Riding in the Hills

Once upon a time Banjara Hills was the posh place where the rich and the beautiful in Hyderabad had their beautiful houses. But sometime in the late eighties or so when bigger moneybags arrived, Jubilee Hills became the place to be seen. Now it is home to beautiful, big houses with enormous gates and little forests inside, security guards and boards outside that warn you of the dogs inside. Being very far from Jubilee Hills and also no reason to visit the place I don’t usually go there. But I was at Jubilee Hills yesterday evening on my way to an art gallery.

Being in the Jubilee Hills area gives me a different feeling of being in an affluent place seeing so many beautiful large houses and the big cars inside which are people wearing expensive designer clothes, dark glasses who don’t even bother to give you a look. Sometimes it feels good to watch this prosperous crowd living it up as best as they can. It makes me wonder about how different things are in such places- the houses are different, the cars are different, the people are different but there was one thing I found that was the same as the place I live in. It was the condition of the road.

I really felt glad that the guys who are responsible for laying and maintaining roads in Hyderabad have seen to it that the roads in Jubilee Hills are no better than they are in other areas. I was indeed delighted to see that the roads in Jubilee Hills too have enormous potholes, manhole covers that are not level with the surface of the road and piles of rubble everywhere. I was pleased, in fact to see that the roads seem much worse in Jubilee Hills. So much for being rich.