message in a bottle (02.2003 - 09.2008)

Breezy mornings, and waking up on the call of the idli vendor;

Mad traffic, overcrowded autos, and walking down to the workplace;

Tall buildings, silent bays, glass pane and the view of red treetops;

Random lunches, grocery shopping, and experiments in the kitchen;

Unclear multilingual conversations, then watching regional movies to decipher those;

Exploring cuisines and eateries, to get over the disappointment of the houseful board;

 

Lazy weekends with friends and films, sipping soda in that dark room;

Calling home all the time, and forgetting bills that needed paying;

Walking home with a friend, or with some music;

The moments, the places, the habits, the people - will all be missed.

The non-existent winter of Hyderabad is my favorite kind of winter. Despite the fact that like any other chick, I too love long sleeved-pullovers, smart jackets, and fancy coats, I do not miss the chill much. The weather of this city has been good to me so far; I have hardly taken out my think jacket in the past two months. Nice.

 Yesterday was one such lovely and warm day. Only, it was also Lohri - a day that is supposed to be very chilly!

Lohri is a very popular Punjabi festival that involves lighting a bonfire, offering the fire some munchies, such as peanuts, popcorns, and revri, and having some too. Celebrated on January 13^th, the day usually signifies setting of winters. In the northern part of the country, this day is usually very-very cold. However, down south, it has a different meaning. Here, the festival is called Sakranti and it signifies offset of harvesting season. Caught between the odd weather and a new culture, I decided to experience the flavors of both festivals.

The most fun part of Sakranti is flying kites! During this week, one sees the sky dotted with kites almost all of the waking hours. I went to see the best kites at the best spot of Hyderabad. Necklace Road, by the Hussain Sagar lake.

Pretty red kite flown by a professional. It looked lovely floating and fluttering in the clear sky.

 

Then I came home and made a small bonfire of my own.

I say discs because that is the term that comes to my head. Here, in Hyderabad, we call them pubs. Three huge rooms, called level 1, 2, and 3, white upholstery, white balloons on the floor, minimal to zero furniture, absolutely no place to sit, lots of place to stand. That is Touch for you at 9:30 pm on 31^st December. What am I doing there, well, that is a question we should address to arunjeetsingh. Maybe he should make an LJ post in reply.

 It took a lot of time, ample jostling skills, and many buckets full of money to be standing on the white floor. Because that is exactly what I was doing at 10 pm. Standing. The rooms (dance floors, if you will) were full of dolled up chicks and dandy boys by now. A jumbo plastic glass poised in everyone’s hand, loud remixed music filling the room, and everyone standing. It took another hour and a lot of alcohol to get most people dancing.

 Disappointed by the very first look around, most of us friends roamed from one level to the other in search of good music and maybe a place to sit. Found neither, however, found a dark level with comparatively good music and a lot of balloons on the floor, shady people lurking around the corners. Make out level, we called it.

 At 11 pm, I asked the husband if he thought we would be served any grub. He seemed doubtful. I interested him in the dark level but he is shy. So with nothing better to do, we started to dance (or rather to wave our arms up n down and left n right, considering moving ones feet would have been an impossible feat). A couple of our friends were having a gala time by now. Another two were just happy to be out on the 31^st, and I was simply thankful for my cute and comfy dancing shoes. I chose them over my sexy bronze heels but looking around at skimpily clad women concentrating hard on not falling on the dance floor, I was glad I made a sensible choice.

 Every time the husband wanted to give up and try to find something better to do, he would find something that would send him back to the floor. For example, the puke outside the dance floor. It was amidst such weirdness and sweat that I rang in the new year. The only saving grace of this non-fun night was friends. I am officially off the dance floors. If I am in Hyderabad and you want to take me out post dinner, Ten Downing Street is the only place I am going.

 Maybe I am aging but I would vote for the cozy dinner n drinks at Punjabi by Nature or Bukhara over the madness called Touch any day. Or rather, any year.

Last one month has passed like a whirlwind. When the wind settled, I found myself in Hyderabad and there was this other person, awesome though he is, but he was there right beside me. In addition, I found myself carrying the extra weight of very pretty red bangles that always stay on my wrists.

So my love for Hyderabad is no secret. I have made at least five posts about the city in last couple of years. But loving a city is one thing and living in it, another. I am adjusting to the city where there are 143 movie halls but one never finds tickets for a show. Frequent rains help in getting the city more and more brownie points from me. Though it is the distance between work and home that is the biggest plus. It is only 3 km. Did you hear that? Three bloody kilometers! From 38 to 3! Fantastic, I’d say.

The whirlwind also took me places. From hills of Jammu to the islands of Phuket, via the beautiful George Town and some other cities, on a sailing ship. Err…no the ship did not start sailing from the hills of Jammu but we do not want to get into those details right now, right?

Traveling implies that I have been eating a lot too, of course. Tried many interesting dishes but also ate a lot of Indian food just so I could avoid eating beef, but that is material for another post. Oriental seafood is something I do not swear by but delectable Thai food in a local restaurant in a village built in the ocean is another story. More food stories coming up soon.

Well, so now that I am in Hyderabad and not getting to watch any movies, what have I been up to? Playing games, of course. Having married the gamer, mild mannered or not, games become an essential part of life. Now, when I am not playing Gears of War (I suck at it, though), Elite Agents, or Wii Sports, I am found with my head bent over a Windows mobile phone. Checking mail on the little device is so much fun, inconvenient yes, but still fun. Also, the joy of seeing the coffee shop you are sitting in on google maps is humongous. Right, I have a pretty meaningless life but what the heck, I love it!

Although I liked the city more way back in '05. It did not have under construction flyovers then.

... will be back after a break.

Meanwhile, the city still looks picturesque. ( Lookie? )

Where I am floored by a Roman artist and a genius from Kerala

I think I have not been exposed to museums enough. I was not particularly keen on visiting Salarjung when we went checking the city out. However, fifteen minutes inside that white castle-like building and I was mesmerized by sculptures from the first and second century. Most of these were statues of Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu deities dating back to Pallava and Chola periods. I also loved the children’s section that has a wide array of toys and puppets. Another interesting gallery was that of guns, daggers, shields, and swords belonging to Mughal emperors like Aurangazeb, Tippu Sultan, and Mohammad Shah. Nevertheless, I only had time and energy to explore the first of the three levels of the museum.

Two pieces that impressed me the most were Veiled Rebecca and Stolen Interview. Let me tell you that the pictures of those that I found on the Internet do not do any justice to the real pieces.

Veiled Rebecca is work of the Roman artist Giovanni Maria Benzoni. Rebecca was wife of Isaac. In this sculpture, she draws a transparent veil on self before meeting her future husband. What struck me about this sculpture was its precision and elegance. You have to look at the real piece to appreciate the neatness with which the artist has sculpted the folds of the transparent veil that covers the woman from head to toe.

Stolen Interview, known as Romancing Couple on the Internet from some reason, is a painting by the famous painter of Kerala – Raja Ravi Verma. The original painting is colored, unlike the picture seen here. He is popular for his depiction of female beauty. And after seeing this painting I know why. The woman in the painting charms you. The expressions on her face, her facial features, and her body language... you just cannot take your eyes off her. I am told that one can find a huge collection of Ravi Verma’s work in the Art Gallery of Mysore.

Where I realize that people in Hyderabad do not walk much

I went for this micro-mini LJ meet yesterday. Met navina and psasidhar for lunch at 10 Downing Street. Post lunch we decided to visit a bookstore, not more than a kilometer away. Navina and I decided to walk down instead of taking an auto. During this seven – eight minutes walk, different auto drivers stopped by our side to check if we needed their services; not once, not twice, but nine times. (Yes, we counted!)

Two women walking down the road at 3:20 in the afternoon is not a common sight in this city, is it?

On a different note, these nice people from Hyderabad have offered to take me to all the cool bookstores in the city. All you treasure boxes that beatzo talks about on his journal, here I come!

( Nice People from Hyderabad )

Where I discover the source of inspiration for Telugu movies’ choreogrpahers

While I ate my dinner at the office cafeteria last night, I entertained myself by watching some Telugu movie on Gemini. The hero (some real popular dude, I think) saves the girl from being slaughtered on a train by the baddies. Next, a dream sequence where the hero, dressed in all black, breaks into a dance sequence on the roof of a moving train with a supposedly sexy woman in red lehenga for company. The jhatkas matkas of this woman will definitely put Malika Arora to shame.

I saw two different worlds come together and blend smoothly into the city called Hyderabad. My friend met me at Banjara Hills, the most happening place around, and then lugged me into an auto and took me to the old city. I am not going to comment on the old city, but please hear this loud and clear - I am NOT going there again. Yummy biryani and stuff notwithstanding!

Now, there are two ways of looking at Hyderabad:

( Through the Sunshine Eyes )


(  The City that Really Is  )

Disclaimer: Click with care. I do not have Adobe Photoshop handy.