No More Hyderabad Blues!

I’ve had 45 days of Hyderabad and it has been a fitting experience. Although I’m so much used to living out of home, this one has been different.

The 7 semesters of hostel life in Manipal provided various types of shared and single accomodation. But at no point of time was I required to worry about laundry, arranging drinking water, paying out bills, finding a house to live in, finding someone to clean up the house once a while,etc,etc.

Then followed a heaven called Mysore, which took the definition of “hostel” to an entirely different level.One cannot complain when you’re provided with LCD TV, intercom, lamps for various purposes(one on the supposed study table and other on the side of the bed, either of which were hardly used by me), no roommate to have differences with and when someone’s there to arrange your bed, dust and sweep your room, replace the used tea and sugar bags with fresh ones. However, the cribber that I am, it didn’t take me even 24 hrs to find faults with the housekeeping people. When I entered the room for the first time, it was all spick and span, cleaniness to such a degree which was(and will be) alien to me. So, I decided to mess it up a bit and give it a familiar look, the kind of look I was so used to during my hostel days in Manipal, in which there was a bunch of clothes which would be lying either on the chair or the bed( I was in a habit of shifting them from chair to bed when I needed to study(come on, whom am I kidding?... when I needed to use my laptop placed on the table as a desktop) and then back on the chair when I needed to get some sleep). To my surprise, the moment I came back, I found the bed to be as it was before, as if no one had used it, ever!My shoes and socks were in place and I was about to lodge a complain with the reception people, alleging that the housekeeping guys had stolen my belt, when 3 days later I found it out in the drawer of my study table!!

I must confess that throughout my stay in Infosys Mysore, I was wondering what right have I done all my life that I managed to find my way to Infosys campus interviews by fooling the HR people ‘n’ number of times(Yes, unlike others, I was interviewed more than once..thrice to be precise.. before joining Infosys but then that’s another story in itself!). And, to be honest, I’m still quietly smillng at these god-sent Infosys people, who have been paying me for about 7 months now for doing practically nothing.

Anyways, cut to the present scenario. When you’re determined not to go to a particular city but are left with no other option, the first aim is to start finding faults with the city the moment you enter it. My entry to the city didn’t give me much opportunity to do that, as I entered it via the RGI Airport at 11pm, HUNGRY! And, trust me, Hyderabad airport is clearly the best managed airport I’ve seen till now, which includes Mumbai, Mangalore, Goa, Bangalore and of course, New Delhi. The moment I step out, I found McDonald’s, which was something I had missed too much in Mysore and Manipal. That was another thing to be happy about. Moments later, I was in an aero-express bus, which saves you from getting into arguments with auto/taxi drivers, despite which you end up paying an astronomical figure, just because you’re new to the city and have no idea about the rates. 40 minutes later I was with half of my college group(half, because only 2 out of the 4 were there) and from there onwards, things never looked back. From finding flats to stay in to celebrating birthdays to night outs, everything has been fun. The best part about staying in Hyderabad is that it takes me barely 20 mintues to reach office and I have the flexibility of timings, as I don’t even need to take office transport!Bangalore and Pune are notorious in this regard, where you need to spend at least an hour and a half in traffic on a daily basis.I have my friends staying very close by for any kind of need(varying from work to party to getting me something from the market when I'm not in a mood to,etc,etc).

It’s strange how people adjust to different things. When I went to Mysore and I came to know that I’ll no longer have 24 hour access to internet, I thought I couldn’t survive there and wanted to get out of it asap.Then I started liking the place and started spending time with my friends doing everything apart from studies. Then,during the last month, just when Mysore started getting boring,god sent one more person who, strangely enough, found our company interesting!The days that followed were exciting, challenging and memorable and Mysore rounded off with the best 20 days of my life!Then came the postings and I got posted to Hyderabad. I so very much wanted to go to Pune and didn't leave any stone unturned to find a swap for the same.I got a feeling as if I'll not survive in Hyderabad and imagining life here was becoming difficult. However, it has turned out to be a college reunion of sorts and I do find myself very much settled here, despite three out of station trips in a short while. Not for a moment am I trying to suggest that those days have been replaced by the ones in Hyderabad, but then, this is the way the world goes!

Lance Armstrong, the 5 time Tour de France Champion has an interesting way to share his idea of happiness in his book, “It’s Not About The Bike”. In the mid 1990s, when he was a challenging cyclist who had not been able to clinch the world championship crown, his idea of happiness was to “Win the Tour de France(Considered the world’s most physically demanding athletic event)”. A few years later, some time during 1998, he was being diagnosed against cancer when the doctors didn’t give him more than 10 percent chance of survival. Chaemotherapy virtually killed him for three weeks, one loses his strength, can barely walk, leave alone cycling. Then, his idea of happiness was “Waking Up and being able to crawl”, as it gave him the assurance that he had lived through another day of Cancer(Which, however, was no assurance that he’ll live on to see the next day!)

That gives us a reason to think and redefine our idea of Happiness, doesn’t it?

More to come...