When it gets incredibly boring even by my bureaucratic standards I tend to do something to get out of it. It is the second week of my duty at the Legislative Council and the tedium of it is getting on my nerves. Fed up with the tasteless tea in the makeshift canteen in the premises of the Council I decided to go to a real Irani. Bahar, Bombay Bakery were too far away so I settled for Hotel Panchsheel just across the road near Ravindra Bharati . The chota samosa they serve there are quite good so I went to the place. I had about half hour to kill so I just sat down watching the people at other tables.
At any given time half the crowd in an Irani hotel is made up of autorickshaw drivers. They just cannot seem to be able to drive their autorickshaws without Irani chai coursing in their bloodstream. There were the obligatory cops too. You just cannot step into an Irani without finding at least one cop leisurely drinking chai. One finds all sorts of people in Irani hotels in Hyderabad so finding someone reading a book in such hotels isn’t unusual. After realizing that I’d be free most of the time in the Council I made it a habit to carry a couple of books to read whenever I found the time. I took out Pico Iyer’s ‘Global Soul’ that I had with me and read an entire chapter (The Games) sitting in Hotel Panchsheel.
Needless to say I was bowled by Pico Iyer’s analytical style of his writing and the depth and range of his insights into almost everything that he saw or experienced. I wonder what he would have made of my experiences in the Council were he to be in my place. I guess he would have something insightful to say about the dozing bureaucrats, the eager assistants of the Ministers, the gun toting cops in grey safari suits, the dozens of enormous SUVs with blue lights on the top, the frisking at the entrance, the beeps of the metal detectors and the people milling around with passes and IDs hanging around their necks. I would have liked to write something quite observant and insightful about this daily scene I witness but then I am no Pico Iyer.
There’s a rush to get out of the Council as soon it is adjourned for the day. I always make it a point to try to pick out the journalists among the crowd. I know that there are quite a few reporters who sit in the Council to cover the proceedings. There are faces I can recognize and know the papers for which they work. There are some faces I try to connect to the publications they belong. Of course, it is quite easy to tell the television reporters from the print reporters. They are invariably to be seen dictating the headlines into their mobile phones as soon as they emerge out of the Council, headlines which appear as Breaking News on the television screens.
I have another three weeks of this to go before the House is adjourned sine die.
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2 comments:
I would be interested in reading more about the debates that you alluded to. What do they discuss? And what do you make of the nature of the discourse?
I wandered around your blog. And it is quite nice.
The debates are about the issues the opposition parties want the government to clarify. Last week there were discussions about drugs in HPS, vulgarity in pubs and so on. The debates and discussions are mature as can be expected from such a House. Thanks for looking up my blog. Incidentally, there's a 'dubash' in the House too.
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