Anyone for Hyderabad?

Posted by Anirudh in January 16, 2012
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For years I have wanted to describe Hyderabad as it ought to be described; but I haven't really bothered to strain my cerebellum to pry facts and anecdotes, marshal them, and dish them out in an ornately coherent way, when strangers on a sojourn to The City of Pearls pitched me a rather difficult question - What's Hyderabad really like? 


I say it's a difficult question because, when you live in a city with a great history you begin to take it for granted. It's even more difficult when a sublimely attractive woman asks you , for you want to give her the best, unadulterated juice that one could possibly give. All this hoping against hope that she would become your friend, and perhaps, if things fall into the right place, you could hang out for sometime on a Saturday evening in lieu of watching the good old episodes of 'Friends' on Star World.


'What's so special about Hyderabad?', Pratiksha inquired in a fervent tone. We had met at the Aero Express Bus Stop previously and had spoken about this and that before a chauffeur-driven Honda City came to pick her up. Her question was innocuous, and considering that it was only her second visit to Hyderabad, you wouldn't call her ignorant and supercilious. I say supercilious because I believe you might have observed the so in her question. And you wouldn't be in the wrong, if you surmised that she was from Mumbai. I ventured to answer her question by comparing it to Mumbai, but I pulled myself together as it struck me that it was ridiculously impertinent. I wanted to compare it to Delhi but I perished the thought at the last minute owing to the descriptions of the place that my friends who had stayed there hitherto had given me. I don't mean to give you the impression that Delhi is any less. But I simply believe that Hyderabad is categorically distinct from the Capital of India in its own singular way. If you got the building blocks of the argument, would you convince yourself that Bangalore and Chennai are way beyond the borders of the argument? Otherwise, I must urge you to read on.


The next moment I thought her question was a dig but a genial smile on her face ascertained the genuineness of her question.


However, when I started to marshal the facts in my brain, I realized how difficult it was to describe Hyderabad. No doubt Hyderabad is known internationally and the International Airport as well as the innumerable IT companies has made it truly global. And, of course, the more you think about it , the more closer you get to the precipice of ineffability. But Hyderabad, as I know it, is far more than the Biryani , the Paradise , the GVK One Mall, the Tank Bund, and the Necklace Road. It's neither a place where celebrities' children with super bikes ram into some sort of a heavy vehicle on the Outer Ring Road , nor a study center inundated with prolific "educational institutions" - albeit not completely wrong.


Hyderabad, as fellow Hyderabadis will most definitely accede, is full of sunshine and splendor. I don't mean to give you the impression that Hyderabad is impeccable, pristine, and all that sort of rot that makes a city eligible to be officiated as The City Of The Year, if an award like that exists, but what I am merely hinting at is that it is a city where great things transpire at both godly and ungodly hours, if you like classifying time as I did,  with equal chance. It's also - as only the Hyderabadis can manage - both Indian and Hyderabadi  in the same breath. We are definitely not like the residents of a certain city who , upon arriving at another place in the same country, start dividing people based on geographical location. To them, the world is binary. To Hyderabadis, the ethos subsumes the Utopian ideals.


Further, the Prince is as much a fixture as the comedian from a low-budget movie. Venerable tradition of the city sits adjacent to the innocuously funny expletives coined by Hyderabadis squandering time at the  New Sea World Cafe.  Aadabs and Namastey Mamas/Chichas are as common as Sania Mirza's short skirts(Or must I say Saina Nehwal ? ) .


Lastly, and most importantly, what else could more euphonious than Hyderabadi Hindi , a brand of Hindi  that is bequeathed to anyone who comes to city with aspirations?  After all, Hyderabadi Hindi is laced with eccentricity, exaggerated propriety, geniality, snobbery, nonchalance, and most definitely an unabashed delight for all good things of life.
But how was I to explain this intangibly complex theory to Pratiksha? As I tried to explain, her eyes started to glaze over. At first she seemed intrigued. Then a bit flummoxed. Finally, vexed. Ironically, Pratiksha didn't have time hanging heavy on her seemingly smooth palms. She was pressed for time. I don't know about India at large, but I am sure that Hyderabadis have a concept called style of life. In India if being Hyderabadi is a metaphor for a style of life, Hyderabadi Hindi is its apogee.


So I decided to give her a slice of it and delineate the gist of my theory by means of an example.
I hailed the autowallah who occupied  only one quarter of the driver's seat in a bizarre fashion , despite the fact that there were no passengers in the auto. Having nonchalantly aligned the front wheel of the auto  in the direction that led to the place we were standing, the autowallah sped towards us with considerate speed before suddenly decelerating.


Self : Narayanguda aate kya, miyan ?
Pratiksha was stunned when she saw every element of my body transmogrify into a pacca Hyderabadi. I saw her wince and  heard her cough a deprecating cough.


Autowallah : Kitte logaan hain? 
Self : Do logaan. Aate kya?
Autowallah: Aajaoo.. Baitoh..Sevaanty rupees do saab. 
Self: Kaiko Seventy? Aisa nai hota,anna.. Meter Chalra na? Kya toh bhi bol re tum
Autowallah : Itta saaman hain na.. Aur..Subah se girakh nahin mila saab. Chalo Baitoh.. 
Self : Mereko samajh mein nai aara.. Tumhari Meter chalri naa? Chaalees rupayee hota. Jyada Kaiko dena? 
Autowallah : Kitta dete aap phir?
Self: Meter pe aa jao. 
Autowallah : Sixty de do saab. 


I didn't utter a word for few seconds.


Autowallah : Chalo, meter ke upar paanch rupayee do. Bas. 
"Hamare ko bhi paise pedh pe nai ugre, anna..", I said  in an authoritatively sympathizing way as I lowered my neck to get into the auto.


And the conversation about the status quo of Hyderabadi autowallahs began in the language that is best understood only if one experiences it first hand.


Meanwhile, Pratiksha gave me a berating look that translated to 'Real gentlemen won't give a fig'.
'Huh! Hyderabadis and their idiosyncrasies' , she mumbled.


I was dumbfounded. Fortunately, yes that's right, Pratiksha missed the point as well. In her view, this was all beneath contempt.
'So, what do you think about Hyderabad in general?' I asked her.
'Huh! A sort of a shoddy place?', she replied brashly.

'No not at all', I affirmed.
'Then you have some sort of a weird taste, not to mention the jarring effect of the language', she added.
'No . I am quite sure you have got it all twisted.'
'In that case',  she said tucking a strand of her hair behind her wet ears, ' I don't seem to get the heart of the spirit of this city.'


Now tell me fellow Hyderabadis and others who have got a grip on what I have been driving at, could I have disagreed?


-Anirudh Sreerambhatla.























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Reminiscences of Old Chimpu

Posted by Anirudh in August 8, 2011
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This is a different CHIMPU! 
If you clicked on the link to this article on some godforsaken website with a sunny hope of reading something about someone you think you know, I must say that you hit the bull's eye. So much so that, if I were to rate you based on this incredible talent of yours , I'd scribble a couple more than the maximum mark on your answer sheet. For,I believe, you have bumped into the right sort of stuff. But if you think you don't know the person I mentioned in the title , don't worry. You'll probably discover him for yourself , if I succeed in painting this old chap, Chimpu, with the sort of colors that made him so entertaining in an era where classes were devoid of girls and 'lol' was only in the dictionary of junta who either had a 'yahoo' or a 'hotmail' account. Well,I would perhaps be commended by all my school mates when I say that those were good times . And , if you sat in that blasted 'Hindi' class , where incredible things transpired at the drop of a chalk - or shall I say at the utterance of a certain number with a pronounced Hindi accent, you'll either accede to whatever I said with an honest laugh--I know you are guffawing-- or reread the innuendos I have just sown, only to tighten your shoelaces as I plan jog along with you on a rather funny memory lane.  However, if you are still befuddled and haven't yet got a tenacious grip on the subject , read on, for I think you might scoop this thing in with relish. 


Chimpu --I don't know what he did to earn this sobriquet, but I was told that this nick had been given to him somewhere in the 90s by a certain batch-- was our Hindi teacher, who perhaps had the habit of chewing Paan or something of that sort which in turn rendered his Hindi-speaking tongue red. I wouldn't go so far to state that he didn't know other languages , but I'd say that his English diction was conspicuously distinct in a school where one could find 'Speak English' posters almost on every wall in the premises. Although he had a cheerful disposition towards life and a unique way to teach Hindi , if he was allowed to teach during those 45 minutes, he would always ram into some sort of trouble which , more often that not , popped up in the form of students. I don't mean to say that he was at fault , but owing to the fact that my friends and I , quite forcibly, put our beans to work to contrive some ingenious scheme on a daily basis, one could go so far to say that the Sword of Damocles was always hanging over his head. Poor old chap, who instead of banging his fists on the table in order to silence us when we made some sort of noise, which you can experience only if you ventured into some sort of a dense forest during a  dark night, coined a new phrase 'sshqq beta' , which almost sounded like 'Isshhq beta'. And what ensued? Quite rhetorical , I believe.  Group A starts laughing , group B(in the same class) takes this as a signal and bursts out into a frenzy , Group C joins the chorus only to amplify the intensity, and so on and so forth. I mean, the effect was inductive,the class became raucous, and Chimpu's miseries compounded-- so to speak.

While there are so many amusing incidents -- 'The ink spilling incident of Shashank' ,'The train alarm incident' of which I was an integral part, 'Standing on the bench just for the sake of it and deliberately falling down', 'Handwriting classes in Hindi' which most of us took lightly, 'The Dictation hour' which would later turn into a mass malpractice hour, and so on-- that would positively captivate your senses , there is one such incident that  I would like to bring to your notice. And , it's arguably the most ingenious trick contrived by one of our friends. You know who it is and what it is... Yes, you are treading on the right path.... Bingo, it's 'The Agarbatti incident'. Well, it so transpired that one day  Chimpu made an allusion to the fact , if I'm not wrong, that a teacher is tantamount to God or something on those lines. And , my friend , Anshul , without giving things a second thought, lit an agarbatti and fixed it underneath the teacher's table . While Chimpu was reading the lesson , he saw some sort of smoke engulfing him .  You shouldn't be stupefied when I say that , instead of taking a 180 degree turn and looking underneath table by following the trail of the smoke, he stooped down and looked through the gap of his legs. I mean, only a   bird under the influence of social lubricants would resort to something like that. It wouldn't stop there. His inquiries involved a lot of scrutiny which were usually relegated to the leaders of the class. And when the culprits were found --only in petty cases when the leaders knew that he wouldn't behave in an unprecedented manner-- he would write a note to the parents. The note usually read as follows : Pen not bring textbook nothing, which meant that the student practically didn't bring anything to the class. Another note went as : Parents to meet to hindi teacher. And I think you can decipher it and make the necessary changes . Well, sometimes we took the liberty of jotting down such remarks even without his intervention . Pure routine, you see! 
We always liked to atone for our sins. You know how it is . Kneel down, get out of the class, and so on and so forth. The punishments inflicted upon us were not malignant, so to speak. I mean, they never blotched our escutcheons. We were always ready to make our way out of the class, for he would enunciate his popular sentences. The dialogue usually ran as follows:

Chimpu : Beta now phirsst get out! 
Student : Sir, please sirr.. Bas ek baar chod do sir..!  ( Once I pronounced it as 'chodd do sir' and corrected myself immediately just to divert the topic)
Chimpu : Beta, maine kahan na.. Phirsst get out..
Sometimes he would kick three students out of the class..However, he called them 'outstanding' students.
But when kicked three of us out, the main dialogues would be - Both of three get out ..or maybe All of you stand in a straight circle. 

We would take pride in the fact that we were sent out by him, not to mention that it was very easy to return to the class. We would resort to the then popular ruse-- 'Sir, Madam had called us, and so we went out' and then ensconce in our places. The drama was only to buy some more time and make sure that a few more friends accompanied us. We would bask in that glory. 
We used to close the doors and the windows of our class , only to hear him say-- Open the doors of the windows, let the 'Air phorce' come in. Some of us even went so far to append it by saying, 'Sir, shall we call the army too?' 

And the class would go berserk .

The roll call would be the starting point of our mischief. You see, this man Chimpu who used to don on a Safari suit , had a peculiar way of enunciating the number 'seven'. He used to pronounce it as 'seyvonnn'...And we preyed on it like ferocious animals. The roll call would go up to seventy or so even though there were only 60 students in the class. Numbers which have seven in it were brutally abused. 

You shouldn't picture this man as an imbecile person, even though he was gullible enough to believe that we would submit our class works(we never had a homework book) on 30th of February. He was highly educative when it came to topics pertinent to sex . We never used the word sex. We called it Kamasutra in order to give it a Hindi touch, so to say. This man had great insights into societal issues and we pounced on it. You see, whenever a subjects related to females popped up, we jumped onto it. We asked questions like 'Sir, aaj kal ke ladkiyan bahut bigad gaye' . ' Bahut chote chote vastr pehente hain, sir' ..
Chimpu :' Bahut sahin baat bolen aap, par ye topic nahin hain mere dost!'
Once he quipped to one of my questions by saying, 'Sex ek kala hain beta' ..
And before he knew , the bubble of laughter burst. 

You know there are times when you are sitting in a mundane class, you feel like pulling a prank like we once did. It so happened that when Chimpu tried to hit Shashank , Chimpu hurt himself . Blood was oozing out and there was practically no danger. But I still vividly remember that Shashikanth, Phani and I rushed to him, told him that we would go and call the ambulance . We came back after the bell had rung and told him that we couldn't contact the ambulance driver . Well, I think he would have smiled when he got to the staff room.

Well, that's Chimpu for you and that's what I was driving at . And when I say they were good times, I sincerely mean it . I mean, did you ever get the chance to perpetrate something of this magnitude on a large scale? It was a non-taxable lucrative business. 
And let me for once state something categorically. However hard we may try to imitate this old chap, he still remains inimitable. Well, he's indeed our Inimitable Chimpu.


If someone said that Chimpu was a social glue that bound us together, fortified our friendship and was the reason for our unswerving unity, well, yes., I couldn't agree more with that fellow..

So, can I take this opportunity to wish you guys 'Happy Friendship Day' ?

-Anirudh  
(I still remember his phone number. And if anyone meets him , do tell him that I could send him a copy of it in Hindi. My handwriting is still 'Atee Sundar' .. And , I believe 'Mahabharath ke Arjun ki tarah teer seedha nishane pe laga hoga?' )

PS: If you found anything amusing in this , please bear it in mind that I wrote it while I was NOT listening to a mundane lecture. And if you found something bland or something written in a hasty manner, please understand that I was being tortured by some female teacher. 

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Have you been through 'it' ?

Posted by Anirudh in August 6, 2011
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Have you ever been in a situation that took a turn on its own? The question usually begins with an innocent inquiry, you reply , without prevaricating ,with an equally considerate answer , then suddenly , without anyone knowing , the person questioning trods onto a delicate territory, jumps to some sort of a bizarre conclusion and upsets the apple cart. Or worse, the situation could get embarrassing. 
If you still haven't got a grip on what I have been trying to drive home , I can assure you, rather categorically , that it's not the sort of question Simi Garewal asked Deepika Padukone on 'Simi Selects India's Most Desirable'. Not even close to what Karan Johar asked John Abraham on one particular show.And it's definitely not the sort of question-- to which the answer could be a calculated spiel--the HR guy hurls at you when he/she thinks that you're too smart a bird for their company. You may be thinking at this point as to why I haven't described this quirky situation by means of an example, which could fortify what I intend to convey. But, if I were to paint it using the few colors that make my case , I'd only be resorting to crude generalizations and oversimplifications of the matter at hand. Wouldn't I?
So, if you think that you have been through S#!T - let's just call it so for time being-  do share your story. And, if you would allow us to be a bit callous this one time, we might even ROFL..

-Anirudh..

1 comments

Where do we stand?

Posted by Anirudh in July 6, 2010
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As a child,you've told lies but as a parent you hate being lied to.As a parent,it's embarrassing to see your child throw tantrums but it's okay if you got irascible and called it  "Work Pressure".
As students,we always want state-of-the-art technology and reputed faculty with deep insights but as owners of institutions we find reasons to back up our incapabilities.As young Entrepreneurs,it's(excellence) an objective and a driving force but it eventually boils down to a lofty ideal.
As a student,you desperately want that extra mark even though it wouldn't make any difference but as a Professor you are reluctant to award it.
As a student,you disliked the teacher who played favorites and today as a teacher some of your students are too special to you.
As a student,it's okay to indulge in malpractice but as a Principal you abhor it.
As a customer,you bargain to get maximum discount but as a businessman you spin business models to maximize profit and strictly condemn bargaining.
As an employer,you like to see your employees working late ..but back home you don't like working members of your family staying late at work.
As a victim,you want the jury to be on your side but as an offender and a law-breaker,you want all the forces governing the system to take your side.
As an Engineer,you disliked precision but as a consumer of a product,you want it to be impeccable.
As a pedestrian,you crossed the road at wrong places creating chaos but as a driver of a vehicle,you speak about traffic rules.
As an artist performing on stage,you want claps and not clamour.. but as audience,you like hooting.
As a traveler,you swooshed past a driver signalling for lift... but when you were helpless on the highway you wanted that speedster to pull-over.You don't want to travel that extra mile but you want everyone at your rescue in dire situations.


"Are we two-faced?Do we practice double-standards and nepotism? 
And How many images do you see as reflections when you look into the mirror-one or two?
So where do we(in general) stand? " I asked Praveen.
" I believe our position is precarious and is in a limbo.",Praveen replied instantly.I knew it was well-rehearsed answer.
"What else can we do? Put your feet in my shoes and then re-consider the present-situation.You see,they are immutable facts.Why can't you see it from my standpoint and proceed further?" Praveen said in a rather overwhelming tone.

"Praveen,my feet are too big for your shoes!" was my riposte.

                                 : The Story Of B'wood Actor Dilip Kumar


Image Courtesy: http://www.gearfuse.com/


-Anirudh Sreerambhatla

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