Andhra 'Meals'

Yes, rather peculiar, you might say, and I agree. I’ve been in Hyderabad for 2-and-a-half years now, and have never before tried food at a typical Andhra mess, the ones that you’ll find beside streets here and there, all over Hyderabad. But I did already have a fair idea from eating the food served at the Times Of India canteen here, and from a couple of friends’ narrations of their encounter with the Chicken Pulusu and Eguru. When my friends asked the waiter at Abhiruchi, a well known Andhra restaurant in Sec’bad which of the two is less spicy, they met with a smile, and “Sir, Andhra food, all spicy. Pulusu less gravy, Eguru more gravy (or the other way around, I’m not sure).
So, a couple of my colleagues who’re from here, and me, we went to this Andhra mess near Yusufguda checkpost. 35 bucks a plate (sorry, meals, yes, always plural), and well, I who had thought my office food was a not-so-great version of the local cuisine, found the fare much the same. Didn’t know friums (basically, some kind of hollow cylindrical fries) were Andhra food. Anyway, the dal was, as usual, heavily infused with curry leaves, and the rice and potato mash-dry-curry weren’t much of an improvement, really. The Egg curry had a mirchi-ka-salan type of gravy with one egg (not fried) floating in the middle.
As I found others eating around, one helping, two helping, three helping, four…it was again reinforced that quantity rules over quality here.
No, I’m not being a racist here and declaring all things South Indian bad, for I myself am a big fan of Utthapam, and dosa and Mysore Bonda. But make no mistake, that’s not Andhra cuisine. I also totally love the Nizami food in the Old City, the haleem, and the kebabs of Shahdab. But this typically Telugu food, friends, wasn’t quite my palate.
Good in one way, though. I could now reconcile to the quality of food in the canteen and not feel cheated for being charged 30 bucks for well…
Oh, by the way, the menu also pomised a brain something. Think I’ll avoid.

Hyd 2018: A futuristic probability

After the party yesterday night went on till 4am at the SkyBar, Shamshabad Megacity, I was still bleary eyed as I entered office. Some things about Hyderabad just don’t change, I was cursing 15 minutes later, waiting for my cab on the terrace of the Times Office. “Too much air-traffic,” the fella video-called to say. What a pain! And only yesterday the Chopper-Taxi Association held a pankha-jaam* to protest rising fuel surcharge!

From 4 years back when chopper-taxis were

 heralded as the transport solution to road-traffic, things have really gone down, I thought as I gave the pilot the address to the Goldman Sachs campus, Gachibowli Financial City. The press-conference for the inauguration of their virtual gamedrome for employees would’ve already started. As it turns out, everyone was on a half-hour lag. Mandatory retina-scan, X-ray scan and robot-controlled embedded chip detection later, I was in.

As the lights went low and I put on the projection eye gear in the press-kit, I saw a tennis court before my eyes. The mode-selection option said player or spectator and provided difficulty levels. You could choose cricket, rugby, kickboxing…oh…bungee jumping, that’s new! Pretty realistic, I’d always thought of the Microsoft Xcube that had relegated the Xbox. And of course, it’s the next best thing for keeping employees happy at the workplace, after the Sony 2nd generation mood-control chip, that is, where all you have to feel happy is select it! The Society for Prevention of Mood Alteration was of course still creating a row over chip-abuse when a bunch of geeks managed to reverse-engineer the chip to produce the feeling of being high! On the bright side, though, it took a lot of people off drugs! Personally, I’d always resisted it, though I wished I had one now to feel awake! Good old caffeine will have to do, I thought, crushing the paper-cup and putting it into one of the mini auto-recyclers that took 10 seconds to recycle and create a fresh cup. Pretty neat, the bits of technology that we don’t even notice.

On the Hyderabad Metro on my way back, the download reminder on my cellphone beeped. Yes, Samit Basu’s latest science-fiction novel, After the Big Bang, must’ve downloaded. Wonder sometime if Basu’s books would’ve been so much fun on good old paper where illustrations couldn’t animate as holographic projections. Right now, though, there was no time to read. By the time I finished speech-to-text-ing my story directly to my office computer, the metro was inside PVR. Biometric scan gave me my seat number, and I was glad to be on time. Charan Tej was doing an action flick after a long while, ever since he shifted to doing just Telugu art films. 3-d glasses on, I fast forwarded commercials, quickly browsed language options…Telugu, Hindi, English, and was set!

2 hours later, after I had had dinner and paid for it through bio-pay (biometric scan to deduct from account), I saw it raining outside and was suddenly reminded of Panjagutta 10 years back, when it looked completely different without the metro snaking its way, choppers in the sky, when traffic would be crazy and there’d be water on the street. That was then. This is now, in 2018, and I’d be home without getting wet, on the metro from the mall’s cash counter to my apartment lobby in Gachibowli in the next 3 minutes!

Charminar, CIEFL & Budday cake

Here's the link to the pictures I shot recently in Hyderabad with my Nikon P4. The Old City pictures are on the second day of Ramzan, and the shots from the top are from the top of Charminar:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/saritray2001/CIEFLBuddayCakeOldCity#

Snippet: Why I’m afraid to crop my pictures

When you shoot, you try and frame a fleeting fact of life into stillness. The poetry or story that a photograph tells after that is purely coincidental, with minute elements having been at their perfect place by pure chance!

Dog-ged

The coolest creature on Indian roads. (No, that’s not the catch line for Bajaj’s latest 125cc bike.). In my opinion, this creature really is the only one that moves and exists in a completely different time-frame to the fast cars (they may be moving only at 5kmph on Hyderabad’s so-called flyovers, but they are in eternal hurry) and the people scurrying about. He lays cool, resting on his belly, with his face on his crossed legs, at the corner of the metalled roads, choosing either a spot on the pavement or one on the tarmac, whatever suits his fancy. He will yawn and spare a glance at the pair of headlights that zip by within a metre of where he’s lying. Nope, he won’t flinch or even bat an eyelid as the two globes of light come precariously close …Oh sorry, haven’t I mentioned what I’m talking about here? Trust me, it’s not the suspense I’m aiming for…honest. I’m talking of the Indian street dog.

Yeah, the same one that manages to find peaceful sleep on the busiest crossing at Chowringhee, on the pavement bang opposite Janpath, and in the crowded lane beside Alpha hotel. Sometimes, I wonder. Is it really sleeping that peacefully, or is it just feigning it, to make me and all the people rushing to office or rushing back home jealous? I mean, lazy bugger, do you have to let me know that I have to get to office while you can afford to laze away? ‘Bitch,’ I mumble enviously, reflecting the next moment the odds of it actually being one are 50-50. That’s based on the assumption of course that their sex ratio is better than ours. I mean, I can’t imagine them being a patriarchal species where a chauvinistic dad would beat up a bitch for giving birth to another bitch.

But coming back to the general life of the dog, it’s quite an ironical statement, don’t you think - ‘A dog’s life.’ Hell, it doesn’t look so bad from the window of a crowded bus full of smelly armpits. Honestly, deodorants should be subsidised in Indian metros. (Spare my digressions).

So, while I squeeze my way out of the crowded local train, come out of the Begumpet station, trying to smooth the creases on my white shirt ineffectively by tugging it here and there, this dog gets up from where it was lying and starts busily walking beside me, his tail wagging, his tongue hanging. It casts a glance up at my face and looks ahead at the road again with a newfound concentration. I feel good for a moment, thinking, not bad…even he has to hurry to somewhere today! Another 30 yards ahead though, it flops down in the shade of the chaiwallas shop. As I try and coax an autowallah into charging me 10 rupees extra (in stead of his demanded 15), he glances again at me. I swear the look on his face reads ‘Too bad you just have to go, and can’t decide when not to.’

I just can’t explain how it doesn’t feel fear when a vehicle passes it by on the busy road. He just coolly holds his ground, leaving the onus of saving his life on the man behind the steering. Amazing! He does it every minute, with every passing car. And then, ever so lazily, it gets up and ambles across to the other side of the road, exercising just enough muscle to jog the 10 metres. A cat will scurry, you know, even though drivers will invariably brake to let it pass. A dog, however, will just not bother. Hit me at your own risk, it seems to say. What risk? Dog only knows!

Jagjit Singh Taramati Baradari

Well, for all those who say, heritage sites in Hyderabad are not well-maintained (and I do agree with all those people who say so), here's one that stands out in contrast, proving, that if the authorities (the Archaeological Society of India) take the necessary measures, the monuments can be maintained extremely well.
The Jagjit Singh concert at the Taramati, was therefore as much a treat for music-lovers as for lovers of heritage structures.
And speaking to Jagjit Singh was quite the adventure of my journalistic career. I waited for him in the green-room at Taramati before the show. However, the man landed up at the venue only minutes before his show was scheduled to start. Well, that meant, his tabla player ushered me out of the green-room saying, "Not now...After the show...pakka." So, we wait through the show. (No complaints, though, for the show was quite fabulous as he belted out one beautiful ghazal after another under the beautiful starry sky). Moreover, the APTDC (organisers) had arranged for quite a nice spread.
However, after the show, Jagjit ji hopped ontp his car...and left! Well...no...that wasn't that, for we (that would be another desperate reporter from a website and desperate and sleepy old me) hopped onto the musicians' car and followed him! Yeah, and that too...till the far end of the city, quite literally, for he was put up at the Golconda resorts, some 25 km away from civilisation!
And then, we found him, whisky glass in hand and surrounded by friends, wife Chitra, and other hanger-ons who were only too happy to share the table with him!
But he did step out for a brief chat...brief...but candid! After all, a mere 7-8 minute chat, but after more than two glasses of whisky...can be entertaining. So, he answered questions with a humour, which on quite a wry strain, generated smiles, less out of the inherent wit, and more because he was, well, Jagjit Singh!
Click on this link for the interview that was published in Hyderabad Times, dated December 12:

Getting my ipod repaired in Hyderabad

You can jolly well understand how upset I got when just three months after having bought my expensive flashy 30 gb Videopod, it stopped working! Yeah, just like that, without as much as a warning or a whimper. It had been on low battery the last time I saw it, so I had switched it off and kept in inside. When I pulled it out now, it said something like "please wait...battery too low!" I plugged it into the comp and left it to charge, but it just wouldn't. I went on the apple site and it gave me some supposedly standard troubleshooting steps that sounded pretty convincing. But after all the pressing the centre button and menu with it and jumping to centre and play, and what not, nothing would happen...what did happen was, it gave me the dreaded "sad ipod" icon. Pretty ironic this was, going by the fact that it reflected my feelings at that point pretty accurately.I was quite perturbed by now, going around asking friends and visiting blogs...the only tips I picked up from the blogs was that I should whack my ipod around a few times, or just let it drop on the floor! Can you believe that...drop a 3-month young videopod on the floor?! Ridiculous, I say! (p.s- In heights of desperation, I did give it a few tentative light knocks, hoping it would spurt back to life somehow).I had almost succumbed into depression over my poor luck with gadgets, and that I may have to send it to the US or at least have to take it to Bangalore, which I had heard had an Apple store. However, just looking around vaguely on the apple.co.in site, I landed on the page for the service centre search. And, guess what, I struck gold! Hyderabad actually did have a service centre.So, the very next morning, I went looking for the 'promised store' that would put an end to my pod-miseries. Inside a lane near a busy crossing called Ameerpet, i found the mentioned address, but hey, where was this store? I looked around, asked around and then gave a ring on the store number. Guess what, it was a small flat hidden somewhere in the bowels of a big residential complex. This got me so scared that when they took my pod and gave a receipt, asking me to wait for a call, I was imagining the worst--maybe I'm never gonna get to see my dear ipod again, and next time I come here, I'm just gonna see an empty flat (too much movies, I know)!But hey, I did get a call, and in two days as they had promised. As soon as office was over on Wednesday, I was rushing towards Ameerpet in a cab, battling through the messyoffice-time traffic of Hyderabad. What awaited me there was quite a pleasant surprise. They had fixed my ipod and got it into perfect condition ( read, Sarit was ecstatic), and whats more, he had replaced the case as well. It looked as good as new (read, Sarit super ecstatic), with a new protection covering and a new serial number.And, once again, I have to acknowledge that I am blown by Apple's service! It's something ordering your pod online and getting it delivered within 24 hours where they promise 4 days; but it is simply incredible to have your ipod perfectly serviced and revamped in a small residential-flat version Apple service centre in the middle of the circus-like madness of Ameerpet, Hyderabad!Moral of the story: A fantastic and novel experience in customer satisfaction.