks to our stupid technical faculty. That great person,(like Sreenivasan says in Yatrakarude Shradhakku, “Dhaivame, ayakk nallath mathram varuthane, ennalum aa kalamaadan!”) was born to torture me. I would be working on my system, reading books and preparing notes and he would be standing behind me like in horror movies. Suddenly you turn and there he stands... I get the shock of my life!! “Yes Sir?” “What are you doing Madam?” (Frying fish..want some?) IS HE BLIND? He does this daily! And then he says, I have to try harder. People sit in groups and chitchat and he is okay about that because they are from his state. Bloody Biased Fool! Except for him and Java, life was good.

I was part of 3 gangs-my G-603 gang-my flatmates, 5 of us from NSS and one from MES. The best apartment I have seen, it wasn’t fully furnished, but I just loved it. One day I want to own an apartment like that. It was well lit and spacious and felt like home. There was no lake view or sea view, but just puddle view and building-in-progress views, especially the workers starring into our rooms. For someone who lived in a Government college hostel infested with bugs and insects even Discovery Channel wouldn’t show and which was home to a lot of ghost stories and looked like a haunted house and later spent 5 months in a cabin without ventilation it was no less than a 5star hotel.

We made it a point to have lunch and dinner together daily and we had the discussion sessions every day to share the stories which happened in each batch every day. The sofa in our sitting room which was light blue in colour ended up being brown in colour. We sit there chitchatting and watching TV and at times Vidhya sleeps there! She has a single bed all to herself but no she sleeps there.

Then was the Tamil gang - Thanks to Vidhya, I could learn some Tamil and I have to thank them for their patience in putting up with my Tamil. I literally raped the language in all possible ways, but I just wanted to be fluent in Tamil. Even after watching a lot of Tamil movies, I never understood 90% of these movies.

The third gang was our Ajab Gajab family and as the name suggests it was a family and we had grandparents and parents and kids and uncles and aunts. People all over found it silly(and reports say that many were jealous too) but we were really very close to each other and felt like a family. It was a very big group and I was introduced as the prospective “bride” to two of their sons and I ended up being Bhabhi and Bahu to many and most of the times I had confusion about who my “husband” was but finally I ended up with one husband ;) I really felt like I was part of a Hum Saath Saath Hai kind of family and the drama of being bahu and bhabhi and patni was really funny. Many a time I felt like a Bollywood heroine :D All of them spoke good Hindi and I was the only person of the group who spoke Hindi like Chatur in 3 Idiots. The outings and movies and dinners were so nice and above all the travel to and fro by autos where we sang songs the whole time was real fun. I really miss those days. Waiting for the day when we all would meet again and relive the old days.

Food was a great problem as the dhabas and hotels nearby did not have great food and many a time we were fighting for the toilets in our flat :D We had our bus which came every morning to take us to office and then it would drop us back. Never before in life was I soo punctual!In the 3 months, I missed my bus just once. So venamenkil chakka verilum kaykkum ;)

Also there were autos which would fit in as many people as it could. If you can get in the auto, then number doesn’t matter. We once had about 10 people in a small auto including the auto driver. 7 at the back and 2 with the driver. Was a real adventure. The autos also let people sit at the back, which is for the luggage. You have to sit facing the vehicle at the back. We once went like that. You feel soo silly, as you are looking at the driver behind you and there is nowhere else to look at and the most important point is you are holding on to dear life. You miss a hump and you are under the car behind you.

Then came the malls of Hyderabad. Our favourite, Inorbit Mall, HiTech City. One of my most favourite malls in the world. The people who visited that mall on 18^th May 2013 were the luckiest ever. There was a karaoke competition and guess who went on to participate? Yes, you are right! Me!! I sang Dhoom Machale and I’m sure Sunidhi Chauhan would feel inferior if she heard me that day! The previous time I sang the song, no one heard it, thanks to the boos from the audience ;) We hang out every now and then at the InOrbit Mall and it was very close to almost all of the TCSers. I even got a chance to visit GVK1 mall, which was a really cool mall. Suresh maman had once taken us to watch English Vinglish there.

Then came the office- for someone who came from a Government college which boasted of the worst food in Kerala and maybe the oldest buildings, Q City, Gopanapally, Hyderabad was like a wonder. Food was good and we got to drink CCD coffee for free during the breaks :D The office was also well designed and stylish. My most favourite part was the auditorium, which had the best chairs fit for sleeping :D Comfort redefined. And in that auditorium, I heard some of the best stories about the lives of TCSers.

Hyderabad had a very important role in my life. As a person I evolved there. I became an independent working woman both emotionally and financially from Hyderabad. I had this weird desire to never be independent. That till marriage, I would depend on my parents and then directly shift to the shade of my husband. But from Hyderabad the desire to be independent and shower my family with gifts and spend to my heart’s desire captured me. I really wanted to do something in life and be different.

Then I moved on to Bangalore and then the seeds of what was sowed in Hyderabad grew into a small sapling. Inspired by Yazhini, the desire to be independent became strong and I the urge to do something different in life became stronger. And when I returned back home to do my Post graduation, something killed the independent working woman and I had this deep desire to get married and settle down. But again, when I started doing my internship, once again the desire to work and spend and be independent has come back and is nagging me. I do not know where this would end up. But as far as being different is concerned, I am sure that I am weird enough to be different from the rest ;) Athokke mathi thalkalam. :P

I’m like this only! J