Hyderabad is the greatest city in the world

For a long time I tried to change my vote to Austin and it was in fact my default vote since I hadn't lived in Hyderabad (India) for a long time. But now that I'm not in India as a tourist, and am in fact living in Pune, I am seeing Hyderabad as a place where I could see myself living. And it's amazing.

Let me start with the FM radio. The constant Telugu songs - old, recent and brand new. The banter of the RJs who speak decent Telugu for a change. (The early days of cable TV and FM radio were filled with people whose best quality was their upbeat nature rather than a grasp of fluent Telugu. Now we get both skills.) The ads for programs which play sound bytes of actors - or rather some random voice actor imitating the voices of the stars.

Then there's the food. I would love to be able to just walk over (or drive to) to any of the restaurants and try out their food. For the most part they are the same, but Hyderabad, which is now an A1 city, has a rich variety of restaurants.

Then of course there are the movies that I'd love to watch without reading reviews, or about a billion days after they are released. In case I haven't said it before, I'm a proud Telugu, and would rather watch a bad Telugu movie than a good Hindi movie any day. (Of course, I'll make exceptions for exceptional Hindi movies like Lagaan or Munnabhai MBBS.)

Lastly, there's the tourist spots. Birla Mandir, Tank Bund, Charminar, shopping in Koti/Abids and the numerous malls and multiplexes.

If ony I was born 20 years late, and went to college in Hyderabad and then went on work there. Aah ...

Deus ex Mahesh Babu

I took my parents out to watch a movie. It was their first movie in a theatre since Yamadonga, so more than an year ago. We went to watch "Ashta Chemma" (name of a Ludo-like game native to Andhra Pradesh). It was a safe bet to be family-safe, so no awkward moments as I watch it with my family. The movie is about a girl who is obsessed with Mahesh Babu (the actor) and when he gets married, decides to settle for any cute boy as long as his name is Mahesh. It's supposed to be based on "The Importance of Being Earnest". The movie had a very weak script and relied largely on the acting talents of the actors to carry the plot. Honestly I think the director just walked into the producer's office and said, "In this movie, Swati will pout and look cute." "OK, make the movie". The ending was astonishingly contrived (for a movie that seemed to be doing well till then). Let's just say Deus ex Mahesh Babu.

What I found interesting was the movie theatre. The best seats in the place cost us only Rs. 35. So for the three of us to watch the movie, and for me to get my cold drink (Thums Up) and the parking charge for the car cost us less than it cost me the previous weekend to watch a Telugu movie in a multiplex in Pune. I asked my dad why there was so much discrepancy and how the smaller theatre managed to make any profit while selling tickets for a fraction of the price the multiplexes were charting. Apparently it's to do with the overhead costs for the multiplex that the smaller theatres don't have. And the fact that they make up in volume what they don't make up in price. The theatre of course came with its own flavor - the smell of urine, sweat and sticky floors - that was missing from the multiplex.

A fun day out with my mom

On Friday, seeing as dad was going to be at work, mom wanted me to come shopping with her. Normally I would wince at the thought of going shopping for things like curtains and bedsheets but this was a handicrafts exhibition and I was really curious. It turned out to be a lot of fun. So much fun that our plan to get out of the place in an hour went out of the window and we ended up spending a great deal of time and money at the place.

The exhibition was mainly meant to showcase the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) project, which was incidentally started by N. Chandrababu Naidu (suck on that YSR!). I was given to understand by the stall managers they got the stalls and space for free and so they in turn were selling their merchandise for significant discounts.

The merchandise was significantly diverse. They were selling made from cloth (bedsheets, towels, lungis, kerchiefs, clothes for men and women and children), wood (furniture, toys, puppets), fibre (supension chairs, more toys) and an assortments of other material like animal horns, leather and clay. The DWCRA project was started in a bunch of places but it was successful only in AP. As a result, while there were stalls from all over India - Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan etc. - the stalls from AP were a lot more in number and hence, represented a lot of parts of AP that even I didn't now. It was nice to see a lot of Telugu being spoken and I loved the sales banter that went on in the stores.

In one store, the saleslady started adding food items to our bag without asking and when we tried to stop her we got a dose of one of the most efficient sales pitch I'd ever heard - just a simple, "Oh come on, these are good, just try them." One guy sold his incense sticks by telling us, "If you don't like the smell of the sticks, bring them back and I'll refund your Rs. 20 and pay you Rs. 50 for the auto charges." Another guy sold us honey by insisting that the higher price was worth it since they made honey only 2 month of the year. (This guy has honey from the flowers of Aloe Vera!!)

Poor mom, she walked around even with her hurt knee. And what's more, we brought dad to the same place the next day and made him walk around for about an hour.

My friend opines on stuff

Thursday was all about me. I spent time with a few of my oldest friends, people I've known since 1993. It was a great reunion. Of the five of us (who formed a group) three are married(JBR, Arun and Chandu), one of those has a kid (Arun), another was getting engaged on Thursday (that was Satish's enagement where the reunion happened) and I, being the youngest, am currently the only single one. Rarely do the five of us get to meet, probably happened just once, but four of us is rare too. We reminisced about common friends, teachers, updated each other on our work etc.

After the engagement I got together with my friend JBR and went to his apt. JBR is an ultra-Right wing conservative. He makes my American conservative friends seem like radicals by comparison. (Only Arun is arguably more conservative) When JBR and I start talking, time just flies. He had to push me out of his apt in the end, and even that was because he is now a married man. Or else God knows we'd still be talking about stuff.

A few things I learned -

• Maybe it's just him but his primary complaint to me about Obama was "How in the world are you guys electing a Muslim candidate?" I had to explain to him that Obama was in fact Christian, his Muslim-sounding middle name not withstanding. And then explain to him that the bigger deal in this election was that a Black man was going to get elected President of the US, which is a big deal since the US had segregation as recently as a few decades ago.
  
• On a related note, there is a good chance the country might have its first lower caste Prime Minister - Mayawati - after this election.
  
• There is no true Right-Left division in India. The BJP is Right on social issues, but Congress is more Right on Economic issues. However Congress on social issues blows whichever way the wind blows. The Left in India - the communist parties - ironically have a lot of deals with some Right wing parties like TDP. In West Bengal, it's the Trinamool Congress that opposing the deal to give land (purchased from the farmers) to Tata for the Nano plant. The CM, who is from a Communist party supports the land deal. 
• Whenever Pakistan supports the "oppressed" Muslims in Kashmir, it's not the people they care for. It's the land. So here's his deal - we will provide safe passage to all the Muslims in Kashmir (who feel oppressed) to Pakistan, in turn, shut the hell up and stop killing Indians in India. Sounds like a fair deal to me. 
• (This point my dad brought up independently.) The formation of a separate Telangana state from AP is not a bad thing - as long as Hyderbad is not part of the new state. The Telangana movement is nothing but a political move by politicians who fancy themselves leaders and want to steal the crown jewel of the state for themselves. So let Hyderabad be a centrally-governed province and let's split up the rest. Of course, the Telangana folk will cry bloody murder at this because other than Hyderabad, the rest of Telangana is just barren land.