The Iconoclast!

I was at Paradise the other day. No, not the idealized place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless, this is the other one... in Secunderabad, which is quite the opposite... where everything other than fellow human beings can be bought for a price.

This is probably the first time I had been there in the night and I felt as if I was in a different city altogether. The entire area gave me an eerie feeling... it was nowhere near the Hyderabad that I grew up in and know of.

For those who have not been to the Paradise Circle (at night), you can relate it to an extended market street, extended atleast by a few kilometers, the roads are a typical Indian bazaar, with hawkers yelling at the top of their voices, customers negotiating even louder and above all policemen appearing once in a while using their lathi on an occasional hawker's cart and generally doing what they do best.

But this was not like a normal Hyderabadi street experience (though it might have looked like it), for one the shoves from the fellow pedestrians were much stronger, more like pushing, the curses and abuses were much louder and *ahem* more vulgar and there was an eternal fear that some one behind is going to pick your pocket or thrust a knife into your spine.

Something just did not feel right. There was a constant voice in my head that was telling me that I was not in Hyderabad anymore. These are not the same vociferous people I know and love. I was only way too pleased when I jumped into the car, rolled up the glasses and left... thankful that nothing was broken and nothing was lost. The feeling was profound and lasted much after I had left the place.

I mean you could go inside the alleyways of Koti and Abids and check out the different markets, that would only make you feel like you have gone back in time like a bit of nostalgia, but this was different. This wasn't anything like the Hyderabad I grew up in.

On telling about this to a friend who resides on the other side of the Hussain Sagar Lake, he simply said (and I quote) "You finally understood it, Hyderabad is not one, it is two cities put together. And both have different styles and cultures. Both have different histories which differentiate the cities." He further told me that the feeling was mutual and exactly similar to what he experiences when I take him to Subbiah's.

Is it really that way ??  What could probably differentiate (culturally) people living literally a stones throw away from each other ??

OBSERVATION 1 

The Great Global Economic Depression has hit Hyderabad...

Proof?

Subbiah is planning of shutting his Samosas shop...

Subbiah now plans of going back to his ancestral village some where in the remote jungles of Andhra Pradesh (Does Andhra Pradesh have Jungles?) and start a hotel there due to over the top prices and trickling customers.

I mean how can we ever claim in the future that the best samosas were once made in Hyderabad! Read this post for more info.

Now all that we are left with are Yadigiri's Bajjis which are hopelessly atrocious. Seriously if you consider them edible, you should visit an ENT specialist.

OBSERVATION 2 

Deccan Chronicle is not a news paper.

It could be any one of these :-
a) Toilet Paper
b) Paper to wrap up Bajjis and Samosas
c) Money-earners by selling them to raddiwallahs.

but never a news paper. Seriously sample this for a so called front page article -

Blasts Rock Assam
A Series of Seven highly powerful... (Turn to Page 2)

(Contd from Page 1)...bombs exploded in Guwahati, the capital city of Assam killing 4 and injuring 12.
By  Our Special Correspondent

And they also give widely useful news like the fact that Deccan Chargers has a group of fans who tatooed their bodies with the logo, and the amazing news that Mallika Sherawat has a milk shake named after her.

Oh! What would have happened to me if it weren't for Deccan Chronicle!?!?!?

OBSERVATION 3

Females in Hyderabad have no taste. (I ain't talking about food!)

I mean how else do I explain the fact that any girl (from Hyderabad), would agree to go for a date to sip "spaeshal masala chaai" at "Cafe Sensashunal" at Chor Bazaar with a pan chewing, supari spitting, chindi chor like Yadigiri who doesn't even know how to make proper mirchi bajjis... while I am still single and desperate!!!

P.S. - To try and impress the females of Hyderabad, I plan on buying a few of those t-shirts they sell on the streets of Koti with photos of Hrithik Roshan and Mahesh Babu printed on them... What say?? Yadigiri has atleast a dozen of them!

Signing Off

It is trully funny how people screw themselves up in the name of their future and development.

With the elections coming into full swing and campaigning at its peak and all, its quite depressing to watch half in horror and half in disbelief that parties are willing to give colour televisions, highly subsidised groceries, almost free rice and splitting the state in two. What they are not giving are the ones that are actually required - free and compulsory education upto the age of 14 (maintaining good standards of education and good teachers) and better amenities to the farmers who form 70% of India's workforce.

But what is hard to bear is the fact that, in India, a farmer earns less than what a child labourer earns in a factory. Both of these facts are equally shameful, cause both are India's future - the agriculture and the child!!

I hope after six decades of utter nonsense displayed by both the politicians and the voters, they have learnt their lessons. Sops don't count, and that the politicians' "What-eva, I’ll do what I want!" attitude has got to change to "OMG! My Pant's on fire!!" 

And with the politicians fighting over who abused whom and who was the most corrupt of the lot it is hard to choose for the lesser of the two evils and most "INTELLIGENT" people just sit at home and watch IPL Ver2.0. Its hard to imagine with all the happenings in the country that India in 2020 will be an influential superpower, I would be happy if it becomes self sustainable and erases enough poverty from the country.  

I hope the voters understand one thing "People should not be afraid of their governments. The Government should be afraid of their people"

The worst part of Indian politics is even though most of the leaders end up in jail after being involved in scams and schemes they have a million supoorters who scream into the televisons that it's "sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person" is impeded "from doing important work."

Then again there are some people who quit posts and "spend more time with my family" , which in their line of work means :

• They asked me to resign
• I'm quitting before you can fire me
• I totally screwed things up, so I'm leaving before you can hold me accountable 

I hope this year we can see one man; one leader who enters the secretariat with honest intentions.

APRIL 16th --- Don't forget to Vote. We may have a chance to make some real change in the political scenario this time around. Every vote counts.

People in Zimbabwe today do not care much about politics. They do not care whether the land is owned by blacks or whites. All they care about is that a $100 billion monthly salary will buy them just two eggs. In two days it will buy them only one.

There are billionaires and trillionaires in Zimbabwe who can afford to buy nothing. Hyperinflation was last year reported to be 8.97 Sextillion (numbers don't make sense anymore!!). I read a story about a simple pasta lunch for two cost Z$ 1.8 Trillion!!!

Now it has come to this: Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on. It has already removed 25 zeroes from its currency and yet the numbers run into trillions and zillions.

Robert Mugabe reallocated all lands from white farmers to black farmers, who had little knowledge in the modern techniques of farming and yielding better crops. This led to food shortage and then set off a chain reaction. 

The Mugabe regime has destroyed Zimbabwe. It has presided over the brutal oppression of the opposition, a cholera crises, massive food shortages and the total collapse of their economy. Furthermore anyone brave enough to report this has been bullied, beaten and driven into exile.

Notes of currency were being used as toilet paper in most places. Prices keep doubling every other day... ie a item worth a Rupee today is worth two tomorrow. Before the crunch, a beer at a bar in Harare, the capital, cost 15 billion Zimbabwean dollars. At 5 p.m. July 4, 2008, it cost 100 billion ($4 at the time) in the same bar. An hour later, the price had gone up to 150 billion ($6).

Hope and faith are two impossible words for the people, change in government is something they can't even dream of. What does the future hold for this country of trillionaires who can't afford a meal a day. What does it look forward to, let me rephrase What "can" it look forward to ? 

All this in a country whose one dollar was worth 1.5 American dollars hardly two decades ago. And now a deadly epidemic of cholera poses a threat to the country where already 1/3rd of the population has left for greener pastures and better living.

With the global recession setting in, Zimbabwe and its people, faces a tough task at fighting and survivng the crises. Hope has died for the people of Zimbabwe, and the world too has betrayed it.