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...

Mysore Memories...

This one's for the two of you, A and V.. and am not even sure if you'll ever read this!

It was on 22nd of February that I got my posting as "MFGD-Hyderabad" and I can't put to words what sickening feeling it had on me for the next few days.The SWAP portal closed on 25th midnight and I was "sick,tired and frustrated" of being "sick,tired and frustrated" at the end of it. I was myself surprised at the intensity of such feelings, such desperation to get to Pune, a city I had never ever stayed in! I was surprised at my madness because in the past 10 years, Hyderabad was going to be the 5th city I would be living(yeah, Living, not just visiting) in. So, I am very much used to entering a new city completely on my own, making friends for a lifetime, then bidding an emotional goodbye to all of them,packing bags, travelling alone to my new temporary home, making new friends, having a good time again and the cycle continues...! So much so that with the passage of time the word "emotional" had been struck off from the phrase "emotional goodbye". BUT.. THIS WAS GOING TO BE DIFFERENT! I knew it straightaway that this goodbye was not going to be easy by any means.

For the first time in all those years I was afraid of missing my friends. I gave it everything I could to get a transfer to Pune but nothing materialized(apart from an offer to work in Infosys Pune in CME in night shifts, which I outrightly rejected!). I felt like cursing one and all. I felt like quitting the job and finding a new one in Pune. Yes.. all this because I absolutely did not want to miss my newly formed group of 3(Ashish and Vinita being the other two), come what may.The best moment of those days was the 3 of us sitting in one of the food courts, doing absolutely nothing and all of a sudden, one of them would start with,"Jayant, chal na Pune". I hated that conversation then, as it was not going to help in any way but now I miss it badly.I don't feel like entering the food courts here without you guys because whenever I'm sitting alone in a food court here at Hyderabad, I feel the two of you would walk in out of nowhere and start playing pranks at me. I want you to try and snatch my Litchee shake because it tasted much better than your experimental order! I want to be kept waiting for 1 hr after being told to wait for "just 15 minutes". I want to pursuade both of you to keep sitting at FC3 for some more time, despite your eyes crying out for sleep, not because I didn't feel sleepy, but because I wanted to hold on to every single second.I want to snatch the chocolate ice cream from you, not because I loved eating it but because I loved to see your expression and a near-crying face(which,put together with a near-crying voice produced an effect only you are capable of) when someone dared try getting even 1/50th of a spoonful from your cup. I want to keep arguing with you people that shifting to Bangalore is not such a good idea, as getting a swap to Pune is equally unlikely, be it from Bangalore or Hyderabad. I want a totally unplanned outing with both of you, in which we straightaway headed for the exit gate of the campus without having decided where exactly we were heading to. I want Ashish to get into arguments with auto drivers over the nomenclature of eating joints around Mysore and then see his embarrassed face when the auto driver corrected him!

Miss you guys badly. Not so long ago we used to be with each other from 9 a.m. to even past midnight and today, we're so busy that talking once a day doesn't seem feasible.. talk about how times change!!!

Hope... I read somewhere.. is a funny word. It doesn't assure you of anything but it keeps the entire world going...!!!

Adieu to Infosys Mysore and discovery of a new emotion - Sadness!

What a roller coaster ride the past ten days have dished out! I always took pride in the fact that I've outgrown "emotions", in every sense of the word! Staying out of home for long periods and meeting your family once every six months or so fills you up with a false sense of confidence, that you have bravely deleted the words "sad", "miss you", "loneliness", etc, etc from your dictionary. But then, God has strange ways of making you realize that you're still as fragile and vulnerable as you always were.

Stepping into Infosys Mysore campus on 13th September 2009, every other of my 483 batchmates had the same objective as mine in mind, i.e. to successfully complete the training and get out of that campus asap. The initial days were great, as one tries to explore every inch of the 335 acre campus. As time goes on, one starts getting sick of seeing the same food courts, the same cycles, the same hostel room and on top of that, the monotony of alternately going through slides and taking up tests. Initial couple of months were the saturation point for me and I prayed every day to get out of that campus at the earliest.

However, about 5 months after stepping into that campus, i.e. 21st January onwards, my feelings underwent a 180 degrees turn that I still find hard to believe! The 36 days that followed after that(till our batch was released) brought with them a few words and feelings that I had long buried and had decided never to reuse! Words such as "lifetime friends", "crush", "companionship", "trust", "care", "butterflies in stomach", "nervousness", "going weak on my knees on facing someone",etc, etc had sneaked into my life again and the worst things with feelings as these is that the more you try to drive them away, the more you try to kill them, the stronger they emerge. Now I understood why they compare good times with a fist full of sand. The harder you try to hold on to it, the faster it slips out of your hand. I didn't realize that time will eventually come to an end until my batch owner announced it one fine day(10th of Feb, 2010) that "The release date of your batch is 26th Feb".

"God, why do you have to be so cruel? Why can't you put us into extended training?" was my first reaction to it. I decided that to make those 16 days count would be the best thing to do, rather than brooding about why there are only 16 days. And, the 16 days that followed really did count for a lot. Companionship I had never before experienced followed and I expected our group of 3 to be together always, even though fate would not let us be geographically together for long. The postings came and I was the odd one out, thrown into Hyderabad, though in the company of two old time friends. Still, there's something about friends that makes you never want to compare them. As I had experienced so many times before( in the course of changing cities and schools), I was sure that this bonding will fade away with time. Its always been the case that whenever I get separated from friends, however hard I try to retain them, time takes its toll and eventually the regular calls change to the occasional SMS and then to a once-in-6-months scrap on orkut/facebook and eventually it all disappears, though I'm the one who tries to the most to keep things together.

Today its been exactly a week since the group left Mysore and the role of time is already taking its effect. The frequency of calls hit an all time low of 0 yesterday( though for a different reason). There was a mistake made and one of the the three, as always, has been singled out to suffer the most and he is going through the similar feeling once again.. of being OUTCASTED!!!

Let's see what fate has in store for him next.. does he get the courage to make new friends again or the deep scars that have been left will keep reminding him of the possible consequences.