What? Lakdikapul is not a stick-flower?

And so, I have returned from a weekend of sheer debauchery, two shades blacker, from the land of the Nawabs, Biryani of every conceivable object non/living and G. Pullareddy Sweets.

I love this city.
For one, it has this major Minaret hangover. Everything here looks like, at any moment, some bard will set up a mehfil/durbaar/whatchummacallit and wax shayaris, with ever-ready bystanders punctuating them with Irshads and Wah! Wah!s. Of course, there will be plenty pigeons going ‘guttrr guttrr’, and plenty pigeon-origin white-stuff to clean off your respective modes of transport.

Ah. Transport.
This is the only city that outright, doubt-without beats mine at traffic-sense. In the negative.
Take for instance, the enlightening auto-ride I embarked upon, clinging on to dear life as psycho automan (with evil glint in eye and shiny golden tooth that revealed itself in a hippo-yawn) went speeding down a narrow lane at 40 kmph upward – in the opposite direction. What simply took the title of “D-uuude!” (delivered with a Hip-Hop/Stoned-out-of-wits drawl) was the hippo-yawning traffic cop whose head casually turned and followed our passing by.

We sped through streets having no name. And the ones with funny, vaguely-exotic names too.
Nampally was my favorite. On applying the sum total of languages I know (barring en peu francaise) the resulting translation is a rather funny, “my lizard”. Another permutation of languages yields an equally satisfactory “name lizard”.

Banjara Hills, of course, was hot-spot and hotbed for techies, both employed or otherwise. (I’ve heard that because of market situation these days, the two are no longer the same.)

The highlights of my little trip were my doww, my elopist, falling flat on my behind outside posh cafe (consequently, getting a bruise), lots of laughter. Super food. Better drink. Kung-Fu Panda, Jack Black, the man! Comfy bus-rides both ways. Also, the fact that Firangi Paani did NOT know what hit them with doww and I hitting the dance floor. Of course, several lech/vermin variety men hit on us, and bouncers threatened to hit them. Cute DJ who we crushed on, temporarily. Vague feeling of feeling lost, but loving it. Autorides at odd hours. Turning to ash in the sun. In short, everything about my trip. However, regret having missed peeyesh, who, very fortunately for him, took off to Timbuktu. Also, very many thanks Wakee, for all the leads, and I know it would’ve been a wilder time if you were there too (I don’t have a link to you, you celebrity). Other characters that have fled the city citing reasons of bright-future-making, and were missed, were NS, seeti and ape.

Lesson learnt from this trip: The only planning you need to make the most of a really small trip, are tickets forth and back.
And replace poor, underused-hence-very-frustrated Noah‘s stupid rechargeable batteries.

Oh, and lakdi-ka-pul is actually a bridge of sticks. Though I could swear I never saw one.

PS: Men reading this must note (and appreciate as a departure from my usual male-bashing habits) that I very strongly resisted the urge to say ‘redundant’ in the ‘lech/vermin men’ classification.

PPS (Internal joke, it’s okay if reader didn’t get this one. Also.): Note to elopist, now you know why you love Hyd as much. You’re incanted so often at the all those durbaars!