The city of surprises!

Before I begin, let me warn you that this may look like yet another travelogue. But have you experienced having all your first impressions about a place change over time? What urged me to publish this entry here after a long gap was the pure joy of waking up every morning to a new set of surprises, may it be in the culture, people, or various fun facts (Ashiqui-2 still running houseful is just a  fraction of it)!

After spending a large chunk of my life at the “God’s own country” and the “Garden city”, I was loaded with anticipations as I came to the “City of pearls” to begin the next phase of my life. And I wasn’t left disappointed at all as it proved to be one full of surprises.

To begin with, I am at that part of the city which is unaffected (touch wood!) by Telangana issues or cyclone so that there were times when I was updated of such issues only when I received anxious phone calls from family and friends. On day one I saw the statue of the “thinking man” near the entrance of   Hi-tech city (where the corporates stand tall) with currency symbols over his head, which ironically looked to me like a man over-burdened with money matters, typically a lose-your-sleep scenario.  I decided to ignore the warning and look forward to my job, and was not disappointed there either! As each day unravelled new learning opportunities, I got the opportunity to meet many people ranging from proud natives who loved to speak about all the marvels their city had to offer, to my North Indian counterparts who mostly welcomed me as the girl who hails from the land of Idlil, Dosa and Ranjikanth.

At a place where I experienced below average services from well-known food chains like Pizza Hut and Domino’s, I was surprised to find a small food joint with no seating space that could easily go unnoticed, which served only vegetarian pizzas and that too only in the evenings, attract so many customers who were willing to stand by the road, sit on the steps or wait in their vehicles to taste this mouthwateringly fresh and hot pizza. “Pizza Den” is easily one of my favourites already! Apart from the amazing food choices that I absolutely love about here, the architecture and crowd at the Old city were yet another attraction as it’s totally a different world out there!

 At a time when my shopping had got confined to malls, it was refreshing to find this beautiful, quiet place called “Shilparamam” where shopping turned out far from a tiring experience and I had many a rejuvenating evening here, walking through various handicrafts and accessory outlets , sculpture park or catching a dance or musical event at the in-built Amphitheatre.

 

 It’s funny to find that for a place that boasts of good roads, traffic rules seem largely non-existent. I got to see autos and bikes driven over the footpath while people walked (with no intention to hurry up), right through the middle of the roads! When helmet is a rare ornament here, so are meters for the autos around my place of stay. As I was beginning to master the art of bargaining with autowalas (auto-rickshaw being our daily mode of transportation here) and fixing my worst impressions on them, I met this auto driver who changed my perceptions completely! As my friend and I were apartment hunting, we got into this auto after half a day of meaningless search. As we were planning to head back home, the autowala managed to convince us to see a couple more apartments. Initially we were wary of his over-enthusiastic talks as we hadn’t had any good experiences with autowalas here. But talkative that he was, we could see some sincerity in him after a while. He took it upon himself to show us various options and even volunteered to give his details for reference at a place! As the place was a typical far-away village(the name of which is still hard for my friend to pronounce), we decided to call it quits and get back. That was when he started telling us how he wanted to help us as we were guests to his town, and that he was not a full time auto driver. He went on to explain that he was a graduate who left his job to start a factory. On weekends he drove auto as it used to be his father’s job and he did not want to let go of it. He proudly went on to say that this was also part of his larger plan of earning copious amounts of money attain his dream of staying at “Taj Banjaras” hotels for a month with his wife (who is his current girl friend who has dinner with him every Friday at a 3-star restaurant).  As he sincerely continued his monologue, I was thinking that this filmy and passionate auto driver proved to be yet another surprise by being an epitome of sincerity just opposite to the others.

Waiting for more surprises to come my way as I indeed am getting a bite of everything out here..