Hyderabad Blues

Everyday these days I literally ache with longing, to return to those days spent in Hyderabad.

It isn't that I donot enjoy Europe or Vienna, I must clarify. I have made strong bonds here, when I move  to the States I will miss every single thing, even the freezing Austrian indifference. I can imagine how often I will look back with misty eyes to my wild adventures here, struggling to remember small details about each person I met, each place I visited, each new emotion I felt. I have this yearning-for-daysgoneby blues time to time.

So, as I was saying, I'm literally aching. I miss my room-mate and my ex-room-mate, that class full of colourful people, that school of Life Sciences. I remember those long corridors of the LH where I studied the days before the exams at a stretch sometimes for 20 hours, swearing always to start-early-and-never-do-this-again. I especially miss snoozing the alarm till 5 minutes before the 9 AM classes, I even miss missing my morning sambar-idli breakfast and those scorns from my room-mates. I remember those crazy bike rides in deflated tyres, those sleepy afternoon classes, dropping-by at Gops, Student's canteen, that evening chai near F-hostel, Anna's veg biriyani. I long for that typical musty HCU-y smell, its spirit, its people, its forests, its mushroom rocks and peacock lakes. Those 2,600 acres of home. I miss that whole Bengali crowd, and that North-Indian crowd, and that South-Indian too and this GUSH right now is literally UNBEARABLE.

I just can't believe I am not there, really. I can vividly recollect every single detail. Those long wires meeting in the horizon down the road to South Campus, I remember looking up to them as I biked. I remember that quiet happiness every time I entered campus after holidays.

How much I long for that sugarcane-juice, even the Hyderabad-sun, the swings in the Children's Park, the road to ILS, the beers in VC's rock, the CAUTION: DONOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINTs.

I miss those escapes to EFLU and the last minute hurried glance over the MMTS schedule book.

That unbearably sweaty train ride, that unbearably crowded station and finally the reunion with rum and weed and those random stoners! Fuko and terrible, terrible anticlimaxes. 

Those long nights full of conversations in empty buildings and elevators, swearing, talking and laughing to hide tears. That cigarette shop, that dew-drenched lawn, that stalker from Penna-Reddy law college.

I must add that I really miss the Lingampally Siddiqi, the Indranagar Dominos, even the food from the horrible Shanghai Chef. None of the snazzy restaurants and fashionable food here feel like home.

Which brings me to that second home in Gopanpally, cooking dal and chapathis, that liquor shop, that grocery store we bought eggs from.

Those few amazingly intense short-lived friendships.

And of course, that ONE unforgettable person.

I have left. THIS is the truth. And life has gone on.

Well, no wait, I have also left behind and moved on. The ultimate tragedy of life is when you have to leave the home you found and made all by yourself.