Hyd Diaries: 1 - 7D, the home away from home..

I met a long lost friend this week. As we walked down the memory lane, reliving the 'good old days', I remembered one another day. Few years back sitting in a pub, drinking beer during Happy Hours, another friend of mine asked me 'tell me about the best days of your life'. I was quiet for a while and then he said 'probably your best days are yet to come'. Then I did not realize that I was actually living them. Like many other times in life, I failed to recognize what is just in front of me, and had my eyes set on some magnificent future. This concept of 'tomorrow' blinds us from seeing all the good that's around 'today'. When I ask myself that question now, I can see clearly the best days of my life, spread across the past and the present.

It was a dream that brought me to Hyderabad. A dream to earn my future rather than inherit it by chance, a dream to accomplish, to carve my niche amidst mediocrity - the typical middle class dream recipe. True to the dream, everything was surreal once I landed in the city of Nawabs. Me and my friend Arun got a rented house in a distant corner of the city, a place away from the hurry burry, a small house facing the endless fields. In the evenings we used to watch the sun set in the distant hills and in the nights we used to have candle light dinners on the terrace. The stars and the moon compensated for the plain rice, rotis and daal on the table. Life was cheap, simple and real.

Eventually we ended up in the heart of the city, sharing a flat with 2 other batchmates of ours. Srini's brother used to live in a flat with his friends and when he moved out to Bangalore, Srini inherited it. Flat number '7D'at Aeroview Towers, that was our home for the next two years, the place where we learned to compromise, to push our limits, to celebrate, preparing ourselves to face the future. There were seven permanent residents while a few others did grace the place with their short stints. Aeroview was the closest apartment to the old airport and we had a balcony almost parallel to the runway. It was a great sight to watch all kinds of birds taking off and landing, especially with their lights on in the night. Initially the sound was distrubing but then we got used to it, and even started plannning the daily routine around it - get up with the 6:15 Air India, start for college once the 8:30 Lufthansa takes off, sleep after the Oman Air leaves for Dubai at 10:30 and so on.

We rarely talked to our neighbors except when they had a complaint. Even then they did most of the talking, never caring to give us a chance to speak. There was a reason for not letting us open our mouths. The major complaint used to be something like this, in the words of the Punjabi lady who lived in the adjacent flat - 'Dinna ko bhi baata kartein, raata ko bhi baata kartein, ini log sotha kab?'. But soon they all learned to 'adjust' with the crazy schedules of the 'studious' kids at 7D. The flat was spacious for the seven of us, two huge rooms, a hall bigger than the two rooms put together, a kitchen, two bathrooms and three balconies!! One room was exclusively for Ravi bhayya, the senior-most member of the house, the other six of us used to sleep in the second room. The room was spacious enough for all of us to sleep without rolling on top of the other.

The most frequently bought item in the house was not rice, not sugar, not soap, but the timepiece. Like other disciplined people use to do, we also had the habit of keeping alarm for 6 O'clock in the morning. As soon as the alarm rings, a few hands used to fall simultaneously on top of the timepiece, crushing the life out of it. The poor thing always met with a premature death and some days later we decided that the 6:15 Air India is a better alternative. Atleast we knew we can't squash the bleep out of a 747!!

Somebody said that when your memories start outweighing your dreams, realize that you are getting old... maybe I am !!