Monday, October 22, 2012

Family's Day Out

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Yesterday was a Family's Day Out for us. It was Mahasaptami and also Sunday.

It was the second successive Kitchen Holiday...very rare indeed for my D-i-L.

We woke up leisurely and my son drove us to the nearby Cyberabad Bengali Association's Durga Puja in Miyapur. Cyberabad is the city area that grew up around the post-1990s Hi-Tech City. I guess their DP is only 5 years old; and its website was developed by an alumnus of the Kuchlachati College in the outskirts of IIT KGP, courtesy the Late Prof. G. S. Sanyal.

It was a humid day with a dumb and provoking sun. Apparently there was a cyclonic depression on the coast of Southern Bay of Bengal, and Hyderabad gets a side-effect.

As we entered the rather compact Puja Pandal, I bowed to Durga Mai from a distance and was looking for a place to sit dragging one of the plastic chairs from their heap. I am reluctant to enter the Pandal proper since I am claustrophobic and don't like crowds breathing down my neck. And I can't stand for more than a minute and feel naked without my chappals...slight peripheral neuritis in the feet.

So, I dragged a chair by the side of the heap of discarded chappals backing the wall of the pandal and sat down with a mild sun over my head. And newcomers rushing in to enter the pandal leaving their chappals outside, were looking at me curiously why this old nut is sitting beside the chappal heap in the sun...they thought I was the shoe-guard and may demand a rupee or two... 

But they didn't know that I am an expert in the movement of the sun by virtue of spending a lifetime under the open skies at Harrys.

In ten minutes, the hot sunshine quit my head and was on my thighs warming them and proceeding further down towards my knees. A young couple accompanying their very old mom were looking for a place to deposit her within a safe distance of the sound of dhakis...and dragged another chair to my side and seated her on it...she looked at me and smiled and we understood each other like custard and mustard.

By the time my son, D-i-L, and Ishani returned from within the pandal after the puja was halted, the sun was a meter away and I had about twenty neighbors, neighboranis, and urchins eating Bhog on their plastic chairs...so it is a question of who bells the cat always...

Since I was not too keen on Bhog, my son brought some loochies and aloor dum from a stall...it had neither any highly visible aloo, nor even dum...it was a watery disappointment....the loochies were so so.

In the evening my son drove us to the far-off but authentic HBS (Hyderabad Bangali Samiti) at Indira Park. That is an area settled in by old-time Bengalis (pre-software boom) retired after decades of service in the dozens of Central Govt Establishments, Cantonment, Air Force, Army, Research Labs etc.

So, it looked pucca Bengali and rather posh.

As usual I sat down guarding the Durga Mai in her pandal on what were perhaps meant to be chairs for the policemen...but gray hairs have their advantages...a couple of policemen looked at me rather peevishly but I ignored them. After an hour my son fed me a couple of Moucha-r Chops from a stall...they were just lovely. 

And then there was this musical nite in the nearby huge enclosure with tip-top sound system and all sorts of electronic keyboards, guitars, synthesizers and stuff which were rather new to me. We sat down to enjoy the music and since this pandal was open on three sides, the sound dbs were increased to compensate for the losses through the open sides. 

But then it started raining and everyone who was more interested in grub than music rushed in sitting and standing and practically closing the three open sides. And that was good...for I recalled that the human body had an absorption coefficient of quite a few sabines and that gave a reasonable reverberation and the sound was good...I mean the noise...because after a few apologetic soulful numbers of Kishore-da, the rest was mod rock and utterly boring for an old man like me...but my son and Ishani were enjoying and rocking...

It rained for an hour and it was past midnight before we reached home.

That is all the DP for young Hyderbadis...for there is only a 1-day holiday for the software and managment and banking sectors and that is on Dashami...so our outing ended with the weekend Shashti and Saptami...but it was good and thoroughly enjoyable.






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1 comment:

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