Hyderabad iz hot!

The heat is getting to the Hyderabadiz and they're running for cover. As temperatures rise, most roads that have been dug up stay that way--with workers becoming scarce during the day. The traffic snarls are at their worst and when all of the city decides to congregate on the necklace road or NTR Gardens in the evenings, you've had it. This also happens to be the wedding season and not infrequently the 'muhurtam' is somewhere close to the hottest point of the day--you can well imagine what a time the guests have!
With the SSC results out, parents are busy hunting for a seat in the 'right' place for the plus two kids, if you will.
For Hyderabadiz, May has always been the cruellest month and not April, (with due apologies to T.S.Eliot).

See also:

Rules for survivin hyd summer's
posted by Deepthi Tanikella at 11:24 AM on May 09, 2007
The heat is on...

See also:

Heat and Traffic

Hyderabadi roads

Hyderabad Live - Welcome to Another Streaming Hyderabadi Media

..Hyderabad Goes Online: Courtesy Sify
..Sify launches broadband portal for Hyderabad
..Sify launches website for Hyd
..More news and views @ Google

Sify.com has launched one more city broadband portal - http://www.hyderabadlive.in/. Hyderabad is the third city portal of Sify, which already has Mumbailive.in and bangalorelive.in. The content is mainly related to Telugu movies, music, the city’s hottest clubs, gossip, and so on in video. The company plans to launch more city portals. Next could be Delhi. [source]

Also bookmark our own Media Hyderabad Blog:

Heat and chaos = Hyderabad....lest we forget!

The heat's beginning to get us now, and who knows what lies ahead? Added to all this the 'inmates' of this city have to deal with (as one knows the rest of the country does) an apathetic bureaucracy reflected in a zillion little everyday things. One of the results of chaos or the complete absence of planning, if you will, is the denial of free, open spaces to children to cut loose. Where do kids in our metropolis play? In streets and lanes--when and where they can, that is--on the odd rooftop of an apartment cluster or in front of a tv set. In a sense, this is denying them childhood. As kids growing up in the sixties, we simply had to cycle beyond Mehdipatnam or Masab Tank (in days when there were a few buses and not many cars on the roads) to find large expanses of wilderness. There was simply no dearth of playgrounds--very often we had to choose between this place or that, where we could cut loose till the cows came home.

Cut to circa 2007 and what do we see--shrinking parks, shrivelled up lakes conveniently passed on to 'builders', and a bureacracy that has in sixty years of Independence only learnt to wink and nod.......

Oh beloved land--waah re watan-e-azeez!

SATY

The faster we run, the more we stay in the same spot

Well, well....it does seem true--a blogroll of Hyderabadiz is something of a contradiction in terms--we're too laidback as a community to blog as much as we might want to. And if we choose to, our attempts are no different than our desperate efforts to negotiate Hyderabadi traffic--in tune with the chaos that adds up to life in this undefinably insane, 'paradise on earth'.

WYSIWYG: Hyderabadiz Flickr Badge is picked by 3 Bloggers
Thank you guys for going an extra mile

It's not always that blogs get noticed....we've been a shade lucky in that some of our 'virtual' friends have posted our flickr badge on their sites. We doff our hats in grateful acknowledgment to them.The truth is that life (virtual and real) at least elsewhere in the world, is whizzing by at breakneckspeed and things seem to be changing faster than the click of a mouse.

see also: 5 Reasons to Update Your Blog

The other face of Hyderabad....

Strong winds wreak havoc; two killed The Hindu, Apr 15, 2007

Shopping, food are good in Hyderabad :
Vishaka Singh, IndiaGlitz.com, April 22, 2007

All it takes is a cloudburst or a determined shower, so to say, to throw city life completely out of gear. If the wind-god decides to puff and blow, Hyderabad has had it. Hoardings go flying, trees get uprooted, power lines snap, and life, in short, gets totally dislocated. If two tall trees sway this way and that, our electricity folks feel they've had enough.We who belong to this third world city that nurses delusions of leapfrogging into an elite club of metropolises know how to sift the grain of reality from the chaff of hype and illusion...
It's a bit difficult to swallow the bitter pill that a city that lays claims to competing with Shanghai or Singapore, has infrastructure so flimsy and frayed at the seams, that a downpour can paralyze it and a deluge all but destroy it. But that's the plain ole truth--Hyderabad is an overgrown village and if you need further evidence--after all the polluted lakes, overcrowded localities, ill-equipped hospitals, pathetic schools, choked drains, land grabbing cases and insane traffic--you need help!
On this rather sober note we look at our beloved city this week--preferring NOT to look at its hoariness, heritage, history, aristocracy, culture and legacy, for the moment. Remember Faiz--"Aur bhi dukh haiN zamaane meiN mohabbat ke siwa..."

Hyderabad's culture scene

Speaking of the city's culture scene, the Times of India, Hyderabad's Festival drew big stars and impressive crowds. Vani Ganapathi's Bharatanatyam performance, Ghulam Ali's Ghazal evening and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan's Sarod recital, were events I couldn't attend, but Hyderabad made it to. I did manage to go to the plays, 'Dance Like a Man' (Mahesh Dattani's play, directed by Lillette Dubey) and 'The Vagina Monologues', which was directed by Mahbanoo Modi Kotwal and featured her and Dolly Thakore, Sonali and Jayati Bhatia. The culture scene's warming up as is the city, with rising temperatures.

PS. Image courtesy: Musical evening in the lap of royalty @ Der Sturm in meinem Kopf and Sarod Recital By Ustad Amjad Ali Khan & Sons @ fullhyderabad.com

see also: The Times Hyderabad Festival Concert Review by Emma @ Desicritics.org