A Tale of Many Cities

Well, well here we are. Tighten your seat belts or maybe you should not and just relax. It is one long journey. It has been my intention for some time now to blog about the places I have been to, places I have lived in. SSM (God Bless U!) has asked me a couple of times to continue my blog about his beloved Chennai. I even went ahead and posted a Prequel to the series. Ha! And what did I write after that? Nothing (Well thatz NOT the way to go, Babe).

I thought that I had thought of everything. A nice orderly chronological series About few of the places I have been to. Perceptions, impressions, history and all that jazz!! But well you know what they say about men's best laid plans. My fingers are ready to fly as I sit cross-legged on my office chair ready to take advantage of my boss absence and blog on. Well and then I open the can of memories. But hey guys what's this mucky yuck mixed - up thing inside? Where's the order ; where the chronology? Uff how am I supposed to write? Guys I wanted to give you a series but I dish up a Khichdi (An Indian dish made of rice and lentils cooked with garden fresh vegetables and aromatic spices on a low flame with pure ghee - uff I think all the posh restaurants put in more effort on writing the menu card then in actually preparing the dishes. I once ordered an appetizer with a great description and it turned out to be Mirchi BhAjji!!).


Year: 2005. The place is Hyderabad. I guess right now it is one of the most happening cities in India. The pace of development is phenomenal in the Indian context. I have been here for six and half years now and I have actually seen it transform from a sleepy laid - back city to one rocking place. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the pace of construction activity here. I have lost count of how many new buildings I have seen coming up in the past few years. Most of the small shops and general stores/ the kirana stores on the main roads have been pulled down and voila you have the shopping malls/Multiplexes/Big showrooms there. You do not even notice it until you are driving past it one day and you say "Hey this mall was not there. When did it come up?" And then you think hard to figure out what used to be there. The Banjara Hills/Panjagutta (Sorry Non-Hyderabadis) area has changed beyond recognition in the last few years. Gone are the Cafes, the tiffin centers and the small stores and now it is all Wills LifeStyle, Benneton,
Levi's, Reebok, Nike, Coffee Day and so on. It is like witnessing the birth of a new city. And somehow it energies me; there is a strange kinda energy in all this. But well I miss my old Hyderabad also. The greener and the less crowded previous version. When I was doing my MBA (1998 - 2000) riding around and driving around hyderabad used to be pleasure. Not any longer though. The influx of people from outside AP is just too much!! (Ahem Ahem, People like me not included).

And I miss my Bandis (Bandis are small makeshift stalls). One of our favorite past times during MBA days used to be hunting around for cheap and good places to eat. And hyderabad had plenty of those. I remember there used to be this dirty and crowded bandi (Opp Lal Bunglow, Greenlands if anyone interested) which used to serve the so - called Chinese food. I digress but do you know what is the safest business plan in India. Open a small place and get a Chinese looking guy (he can be assamese whatever) to toss the noodles in a wok and voila you have a thriving business. We indians just love Chinese food and especially the indianised version and even the south indianised version. I have had noodles with curry leaves and rai (mustard seeds) also!! and God everything has tons of cabbage in it. And then we used to make long trips to old city part (Mozamahi Market) to have this yummy and very cheap homemade ice cream with fresh fruits. I had a friend who rode all the way to that place one scorching summer evening and had 25 mango ice creams there. Wow!! And when you talk about Hyderabad, you can not help talking about the irani
chai cafes here. I always say that like Paris we also have our cafe culture. I have been to these cafes only once or twice (Never see any gurls there) but the best part of these cafes are that you see all kinds of people in these cafes. Right from auto - rickshaw wallahs to working professionals sharing a table and there are no hang ups. But one of the best part of Hyderabad are the small tiffin joints that used to dot the city. Alas, they too are disappearing; the price of progress. These are usually small places. You go in, buy a coupon, give it to the counter with
the kitchen beyond it, get your stuff and stand and eat. These places were my salvation during student days. The food was good, cheap and also nutritious(Unlike the bandi chinese) and these places were very clean and you cud even see your food getting ready. Though I confess that the first time I saw the cook clean the huge Dosa tava with a broom , i just did not want to eat that dosa. And these places also have quite a wide variety of stuff. Hmm.. i still remember the crisp dosas, the pesarattus and the soft idlis. We often ate at these places for the money saved on food could be spent on more interesting things like movies (Another Hyderabadi craze. Put up any lousy movie and you will not get the tickets for even that movie on a weekend). And then there were 2 punjabi dhabas for the times I felt homesick and wanted to eat Aloo Paranthas (I love them!! - Boo Boo Mom where are thou?).

You must be wondering if this Blog about Hyderabad or is it about Food ??? Well I wanted to write about different cities but you know the thing about the best laid plans. All this is just coming out. I have no control over it; my fingers are just a medium. And after all "Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes" (Richard Gere says this to Winona Ryder in "Autumn in New York" - a very Bollywoodish movie)

And you know what as I write all this I realise that I have not been to any of these dhabas/cafes/tiffin centers/bandis since a long time. Or putting it more accurately since I started working. Have I developed an Attitude, grown too big for my shoes? No, it is not that but I can not figure out the reason for this change. Is it only me or does everyone change like this? I often wonder that if I was to do all those things today, wud I enjoy them as much as I did in those days. Maybe yes, Maybe not! There is this sequence in Hyderabad Blues where the Hero who has come back from USA meets up with his friend and they try to do the things they used to do previously (Going in a rickshaw, going to old eating joints etc etc). Then there is this shot of both of them sitting on the pavement on a crowded busy road and the hero says "Can not believe that I used to think all this is Fun". Does it happen to everyone?

Life goes on and these days I am too bz exploring the other kind of (read more expensive ones) eating places. Foolish me!! But the activity in this sphere is also phenomenal in Hyd. It is slowly becoming a food lovers delight.

I guess I should stop now, before someone kills me for a long long blog. More of Hyd and other cities later. Ciao.