Necklace Road on a Sunday Evening

Necklace Road is one place where half of Hyderabad’s population seem to gather on Sunday evenings clogging the place with their bikes and cars. It was no different this Sunday except there seemed to be more vendors than visitors. Everywhere one went there were vendors selling everything from dinky plastic toys to chaat. We were there at Necklace Road hoping to enjoy a quiet evening but it turned out to be an altogether different experience.

It was quite unbearably hot inside Eat Street where they don’t even have ceiling fans. On one hand was the loud music from the televisions inside and on the other hand was some kind of sales promotion of a bike that involved inviting members of the audience to sing on the stage. The guy (jockey?) at the mike in the make shift stage kept up a constant chatter almost pleading with the onlookers to join in. But the gawkers that we Hyderabadis are, not many volunteered to exhibit their musical talents, mercifully.

Elsewhere outside, some kind of an consumer goods exhibition was on. As is normal in Hyderabad there were more gawkers than buyers. Hyderabadis are the sort who have to see a thing at least ten times before they decide to finally buy it after haggling for the price to be brought down to almost half. After that a Hyderabadi asks the seller a hundred questions of the sort even the manufacturers of the product may not have thought of. A Hyderabadi never likes to take a chance on anything even if it is just a comb that he is buying