The Hyderabad I knew....

It’s been almost 5 years since I left USA

For 23 years I had been away

And then we decided to come back to stay

In this city of culture and history and pearls

The city where I'd spent a good many years

But it seems to have lost all its beauty and charm

The crowds and pollution are cause for alarm

At every street corner that I can recall

Now stands a beast of a new shopping mall

Wide open spaces that were commonly seen

Have been transformed by developers hungry for green

Into hodge podge apartments packed like sardines

It was a city of Nawabs and the Salarjung

Of raven haired damsels and heroes unsung

The Moguls, Nizams, the Qutb Shahis

Charminar, Golkonda and the Baradari

Where you could almost hear the dancing girl

Taramati in her devilish dervish whirl

But these magnificent signs of a once glorious past

Have turned into eyesores and are decaying fast

Now spoilt and ruined beyond repair

The paint is peeling the walls are threadbare

Except for graffiti etched in so deep

By some loutish bloke or senseless creep

(I love you Saroja marry me your Sandeep)

Tenacious climbers spreading their branches

On the seven old tombs and their seven arches

And smoke and fumes of this modern city

Blacken the sandstone of antiquity

There’s litter now, the beauty is lost

Frito Lay chips and Kit Kat wrappers tossed

By people with money who vacation out west

Who clearly don’t know how to protect their best!

The signs of progress are all around

And all day you hear construction sound

Pounding and hammering well after hours

We’ve argued and pleaded with all of our neighbors

Laborers sweating, living mouth to hand

The women work, children play in the sand

The sun beats down on their sari covered heads

Their bodies are tired, oh to sleep on the bed!

80 rupees they earn as their daily wage

While their owners browse the Page 3 page

Hoping the photographer captured them at the party

Hosted by Mrs. Glam Socialite Lady

Ornate homes with pillars and portals

Vastu compliant for the wealthiest mortals

(“Is the master bedroom on the Southwest

The Italian cooking range facing east?

I’ll have to start planning my house warming feast”)

And high rise apartments of concrete and glass

Beckoning the NRI’s who moved back en masse

With  cutting edge names like Mantri Celestia

And Aliens Space station and Rainbow Vista

(Mildew Apartments is luxurious too

but realizing their folly, it got changed to Mild Dew)

Promising you all your Bay Area comforts

Like centralized gas and smooth tennis courts

And telecom systems and 24/7 security

You won’t need to leave, it’s a self contained city

And on the 27^th floor the air is clean 

No mosquitoes, all you’ll see is manicured green

But they forget to mention that in half of a year

The plaster may crack, little lines will appear

And the windows will warp and the toilets may leak

The fans will start humming and the faucets will squeak

You call up the plumber, the painter, the mason

He says “we’ll be there” and you say “hurry, hasten”

And the clock keeps on ticking and the seepage gets worse

And you rant and you rave and you swear and you curse

Cos no one ever said when you left the USA

That in this glorious city nothing moves before midday!

Then finally just as the sun starts to set

The painters appear with white paint and bucket

After sanding and scraping they repaint the plaster

You pay them, they leave, they have fixed the disaster

But then suddenly your eye falls on the windowsill

The white of the paint is now on the black grille

So the painters come back saying “Sir don’t you worry,

a little touch up, we’ll be done in a jiffy”

And just as you feared by the time they are done

The wall now has traces of ob-si-di-an

(You wish you could lay your hands on a gun!)

There are Internet problems and telephone glitches

Power outages and exploding switches

Online cash transactions that stop in mid air

So you stop and you wonder – did you pay that airfare?

Price stickers that stay on and refuse to peel

Snack packets where you have to blast open the seal

Juice and milk cartons sealed with a tab

Which breaks off in the middle so you give it a stab

Paper towels that will disintegrate when wet

Its maddening and it gets me terribly upset

Faulty appliances, rusty nails

A sorely lacking attention to detail

But by now you have learned not to take any chances

And you learn to “adjust” to these annoyances

42 degrees Celsius 30 in the night

That’s 107 and 86 Fahrenheit

Summer in Hyderabad is March April May June

Don’t even dare to step out after 12 noon

Leaves curl and shrivel your skin starts to dry

Nothing to stop the sun blazing the sky

Even sugar cane juice, lemon flavored cold water

Will not quench your thirst or make you less hotter

The AC’s get turned on, desert coolers get filled

Mango and Pineapple juices get chilled

You don’t want to eat your appetite is killed

The streets become bare from noon until six

Except for the stray dogs swarming with ticks

Circling the trash cans hungry for picks

And then they fill the night air with their barks

Cruising the street like the Jets and the Sharks

The only creatures that seem to survive

Are lizards and roaches, they breed and they thrive

And barefoot children not a care in the world

The streets are their playground they swing from the tree

The ice cream man goes by they look wistfully

The dust swirls around and comes in thru the doors

It settles on counters, your skin and your pores

It clogs the air filters and coats the glass table

You pull out your duster with the US Swiffer label

Each disposable cloth lasts a week the box boasts

But one day of dusting turns it to dark toast

Cos the Hyderabad dust so black and so grimy

Turns the cloth into shreds in one single day

As the evening approaches and you think to step outside

The temperature has lessened you’ll no longer be fried

Then you hear the familiar sound of the DDT truck

Spewing white spray for mosquitoes run amok

So you run back inside you beat a hasty retreat

Cos you know when it comes hurtling down the street

That the fumes meant to kill those annoying gnats

Will kill you instead, yes it is a known fact

And as if the city is not polluted enough

The Municipal workers who fill up the troughs

With debris, yard waste and other trash items

Set the whole pile on fire it’s an easier system

(Why bother with compost, recycling and reuse

when this is so quick? Its an easy excuse)

And the smoke fills the air and spreads into our home

It chokes me and gags my reflexes and then some

While the authorities in charge have so careless become

The traffic situation is equally treacherous

Civic sense is lacking, the driving atrocious

Buses, then vans, then cars and then scooters

Autos then pedestrians, that’s the pecking order

Red light is stop, green light is go

That’s what they told us and that’s what we know

But here in this city, the rules are all twisted

As green turns to red they rev up their speed

Before red turns to green they’ve zoomed off ahead

The cops are too lazy they turn a blind eye

They’re too busy sipping on Irani chai

And people like us who follow the rules

Are left waiting at lights, looking like fools

If you slow down your car to let someone go

You’ll disturb his rhythm and upset his flow

He is so used to dodging and avoiding traffic

You’ll just throw him off by being altruistic

Then there are speed bumps that crop up overnight

Built almost like Mount Everest in height

If by chance you happen to zip over them, Pouf!

It’s likely you could be tossed right thru the roof

The concept of sidewalk just does not exist

And if there is one it’s full of cyclists

Crossing the road is a hot potato

And sometimes, you’ll laugh now, I have used an auto

To get from one side of the street to the other

I did this one time along with my mother

Then there are times you are in a hurry

To get to your meeting or airport, you scurry

Only to find out the cars have been halted

Lorries diverted, pedestrians stopped

So that one of the many corrupt politicians

Can cruise thru the streets in his armed Suburban

And if you ever get sick and are in an ambulance

God help you cos you don’t stand a chance

No one will move, no one will behave

You’ll be stuck in the traffic and go straight to your grave

The new six lane freeways are pretty snazzy

The Outer Ring Road and the PVR highway

to the Rajiv Gandhi airport at Shamshahbad

(Rated 5^th best  in the world I might add)

You fly over the city in the pre-paid cab

But the view below you is awfully drab

Houses and tenements in sad disrepair

So close to each other there’s no room to spare

Shops sharing walls to sell liquor and beer

The same walls that say “do not pass urine here”

Electricity power and TV cable cords

Dangerously bunched up power hazards

Children on rooftops with no parapets

Flying their kites and white paper jets

Each trying to win with glass coated maanja

(All the shops have it now, its imported from China)

Cafes crowded with people shelling out money

To sample the famous Hyderabadi biryani

Above all this squalor are hoardings and billboards

Distractions meant to take your mind off the roads

For new shopping meccas and jewellery sales

Kalaniketan wedding mall, exhibitions and melas

NRI villas and gated communities

With golf course sized gardens and other amenities

And far away in the hazy distance

You see the majesty and grandeur that once was

Mosques and minarets dotting the skyline

Now dulled and decayed in sorry decline

And in the midst of all this sorry ruin

You’ll still hear the call of the muezzin

But you leave this behind as you get to your flight

The airport is new all gleaming and white

Attendants to help you and porters to spoil you

Security will scan you and frisk you and stamp you

Landmark, McDonalds and Café Barista

Pizzas and croissants the food choice will tease you

The city gets forgotten, you head to your bay

As you get on your flight and go far away.

Poetry by me, pics by Lakshmi