It was on the bus to Mancherial that I remembered the bottles of anardana I had forgotten to pack. Adilabad had been chilly and I subsisted on a plate of two idlis and several packets of potato chips. There was no direct bus to Peddapalli, one of the new districts carved out by the TRS government. So I took the bus to Mancherial and was glad to be ushered to the ladies’ seat. I had the window seat and the sun was out. But by the time I reached my destination, I had a headache, leaving me longing for anardana.
From the bus terminus, I rushed to the railway station to catch the Kagaznagar Express. On the way, I spotted a Patanjali store and I thanked the stars and Baba Ramdev. As I paid for a box of Amla Pachak, I asked the woman minding the store if the past year had been good to her. “It has been nothing less than perfect,” said Anasuya, her optimism surprising me. She commutes 20 km to the store every day but the job kept her happy. “I am single. No dependents and nothing to worry about. The note ban didn’t affect me,” she said, laughing.
How so? “I don’t need a lot of money. I can live on Rs 2,000 a month. Big families are the ones suffering,” she explained.
Still mulling over this new surprising angle to demonetisation, I stopped at the Women Police Station to eat my Amla Pachak. My headache had eased but now I was hungry. I espied an old woman roasting corn on the cob on the street outside and sensed an opportunity to have a conversation while I sated my hunger. I picked a cob and asked her to a rub a lot of lime and salt on it. As she took my tenner, I asked how business has been. The reply was a staccato burst of fire, taking down the entire political economy of Telangana: “My husband died six years ago and I haven’t received a single benefit from the government. I live with my son who has his own life. What Telangana? Curse Telangana. Nothing has happened since it came. There’s nothing for us. Not a house, not any money. Is this the way to look after old people like me?”
And she declared: “Write this! I’ll never vote for Modi or KCR again.”
Unlike the luscious American corn invading Hyderabad, this cob was of the native variety, hard to chew even for someone who’s used to opening beer bottles with her teeth. The headache threatened to come back and so I licked the salt and lime and threw the cob away.
The 30-minute journey to Peddapalli on the 12758 Up Kagaznagar Express was remarkable only for my encounter at last with the formidable mother-in-law passenger who insisted on keeping her bag on my seat rather than let me sit in it. The Peddapalli railway station was rather more interesting: it had more monkeys, looking diseased, than people. Wary of simian interest in my hair or my bag, I tiptoed out and asked the first auto driver I saw to drop me at the bus stop. “It’s only 1 km away. You can walk,” said the kind man. He reminded me of the autowallahs back home. I smiled and asked him to drop me anyway.
Mirza Ghouse Baig didn’t think the new district would change his fortunes. He had stopped believing false promises anyway. “When the state was formed, the local MLA promised a number of things. He said they would construct houses for those who had land. Nothing has happened till today. It has only become worse with the note ban,” said the 32-year-old with two children and a wife to take care of.
He used to make about Rs 300 per day driving the auto but the note ban has brought his earnings down. He might have his own auto but he wouldn’t be able to afford Rs 5,600 a year for insurance. “We cannot pay that and hence cannot get a fitness certificate for the vehicle.
“What can I do?” he said as I paid him and walked to the bus to Karimnagar.