Current location:	HydrBAAAAAAAD
Current mood:	sleepy
Current music:	The sound of gears turning in my head. Slowly.
Entry tags:	meh

HydraBadass!
So Hydrabad right. Or as the ignorant would have it, Hyderabad. On the coolness index of cities that I invented expressly for the purpose of this post Delhi scores a 10 (does that surprise you? Well then you obviously don't know me), and Agra's on the other end with a -10 (if you live in Agra I am genuinely sorry for you), Hyderabad scores a healthy, rather robust 8. Oh my gawd! Why did no one tell me about this city till now. The weather's perfect! 25 in the day 15 in the night (I think). The roads are great, the peeps be laid back (don't honk their horns for entertainment) and they make biryani so good you could be forgiven for thinking your fingers are part of the dish. In fact I think they do think that. They eat biryani with their hands. A fact that ought to repulse me, it probably would repulse me, if I could get my damn eyes off the biryani! Once again, oh my gawd!

Anyway, I get into the city on the Indian Airlines flight. The gods of vista did not choose to grant me tickets to the airline of the short red skirt. Instead, I get the flying government ka daftar. Not a total loss though. Like its foreign-going cousin I was sure Indian Airlines would have decent food. I wasn't disappointed. Even though I was given a non-vegetarian meal when I asked for a vegetarian one. No matter, citizens must not expect government employees to listen to them. I think its somewhere in the constitution. And I was in too good a mood.

The flight landed, ten minutes too late but I'm being ungrateful. People have had their flights cancelled because of fog. I was lucky just to be here. So I'm at the baggage carousel when I get an SMS telling me the number of the car thats supposed to pick me up. Impressive. Chap who picks me up speaks perfect Hindi. So perfect that I ask him whether he's from North India. He's not. Apparently everybody in HydraBAD can speak the language. Nizam's city and all I guess. Had to have a liberal smattering of Urdu speakers I guess. What we speak in Del's a combo of Urdu/Punjabi/Hindi so language's probably not going to be an issue. Good.

So I get dropped off at the "guest house", which is really just a duplex apartment with a caretaker. A colleague from the old company's already here. And so is Swami. Swami is my new best friend. Swami is the caretaker. I would marry Swami if he were a little more attractive and had sizable tits. Okay, so maybe I'm going a bit far but the guy gets me meals and can't stop thanking me! What more could I want?

We call for a cab in the evening to go have some authentic Hydrabadi biryani. The driver's this really really nice chap who gives us a tour of the city as we go. Just like that. He points out all the sites and gives us detailed history. People from Hydrabad shouldn't be allowed near Delhi. No. They might get bitten by the Delhi rude bug. We walk into the biryani joint (this place called cafe bahaar or some such) and I am instantly in love. We have to wait for a seat (its a Sunday so I guess the locals are hankering for the b-love too) and my stomach grumbles so loudly i'm afraid its going to leap out of my mouth and grab the nearest plate. Easy there boy. Biryani is had and as was wont to happen I end up overeating. I am so stuffed I think I might not fit the door on my way out. But I do and off we go to Husain Sagar Lake.

Now its a funny thing but despite having a place with a name like "Husain Sagar Lake" the Hydrabadis insist on referring to the area as Tank Bund or some such shit. Very HydraBAD of them. Tank Bund by the way is the dam that holds the lake in place. Salim (the nice chap who's showing us around) tells us they even tried changing the name of the lake once. Yeah right. Just like they changed the name of Connaught Place (oops, that's "Rajiv" Chowk!) and Victoria Terminus (whoopsie! that would be chatrapati shivaji or something like that). Whatever. Screw you right wingers.

And then I find myself sharing a romantic lakeside walk with Sachin (the colleague who's putting up in the same guest house). Or at least it would be romantic if it were the person I was thinking about at the time (if you're reading this, you know who you are). Well anyway, that done, off we go back to the guest house. Not before Sachin we've had a brush with Hydrabad's seedy underbelly though. Sachin's dying for a pack of ciggies and Salim tries getting him some off a fly-by-night operator (its night but the guy doesn't have wings). The police shows and the guy tries to cut and run. Sachin has to have his change back though :) A minor drama ensues as we drive away with Sachin still rueing the loss of 10 bucks. I would have laughed out loud if it hadn't been for the look on poor Sachin's face :D