Well, the reason for the over-the-long-weekend Hyderabad trip is basically nothing, apart from the fact that I ran out of creative ideas to kill three days at a stretch in Bangalore. This trip was a sheer product of dread at ruining a nice holiday with the idiot box and some insipid novels (the bibliophile in me is suffering from acute dearth of intellectual stamina).
I spent my time with friends, discovering what has changed in them and what hasn’t changed in Hyderabad, apologizing at times rather earnestly on why I couldn’t make it to their weddings/ engagements, handling over belated wedding presents, checking out remote areas like Bala Nagar and Suchitra, meeting a couple of online pals for the very first time, watching a couple of movies for IMAX and City Planet sake, taking a long walk at General Bazaar during a light drizzle, driving around the city on one good old engineering times lady bike of my pal wearing a helmet, and in free time hogging Paradise Biryanies and Irani Chaies.
There are some uninvited realizations and lessons too. I realized that I lost a piece of the gullible me when I couldn’t trust an autowalah on face value. Especially when my suspicion proved right. I realized that I needed to be more assertive, when someone asked me to pay a price for companionship. I realized that people change and especially when you meet pals after a gap of some years my mental image of them won’t fit with what they currently are. And, I could shed some biases and prejudices that I nursed of Hyderabad, for I realized that at heart I do like the larger than life attitude of the city.
This short trip to Hyderabad proved out to be quite eventful. Indeed.
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