Hyderabad Blues.. Part 1

Life seems to teach us so many things by letting us experience the never experienced facets, by putting us across new people and places time and again. I had never in my dream known that I would be moving to a new city away from my family and that too for a job was the rarest thing to have happened. A couple of months after completing my engineering a job offer from the then one of the top companies of the country was too tempting to let go and after a lot of friends and family discussion decided to take the offer.This was the first time ever I was going away from my family, and it was the toughest decision for dad as he had never let any of us (me, sis & bro) stay even at granny's place for more than a couple of hours. As a family we always dined together irrespective of how busy one was. All said and done the decision was made hoping I will be back home after 3 months as that was the duration of the training.

I landed in the City of nawabs- Hyderabad in march 2006, hyd was definitely not new to me as i had visited the city a couple of times earlier thanks to the fact that my Cousin sis had found her soulmate in hyd. The first day in hyd and particularly at the host venue was a different experience altogether- Islands of curious & excited students everywhere, a medical check up, a few familiar faces & a day long documentation process. After completing all the joining formalities now the big question was where would I stay, finding an accomodation is definitely one challenging task to do. Luckily an old friend from bangalore who was also posted in hyd was of great help in finding a not so great PG and thats when i for the first time realized the value of networking.. Since dad had to leave on the same day I had to move into the PG immediately and parting away from dad at that moment seemed like somebody was taking my life away from me. Huh.. I still cannot forget the way we both cried , I had never cried like that before and everyone around were looking at us like we were from some other planet. Once i shifted to the PG dad left to the airport and i continued sobbing for the next few hours.

The room was mostly 15*10 and was supposed to be shared by 5 girls ,the room had 4 single beds laid out in a single row and 1 bed laid separately close to the wall., 2 wardrobes and a steel almirah, one window and just one bathroom . Luckily the single bed laid separately was for me as the other four girls in the room had been staying in there since the last few months were all from a single city and had occupied the other 4.The suppose to be my bed had been very nicely messed up and piled with books, clothes, wet towels etc etc. I said to myself welcome to hostel life and started clearing up the place.. thanks to mom who had always insisted that I learn to do the household chores.. here it was coming of use and i was already missing home especially my room which I only shared with my sis. After clearing the mess up the next important task was to find a place for my luggage in the wardrobes, but unluckily the 2 wardrobes were already filled with clothes, books, eatables, shampoo bottles, soaps and so on, looked like a mini mart of some kind. The only place i could find was a single shelf in the steel almirah and I had 2 bags of luggage, one big bag filled with my clothes (couldn't help for i was a shopping freak especially with apparels), one bag with some stuff mom insisted i carry along with a few books which i thought would be of use during my training (and i wasn't wrong, though they helped someone els more than they did to me). Here I would thank myself for having always given importance to only two things in life- my clothes and my books, other stuff hardly mattered. From 2 wardrobes in my room back home to a single shelf was difficult to manage and putting it all in one shelf was not a good idea so I decided to keep the books in the shelf and the clothes remained in the bag. Looked like a herculean task achieved and once things were set i decided to visit my cousin sis and shop some stuff for the room.

The advantage of having di was immense as i could visit her anytime i wanted to and then she cooked extremely delicious food, from chicken biryani to mirch curry to kadai paneer to sheer khurma. The warmth by expressed by di and her lil kids was my saviour for the first few days and i needed it badly as i had to join office after 3 days. These 3 days would have been difficult without her and the kids.. love them for it. After the lil shopping di dropped me back to the hostel and when i reached my room all my roomies looked at me like they would eat me up anytime, i greeted them by a simple hi and introduced myself and here started the list of instructions, you should come to the room before 10 pm , I nodded my head and went to sleep. A new place generally dosent put you to sleep early but i guess the stress of cleaning and shopping and the stomach full dinner came to my rescue and i quickly fell asleep. the next 2 days were spent exploring the city with di and the kids, it was fun but i missed home , i missed my frnds, i missed my room , i missed my scooty, i missed bangalore..

The first day of training was about to start and the surprising part was that the timings were 6.45 am to 1.45 pm, the campus was more than 30 kms away from the hostel and the company bus started from the pick up point by 5.45 in the morning.. with 5 girls sharing the room and the bathroom it was quite a scene , so i decided to be the first person to use the bathroom even if i had to get up at 4.30 in the morning, so the struggle began right from the first day and continued for quite sometime..

What happened once the training started was possibly the best thing to hav happned ever and
will follow in the posts to come..