It’s complete chaos and a marvellous experience. When you wake up in the morning and walk to your balcony and see that you can no longer see the roads and the drains have popped their lids and are throwing up bubblish fountains of suspicious coloured water, you know it’s going to be a day where one has to be at your very best. As you watch this seasonal spectacle manifest itself, your most basic and primal instincts travel from the back of your head and set camp right in front somewhere above the eyebrows and behind the forehead. You will have to keep that space clear for the rest of the monsoon season.
You go through morning routine like always but accept new challenges with far less complaint than you would otherwise on a typical Hyderabad day when it is hellish hot and dry as never mind. Summers in Hyderabad are very dry and let us leave it at that. You need that morning cup of sugary tea and you will without any complaint shift the induction stove to the bedroom because there is no power in the kitchen. There you brew your tea while seated on the floor with your legs crossed under you like that vendor you brought fish from last Sunday. You will realise that he doesn’t have it that bad after all and you just have it better and that both are good. Trade places and you just might once again work your place up to where you are today. Then you walk down to the basement and find out why it is that you have power in the bedroom and a dead pulse in the kitchen. The building maid wakes up tired and groggy and tries to explain why everything was the way it was but you tell her it’s alright and move on straight back up to chart out what needs to happen over the next few hours. You take the hour and break it into four quarters and move accordingly. Minimalism is more than just a term favoured by your architect or fashion consultant. The rest of the morning will chug along as usual despite the chaos out on the streets below.
If you are a regular dandy who likes to dress sharp when he steps out for work, the grey skies of Monsoon Hyderabad and grey-green waters on the roads will bring about a sea change in you. You will reach out for your most worn out pair of shoes and the most boring shirt you can think of and a pair of jeans that you wouldn’t wear to a regular night out with the guys and still feel your best. The worst will come when you realise that you cannot call for a cab and that the only rickshaws that are going to be plying the roads will have drivers of the worst kind. The one that I had the misfortune to ride with was a boy of barely eighteen. And he was atrocious. He simply would not stop. He puttered down to minimum and all the while that I negotiated the price with him, he kept on riding. By the time we reached consensus on the price and route, I had jogged a good 70 meters from the point where I had first latched onto his vehicle.
Broken down vehicles may be commonplace in a city but a broken down vehicle on a rainy day in Hyderabad will force you to step out of your rickshaw and call upon your improvisational skills and for a few minutes on what promises to be an eventful day, compel you to act out the role of a traffic policeman caught in the middle of a chaotic jam and create a symphony out of the many honk-honk and aiy-aiy around you. That is how you finally make it to the workplace- with a story to tell and no one to tell it to.
Many things are likely to happen on a rainy day in Hyderabad. What could also happen is that you could step out in the afternoon and find that the skies have cleared, the hellish heat is back and the quick flowing streams of suspicious looking water have all dried up and it is just another day of good roads, bad drivers and worse drainage, all telling you that one is better off living and working somewhere in the Hills.
Righting Writing 