T blues

It’s a passing phase they said, but six months on I continue to battle my Hyderabad blues as the war for the city rages on. The air of this not-so-happening city is thick with stifling un-sophistication. To top it all it’s yet another day of strike. Not the Telangana issue again….

KCR, who has just about as much charisma as an in-grown toe nail, is keeping the T pot simmering. Thankfully the center is not toeing his line. I practically choke on my tea as I watch him on yet another discussion on T.  They call the Palins of the other tea party fame, hillbillies. They’ve obviously never set their eyes on an uncouth AP politician before.

Now for my deepest, darkest secret – I’m a self despising gult. No….this is not a coming-out -of-the-closet story, I wouldn’t care so much as to peep out of it. I’m establishing my closet gult credentials lest I be accused of being insensitive to the ethnic sensibilities of a people who are not my own. As for good gult friends –there’s K, an endearingly tense former IBMer and S, my adorably chatty hairdresser who never fails to be amused by my linguistic challenges when it comes to my mellifluous ancestral tongue.

Besides issues regarding the status of Hyderabad and demands by assorted groups for endlessly spawning new states, I have my own vested interest when it comes to the T issue. Better one gult state than two. Some of my people are best confined to a single state, for I fear they would countrify the entire country, sapping India of much needed class. On the other hand, maybe the Telanganites secretly desire to secede from the gult stereotype. In which case, I empathize with their cause. Better still the entire bucolic bunch ought to be Bangalored, creating legions of closet gults. So maybe they ought to merge Andhra with Karnataka, the happy union would be breeding ground for IT talent. But then again, any b schooler, even those that dare to dream beyond the IIMs, will tell u that competition between states to attract IT investments has been healthy. So do we continue with status quo?

Tsk tsk girl…what’s with this class bias? you would say. A pseudo commie acquaintance assured me that I would be lynched by a maoist mob. No, I have a plan teed up for the T issue. Well…Hi-tech city for all practical purposes has been Bangalored. The new city has enough watering holes to earn itself that title. The T strike had little effect except for turning auto drivers into magicians who pull out random high figures from thin air. Soon these expanding islands of Bangalore will engulf the entire state. The T issue will solve itself when the state has been inclusively Bangalored. This plan for T suits me to a tee. It’s an impossible, bourgeois pipe-dream, the Marxists would say. To hell with your class warfare. It’s possible hain, yaar.

T squabbles and maoist conundrums aside, they’re not a bad lot- my people, most of them are the good sort -they just need a touch of class. They ought to be Bangalored!