Letters from the Past

Trips to Hyderabad, though extremely enjoyable, are always slightly difficult. They come laden with their baggage of nostalgia, of sunny summer vacations whiled away in bliss, the prospect of adulthood a mere blip on the horizon that scarcely bothered us as children. The adults were there to supply us with Frooti and ice-cream, and all we had to do was figure out which movies and amusement parks we wanted to be taken to.

We're all too grown up now for our own good- it has been eleven years since all of us converged together on the house our grandfather built, its walls abundantly shaded by fruit trees. It still stands proudly on a street where most other old houses have been demolished to make way for ugly, monotonous blocks of flats, swathed in blue plastic as they await completion.

What I like best about this old house is its atmosphere- how seeped in stories from the past it seems, retaining an identity that my cousins and I can only try to understand through anecdotes coaxed out of the adults on lazy afternoons or over a long, leisurely lunch in the kitchen. Poring over photographs from the seventies, you seek in the face of the young girl kneeling amidst unknown people the features of your mother; you realise, through careful attention, that the man with the thick moustaches and the sidelocks is actually your uncle whose only claim to hair now is a thin layer of dyed frizz on a smooth, sun-browned pate.

The best stories come from my grandmother. I'd always marvelled at the manner in which marriages were arranged all those decades ago, when girls were barely educated and had little say in choosing the men they were to spend their lives with, rear children with. Several circumstances came together in these choices, and the cases I found most repulsive were those where a girl married a cousin or, worse still, an uncle. Money was scarce, and if a girl wasn't a ravishing beauty, she was married off to the first reasonably "eligible" man who came along. My grandmother thankfully wasn't in one of these abominable marriages, but of course she didn't have the freedom that we, two generations on, can boast of. She loved and respected her much older husband, but also feared him. However, there was a tenderness between them that becomes evident in her fond reminiscences of him, and letting her talk of him when the mood takes her is my way of learning about a grandfather I've never seen.

During my most recent visit, she told me of the letters Grandfather wrote her. In 1948, as trouble brewed in Hyderabad, she was sent off to Thanjavur to her parents' place. Grandfather, living a solitary life, wrote her a four-page letter everyday, and with a flourish his wife couldn't reproduce in her less articulate replies. She saved the letters (now I know where my penchant for keeping all correspondence comes from- I cannot even bring myself to clear my inbox), and I wouldn't be surprised if she took them out occasionally for a peek at them, for a waft of the bitter-sweet breeze of nostalgia.

I asked to see the letters, and Grandmother agreed immediately to show them to me, but on the condition that I wouldn't read them. Of course I wouldn't, I told her, my Tamil-reading abilities being close to zero. So she took them out of the box she kept them carefully in, spreading open the sheets off-white with age and tearing at the folds. The pages were closely covered in faded black ink, and signed in English. At the top right-hand corner, the two letters I saw bore dates from September 1948. Grandfather's handwriting was majestic; not traditional, perhaps, but imposing and authoritative in its own way. I held the fragile sheets gently, trying to embody with character the face I'd only seen in photographs.

"Sixty-three years," said Grandmother, counting off the decades on her fingers bent with age. Quietly meditative for a moment, she then closed her eyes and slipped into prayer- or maybe a dream from the days when she wore vermilion in her parting and flowers in her hair.

Revisiting Hyderabad

Hyderabad, yet again, seeps into my veins (or refuses to cleanse itself out of them). However, I still cannot find it in myself to love the city enough.

The fly-over rises over a lake choked by a thick bed of algae; buffaloes wallow in the shallow pools near the edge where milkmen bathe their cows. Vehicles inch down the road, almost abreast of one another, jostling for space and air. Plumes of smoke splutter from engines of vehicles which, doubtless, would have passed the pollution test. A green-painted bus passes by, still advertising the World Military Games held in 2007. Disembodied voices chanting poetry waft from a single-storeyed 'school'- a building with very few rooms and an open storeroom heaped high with notepads and folders. Grey water gushes through a broad drain by the low wall. There is no evidence of a playground. Or children, for that matter, on this blazing Saturday afternoon. Could the sun be the culprit, shining unabashedly when a soft December wind should be sending yellow leaves drifting off trees? Or is it something as practical as exams and the constant race that we have so successfully embroiled ourselves in?

Box-like houses, discoloured, chipped and generously cobwebbed, stand in rows- no colour, no sign of habitation, not even a clothesline. Trees block the sunlight out, their shadows splayed across the walls. A temple with vermilion-red walls, pictures of deities painted in bright colours, spreads out in a small compound a few steps below road-level. Further down, spires, domes and intricately-carved minarets peep out from behind high walls.

Shops. Plenty of them. Glistening outlets which market goods from Cambodia, Sri Lanka and India under famous names, filling up coffers in Europe and the US and expanding egos closer home. Right next to the shack where the sweaty mechanic in grease-streaked clothes crouches by the rickety old motorbike and the stall that stocks everything from betel leaves to copies of economic intrigue.

Beggars cluster at the traffic signals, emaciated babies held at the waist in dirty rags by tired mothers, drunken fathers lolling on the dividers. You don't want to encourage them- but it isn't easy to turn away either, cold-hearted and indifferent; only, you know that single coin you give them isn't going to help them anyway, and you wish you could do something more, then forget about your resolutions promptly once the light turns green. Fickle, cold-hearted humanity.

The fly-overs and the faux-modernism cannot mask the infrastructural lapses and the glaring masses of people struggling to make ends meet. The few gardens and the sparkling fountains don't hide the vast tracts of barren land where garbage is heaped by the truckloads, the ponds wherefrom sickening odours rise and where parasites thrive. Tombstones and cremation grounds dot the outskirts, the dead and the forgotten buried and burnt and generally dispensed with. Life as it is, ironically, may not seem much better to some of those multitudes.

Time to weed the garden.

A Paralysed, Broken City

Chaos is back, and Hyderabad is reeling under the effects.

The latest round of the Telangana agitation began last Sunday as KCR declared he would go on a hunger strike- a bandh was called and his supporters promptly went on a rampage, Osmania University was vandalised. Monday saw the shutdown of normal life, buses were off roads and shops were closed for fear of violence.

Things seemed to go on with relative normalcy Tuesday onwards, but then took a turn for the worse Saturday afternoon as rumours of KCR's condition began to spread and his supporters grew agitated yet again. Cable operators stopped beaming entertainment channels for a few hours, more buses were tampered with, petrol pumps shut down, shops had their display windows broken. With a two-day strike having been called and a curfew in place today, public life has ground to a halt. Buses are off the roads, a few shops have their shutters hesitantly half-open, all the ATMs are closed, the works- quintessential elements of an Indian bandh. As much inconvenience as possible.

We're destroying the public transport that we pay for, inflicting more blows on the poor. What will make them see sense, though? Sporadic acts of violence, a chance to smile and wave at the camera, a 'student agitation' (accompanied by vandalism) and blocked roads (which will in turn lead to traffic jams)- this is the strike we're talking about- and things are going nowhere. The political implications of the agitation are being thrashed out in studios, while we, as usual, are left to watch and crib. My mother tells me of a similar, though much more severe, agitation in 1969, when life came to a complete standstill. This was initiated by students as well. Schools were closed for eight months, while some others had their students abandon uniforms so classes could go on as usual.

Today, such a situation would hardly be feasible. In a recuperating economy, to think of shutting down completely and hamper with the functioning of businesses that work globally would be hara-kiri. Prices of commodities are already rising as a result of the strike; the state has suffered enough this year due to the heavy floods and the destruction of the kharif crops. Are they even aware of the trouble they are causing?

Tomorrow is Day 2 of the strike- what will it be like? I don't even want to guess.