back in hyd

It's quaint being back in Hyderabad. My last memories of the city from three years ago are like a snapshot frozen in time, so it's naturally a little jarring to come back and see how much has changed. Everyone's talking about the metro, of course, and indeed not to talk about it would be to ignore the elephant in the room - or in this case the city. A giant fissure in the earth would be easier to ignore. But I suppose I should take some consolation from the fact that the pillars are high enough so that the railway does not block sunlight from reaching the streets below - for now, at least. I was pleasantly surprised to see that traffic this time is far, far better than I remember it being. The weather, too. Though I should forbear to speak to soon, because I'm sure this is an anomaly.

I'm home alone. (Putting that out there, in case I have any malicious stalkers on my tail.) My mom's in Calcutta spending time with her mom, who unfortunately is in rather a bad way, though, if you read my last entry, you'd know that her predilection for feeding people to death is at an all-time high. My dad's in Bangalore at this two-week yoga getaway. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but it's supposed to be one of those new-age (really, really old-age?) alternative medicine establishments for people who are into that sort of thing. The osteoarthritis in his shoulder has all but necessitated a complete shoulder replacement, but the surgeon said that the lifetime of fake shoulders is usually only around fifteen years. They nevertheless wanted to go ahead with it, but my dad decided to try his luck with the ascetics first. I speak as if he went there reluctantly, but he's really into this sort of thing. He was really keen on my going there with him, for my - uh - back thing, but for good or for ill my rationalist brain balked at the idea of getting up at three in the morning and chanting verses from the Bhagavad Gita in the hope that it would cure an autoimmune condition. I've been on the receiving end of more hortatory speeches from well-meaning but ultimately religious family friends and relatives since I arrived in this country than I care to recall. Nevertheless, I contrived to stay back home, which I suppose should count as a victory of sorts. (For whom, though?)

Being back home is strange (though I suppose it's just a house now). As mentioned earlier, my last memories of this city are like a snapshot frozen in time. In my case, it's the furniture that's not there anymore, the stuff on the walls, my piano - that appear as afterimages everywhere. The smell of summer. The sound of food being made in the kitchen. Television. It's like visiting a stereotypical haunted house of the sort that you see in movies, opening drawers and finding photographs from long, long ago that you'd forgotten about. I also found Harry Potter books 5 and 7 and H. C. Verma, Volume 2 in a corner of a cabinet. I mean, why did the movers not pack the complete set? The rest of the closet was empty, so it was not as if they forgot to look there. I discovered Pokemon Tazos I'd collected when I was younger than I'd admit to ever being lying in a neat pile on a shelf, but no sign of any of the tee shirts or sweatshirts I was sure I'd find here. I don't think anyone's taken them, because then they would also have taken all the pocket money I'd collected over the years (a not insubstantial amount) and kept in so insecure a location that even Mother Teresa would have found it turning up in her pockets for a month if she'd so much as passed through the house. The only explanation I can think of is that we lost some of our moving boxes in transit, which would suck, because it would mean that my copy of Agatha Christie's Hickory Dickory Dock, also missing, is gone, too.