BENGALURU: Seven years ago, to study journalism and become a writer, I moved to Hyderabad.
A city with diverse food choices, and a friendly people who are agitated by nothing except a lack of saalan in their biriyani. The city gets listed regularly among the best cities in the country. But its inhabitants know of the city’s quirks.
We know, for example, that the famed Musi river is reduced to a sewage drain. And that you can smell Hussain Sagar before you see it. But Hyderabad has been kind to me, and we have co-existed peacefully like a buffalo and the crane that perches itself atop its dirty back.
As a stand-up comedian, I tell jokes to the city’s inebriated inhabitants at night. But my real interaction with the city is restricted to my daily commute to work. The distance between my office and home is 20 minutes, according to food delivery apps. But me and my motorcycle (that is possessed by the spirit of a geriatric, senile horse) usually take an hour to travel the same distance.
I have to navigate through leaky drains that choose to spill themselves on to the road in an attempt at transparency. I have to evade delusional superbikers whose entire life is an audition for MTV Roadies. The traffic is run on a Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest.
Traffic cops are found after an accident, but never seen under ordinary circumstances.But the last two weeks have been a welcome change!Ever since news that Ivanka Trump was to visit the city, Hyderabad has decided to wash itself up and put on new clothes. The changes aren’t even cosmetic - this is like wearing new costumes to a fancy dress competition!
Roads are being cleared and painted. The gutters outside my house, that flowed along such established routes that if I looked carefully, I could predict what my neighbour ate for lunch, are being covered. Road signs are being repainted. Zebra crossings, that had faded out to resemble a dying cricket pitch on the fifth day, look spanking new. The traffic situation has improved too. Earlier, traffic junctions were unmanned and unsupervised, and one had to enter them using one’s knowledge of war formations. I often felt like Abhimanyu entering the Chakravyuh in Mahabharata, charging in and hoping for the best. These days, there are traffic lights, and I often catch a few commuters staring at them confounded, wondering if they are messages from aliens.
Manholes are being covered, and potholes are are being filled. Speed-breakers are replacing the indigenous ‘back-breakers’. Stray animals that would crowd up the road to send out the message of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam, are being cajoled to stay off the roads. The city looks and smells better, and we have you to thank for all this, Ms. Ivanka Trump.
Please visit our country again, and kindly request your father to drop by too. If possible, kindly send a message to Mr. Putin to put in a good word too.May be if foreign dignitaries visited regularly, Hyderabad would gradually become a better city. After all, as it says in our scriptures, Atithi Devo Bhava.