Visit to Araku Valley, Vizag, Rishikonda Beach

Sunday, October 1, 2000

Quite a journey behind us. We did not know till we left for the station if we had reservations. Somehow, our tickets had moved into RAC so we had two seats that equalled a berth between the two of us. The train was filled with people who wanted to go two stations down. One station down, a large (two couples and three kids) family gets into our cubicle. I stood up to arrange our luggage, the two kids occupied my seat, and in the middle of that chaos, they started screaming that they wanted a window seat. Shai’s glare could have fried an egg. Arrived at Visakhapatnam early morning. Went and checked out Hotel Meghalaya, no room and did not like greatly either. Went to Hotel Daspalla and checked into an executive deluxe room with a breakfast plan. Cleaned up, had breakfast and went out for a walk and retreated immediately thanks to the heat and the humidity. Called up the Southern Travels guy and arranged for tours around the city and to Araku valley, etc. Shai slept off. Woke up and went and had lunch at Dimple downstairs. Later in the evening, went down to Ramakrishna Beach, typical city beach, commerce, pollution, crowds, dirty water. Went for a ride on a merry-go-round. Shai had spiced up raw mango pieces. Went back to the hotel for dinner after a couple of rum and cokes. Watched two-thirds of Conair, the movie.

Monday, October 2, 2000

Had an early breakfast of toasted bread, fried eggs and sausages, and dosa for shai and rushed off to Southern Travels where we waited for the city tour bus for the next one hour. Something about the bus having gone to pick up a crowd of Hyderabad tourists from their hotel who were still getting ready. The morning was getting warmer and so were our tempers. Finally the guy at the office said "why don’t you sit inside under the fan?" We sat down. Two minutes later, venkatrao, the tour organizer comes running in and cries out, "you guys are here. The bus just left." So he puts us in a rickshaw and we chase the bus to its next pickup point. No luck. On we go to simhachalam, a temple 6 km away, where the tour stops for the first visit. There we finally find the rickety bus, only to learn that all the "hindus" have gone to the temple and are showing no inclination of coming back, while the "muslims" and us wait in the bus with dripping foreheads, parched throats and empty stomachs. Turns out that there were some VIPs who had stalled the common people’s queue and it wasn’t till three hours later that we all got ready to move on to the next point on the itinerary for the day, that being lunch at Hotel Meghalaya. The food made us glad we had not found room there. Then we went off to Rishikonda Beach, a small piece of paradise. The drive is through hills and suddenly on a turn, down below, you can see the seashore, blue water, white surf, yellow beach, brown rocks and soil, green climbing up the mountainside. The beach is unspoiled. Clear water, tranquil sea, gentle slope, no commerce, no bhaji on the beach. The AP tourism cottages are right on the beach. It will not be long before this place starts getting "developed" and loses its charm. Shai and I almost instantaneously and simultaneously decided we needed to visit this place for a long weekend before too long. We stayed there as long as we could without irking the rest of the passengers, and then, with sand and seawater on our skin and our clothes, w drove off to kailashgiri, a park developed by vishakhpatnam urban development agency. We had carried a change of clothes and when everyone got off the bus, we changed into dry clothes. Like all artificial parks, this is an eyesore too. The only saving grace is the view. This is on top of a hill just outside vizag. So you get to see all of vizag on one side and the sea and the seashore on the other, all of it framed by mountain and sky. Nightfall is spectacular as stars and the lights of vizag compete for your attention. Then we came down to vizag. The big family from hyderabad was tired and wanted to be dropped off. We insisted on seeing the vizag port, even if only from outside. So we dropped off the family of sixteen and drove off past the RK Beach. The Beach Road in vizag is pleasant and clean, a little bit like Puri but less touristy. It was past eight at night when we reached the dockyard. It is huge and the drive through it took about fifteen minutes. It is straight out of a tarkovsky film, with railtracks crisscrossing everywhere, huge cranes that can handle hundreds (or was it thousands?) of tonnes of weight, granaries that can hold a few shiploads of grain, sodium vapor lamps bathing the entire dock in a yellow glow fading into the coalmine darkness of the bumpy uneven grounds beyond it, and not a soul in sight. The ships are so big!! They are mostly out at the see and each of them easily occupies about five percent of the horizon available, such that about twenty of them end to end would block out the whole horizon. We finally came back all tired and had a warm bath and crashed after dinner at a andhra specialty restuarant. Shai all but fell asleep at the restaurant itself.

Tuesday, October 3, 2000

Again another early breakfast, whatever you have ready for us by six a.m. will be fine, and off to a visit to Araku valley. The same family from the previous day joined us after keeping us waiting again for almost an hour outside their lodge. The drive is long and breathtaking. The mountains don’t creep up on you and surprise you like on the drive from siliguri upwards, neither does the air turn that cold. Araku is about 1500 feet above sea level and 100 odd km from vizag. On the way comes the famous Tyda tunnel, some 250 meters of it. Apparently the rail journey is punctuated by several (23) such tunnels. However, we gathered form people who had taken the train that we did not miss much, since the tourism department was caught entirely unawares by the massive influx of tourists. Apparently AP tourism had highlighted araku at a tourism fair in calcutta in summer, and the "silence and tranquility of the valley" sounded more like gariahat on saptami evening. On the way, we passed coffee plantations, and though there was no smell, Shai held her nose as she posed with the coffee plants with huge clusters of green coffee beans. Coffee does not take well to either sun or water, therefore, the slopes and the huge trees to create shade all over the plantation. We also visited a horticultural garden on the way. The hyderabad crowd returned to the bus with whole lot of flowers regardless of the several boards requesting visitors not to pluck flowers. The children occupied themselves with dissecting the more exotic ones. We stopped at a marketplace for lunch. Once again, the tourists far outweighed the amenities available and we were taken to a fly-infested roadside shack. Shai and I stuck to biscuits and sodas. From there, we went to the habitat museum. Unfortunately, we could not take pictures inside. This was a beautiful place highlighting the tribal way of life. The dhimsas are the aboriginals of this place. They wear beautiful silver jewelry. The museum is a small circular building. Inside, the walk along the exhibits leads on to a ramp that takes you to the 1^st floor, the whole thing being a spiral. All along they have displayed model homes and rooms of the dhimsa tribe, their equipment, clothes, jewelry, gods, rituals, etc. it was really nice. And the whole museum is done up in a very rudimentary way. The walls have been painted over in rough manner with earth colors. The displays are set off form the ramp by bamboo railing. They have placed life-size models of tribals going about their daily activities in such a way that for a moment, given the atmosphere and the realistic environment, you would think they are real. From there, we went to the famous Borra caves. This is a complex of underground caves, nothing more. The highlight of this place is the massive stalactites and stalagmite formations. It is usually illuminated but the day we were there, there was no power and none of the pictures came out decently enough to be printed. Most of us slept through the drive back.

Wednesday, October 4, 2000

Started getting ready to check out and get on our way home. Spent all morning looking for tribal jewelry. Didn’t find it anywhere. One guy said, try hyderabad, the banjaras!! Went and checked and sent mail. Asked tipu and chandreyee to tell us when in February they can get a weekend off to go to rishikonda with us. Strange why they didn’t get the mail. Went looking for picture postcards, puzzled at the absolute absence of them at any of the places we were visiting. Finally, found some at the bookshop at the hotel itself. This guy has everything from the high court of chennai to marine drive in bombay, from the church in krishnanagar to houseboats on dal lake, from the vidhan soudha in bangalore to the camel fair at pushkar, but vizag, no, araku, no. Packed dinner for the train, had lunch at Dimple, which we had grown to like over the three days, and having armed ourselves with enough reading material (what shopping did you guys do at vizag? Shai bought one old new woman and and even older women’s era, while subho found a ’98 issue of gentleman that he carried all the way home!!). We reached the station to realize that the train was over an hour late. After our bad time with the journey to vizag, we were once again thrown into the blues when the train finally came in and we checked the chart on the coach we had been allotted and found somebody else’s names on the seat numbers that were supposed to be ours. Some star of ours must be really off, we were thinking, which is why every time we travel, something is sure to go wrong with our travel arrangements. We checked our tickets, puzzled; they seemed okay. We got on, however, and sat down and decided we would take it as it comes. After some time, a railway chappie comes along, tears off the chart that had come from the previous day’s journey and sticks the current one.

Thursday, October 5, 2000

Reached hyderabad little after eight. Thanks to our light luggage, we walked right out on to the main street and caught a rickshaw and came home. A grateful cleanup later, we hit work.

Monday, October 9, 2000

Relatively less work. Laxmi got back from Pune. MD called us both in and we had a long chat, where he brought up the issue of transparency in terms of incentive payments too. Went to inspect the site of Focus Soft, a new franchisee that has paid up in full. A young chap, Prashanth, came and picked us up, Shai and me. Nice place at hitech city. Group of 15 MTs. Planning to make an IPO in January. Later in the evening, finish work and go pick up cables and multipoint plugs for the setup in baby’s room. Come home and Sridhar calls. There is an olufs file that is full of blanks. Can you…? We were just getting set to go out, so I said no, hold it till tomorrow, and we went off to Masab Tank to give my clothes for stitching and also to pick up curtains for this room. Came back and bouncing things off Shobha on chat, felt it would be better I went and moved that file out. So I walked down and did that. Came home to some nice chow, while Shai opted for the rassagollas she bought from balaji’s.

Friday, October 13, 2000

Kind of a draggy day, refusing to get over. Finally, we went out for dinner to Silver Plate. Got home after 11.

Saturday, October 14, 2000

Gosh!! Am I glad for the weekend!! It is late in the evening now, and Shai is watching TV while I am getting ready for bed. Tomorrow and Monday, there is a GDP workshop, so an easy Monday. A very badly needed weekend ahead. Plan to sleep it all out. Saturday night TV a tribute to Helen by the girls of bollywood today. Plugged into a couple of whiskies. Shai cooked up the 100% vegetarian meat thing with soya chunks.

Sunday, October 15, 2000

Stayed home all day.

Monday, October 16, 2000

Lazy Monday. Went to the electricity office to try clarify the mess showing up as arrears. Have to go and get a JV or a GV from Banjara Hills office. Went to OBC from there and put away some dough for another year. Picked up coffee from a coffee day outlet at ameerpet and rushed to work. Had a meeting with janakidevi from sroojas, like giving first aid to a reluctant eel. Then Focusoft chaps need a dictator to work on. Shynet wants to send Guy file direct. Srinivas and venkat cannot agree on giving out texas tech dictators. Ajay and sir cannot agree on whether to build up worldtec hyd as a proofing center or not. Went in the evening and bought tickets for Ichalkaranji for the 25^th. The weather has started to turn a little wintery, though not sure if it is a fallout of the cyclone brewing off the eastern coast or winter itself. Ran the cuteftp and logged into the server. Working fine. Only depressing thing was that the next days work looks unnecessarily large!!

Thursday, October 19, 2000

Shobha sat her CMT test. We got the credit card delivered. Pushed hard and finished work early to go watch a movie, astitva, but the movie was gone. Went looking at diamond rings, leather, etc, before finally deciding to get back to office. Came home late, nothing new, Shai cooked up her favorite dal with beans.

Friday, October 20, 2000

Woke up early after a long stretch. Spent time dumping rhyme for bluemountainarts. Finished work around seven-ish. Came home and crashed out like dinnerless and appetiteless dogs in the living room. Shai kept bugging me as I hovered between sense and sensibility. It seems like we need a virus scan before we can make check payments!!

Saturday, October 21, 2000

Really less work. 20 direct KDC files, and most of it not needing intensive intervention, so we decided we would get out early and look for the leather bag Shai had so desperately been longing for. Of course, at our moment of departure, with one file on hand, laxmi wants to know if we can help her do the one job she has been trying to do from morning. Any way, we go hit park lane and spend the rest of the evening fruitfully, picking up a nice bag, a first billing on our credit card. Picked up some premium whiskey and came home. Shobha still feels I should carry the laptop with me when I am out at icchal.

Wednesday, October 25, 200

Left for icchal, sleeper coach with paulo travels.

Thursday, October 26, 2000

Reached jaisinghpur at 4 in the morning in a sea of fog. Shishir and dineshbhai were waiting. We got into the first auto that came to do business, and halfway into the endless plains, it conked and decided it could not go any further. Dineshbhai takes the rick guy and goes and gets another rick, and we proceed further.

This is followed by ten days of sloth. Saw mission kashmir and x-men in hindi!!

November 2, 2000

Woke up to missed calls from Calcutta, and icchal fog. Called venkat and learnt that sanjay had called. Called home, spoke with tipu, chandreyee and folks. Later sanjay called back. Got a real nice green shirt from ma.

November 5, 2000

Left for Hyderabad. Nice seats, bearable copassengers.

November 6^th to 15^th, 2000

Bad news from KDC gets us on our toes and we decide to look at everything before it leaves us. So shobha, shai and I end up sticking around till really late every day. Ritwik dies in Bangalore of an immune system failure on the 11^th. Ajay faces a crisis of sorts with unclear lines of authority and responsibility in the odessa office. Mails (not so nice) flying back and forth between shobha and drv.

November 16, 2000

We get a studio snap taken in new clothes et cetera. Slog at work till past eight. Go out with venkat to this new eatery on the terrace of the building on punjagutta cross next to Indus and the Hub. Nice place but below average food.

Saturday, November 18, 2000

Go buy a microwave and an OTG. Sunipa leaves for cal, so we hand her a set of photos to give folks. Ali, RK, CJ, and sunipa not at work, not a nice feeling, shobha and me getting jittery at each other too. Decide to work from home. Stay up till 3:00 into Sunday morning getting the work done and into the server.

May 1, 2001

Sprained my back first thing in the morning (almost) and got funked to the extreme. Decided against any movement till someone told me what to do. Stayed on my back in the bed till PC Gupta dropped by in the evening and advised total bedrest for the next week/ten days.

Shai gets dumped with a load of work at the office and is near tears. Boss arranges for her to bring work home till I get back on my feet. Boss comes and drives Shai over to give me lunch.

May 2 to 6, 2001

I am in bed. Shai takes over everything, goes to work in the morning, brings her work home, gets me to have lunch, catches a snooze and starts working in the study in the afternoon in the scorching heat. The mercury hits over 40. I am placed on a muscle relaxant called Tizan that even relaxes my tongue and my eyelids. I spend my time trying to read (my head gets groggy with the meds, making it hard to do that even) and watching tonnes of TV. We get the single bed out to the living room so that I can lie and watch TV. Boss makes it a point to call every morning and ask how I am doing.

One evening I watch a show called indiadotcom on CNN about transcription in India and shoot off a mail. In a day or two I receive a reply that they would like to contact me regarding a followup story.

May 7 to 12, 2001

I go to work after a week. Feels strange to be out on the streets. I hang out in the office till afternoon and come home, my abdomen and lumbar spine secure in a tight belt.

Ajay announces the revised leave policy that seems rather unfair, but inevitable secondary to the abuse the previous policy received at the hands of the AQAs. Everyone is upset but nobody wants to verbalize or ventilate. A bunch of long faces at work, similar to how it was in January when all of them ganged up against Shai, Shobha and me.

Aruna Ravikumar, the Hyderabad correspondent for CNN gets in touch. She drops in Tuesday and works out a treatment. On Saturday, she fixes an appointment to shoot at the office on Monday, May 14, 2001.

I start going to work after finding out everyday if all the work is ready. Log in about six hours a day through the week.

Sunday, May 13, 2001

Start joining Shai for her swimming session in the morning. She has learnt how to swim very well and enjoys herself thoroughly. I sit around and read and listen to music.

Thursday, May 17, 2001

The heat slowly easing but still remaining at 40 degrees. Shai sporting a congestion that wakes her up at night. While sitting around in the morning she remembers that we are near completing one year since her procedure.

Things at work getting murkier. Venkat and Sridhar fight back from their corner. Today they came up with statistics of how many files we send for queries and why. Boss and Ajay come up with the concept of following the wavefile around with a jobcard that will have all the details and the stages the job goes through.

Saturday, May 19, 2001

Go for the 3^rd National Scrabble Championship at Secunderabad. For the first game, I am pitted against mohan chunkath, a senior IAS officer whose claim to fame also includes being world 21^st ranked scrabbler, and winner of the Australian Open. He knocks me back by 240 odd points. Through the day, I lose 5 out of 6 games, winning only one against AG Khan, an advocate who has been out of touch with the game.

Old friends include hariprasad, damaraj and shaikh, and of course the irrepressible kids of zygo club.

Sunday, May 20, 2001

Reach the venue with renewed determination, but manage to win only 3 out of 6 games today. End up 16^th out of 26 or so. Come home and drown my sorrows and vow to practice for next year. Damaraj sounds off that we (hariprasad, AGKhan and me) have been treating the championship as our practice rounds.

Monday, May 22, 2001

The jobcards get computerized and tied into a database. Looks good too. I am tired after two days of nonstop scrabbling. Somehow plod through all the meetings and knock off thirty minutes of Vine to return home and crash. Go for guitar lessons in the evening. Ajay and shobha drop in. James teaches me soldier of fortune, child in time, temple of the king, final countdown.

Sunday, May 27, 2001

Went and got the old mattresses exchanged. The new mattresses came in the afternoon (delivered by a one-armed rickshawpuller) and are quite good. They are the box type and made fairly well. After the exchange they worked out to 1400 bucks for three single ones. Then, we went to this veggies shop called tarkari since it was close to the mattress shop and it was such a delight. they had fresh lettuce (i got some for five bucks a bunch!!) they even had potol, but shai was not sure how to prepare it, so we decided we will wait for Mom to visit in July and then get some so that she can cook it and shai can learn too. Shai and are both very much longing for the visit, both bapi and ma. Shishir got through his second year exams and though we do not know the scores, we expect him to do better than he did last year. He might just visit sometime soon, if he can find time out from his NIIT and his watching TV, and we both are longing for that too.

In the evening, we went to a crafts exhibition here at necklace road. We had visited it late on Saturday evening just to get a fix on how it was and what it contained that might interest us. We picked up a kalamkari kerchief for Aju that we think she would be happier framing and putting on the wall. Being Sunday, it was the hyderabadis day out, and when we arrived at necklace road, the first sight that greeted us was the traffic flowing in. It was so heavy that it was faster to walk for the good part of a quarter of a mile. There was an exhibition of Iranian goods next to the crafts fair (we saw pictures later in the newspaper of exotic chandeliers and crockery and vases and stuff, very nice) and we could see inside the large tent from the street. It was like a sea of people. We decided against the Iranian exhibition and headed towards the crafts fair. It was huge and filled with people, the dust being raised by their feet hanging like a dirty cloud and clogging your mouth and nose. We picked up some sheets and the like, shai got herself a madhubani handpainted dupatta, we picked up ten of those kerchiefs to make cushion covers with.

I had picked up a headache from our morning trip to the mattress store (they fluff the cotton right there and the cotton dust is all prevailing) and the walk in the sun to "tarkari," so i was getting irritated and snappy. However, thanks to our having visited earlier, we knew where we wanted to go, and finished soon. Then we went and had some pavbhaji literally on the beach since this is right on Hussainsagar. After that we walked back almost all the way home, since the previous day we had had a rather frustrating experience with rickshaw guys asking for any amount to take us.

Monday, May 28, 2001

Went out biking the first time since i injured my back. Went for a short trip circling around punjagutta and back. When we came home, there was mail waiting for us. The first one was from ma, the other one was from Sallie. After all these years, she replied to me. She is struggling through her 50s, taking care of her brother and her sister and trying to buy a home, learning to cope with that time of your life when your friends start dying. It was great to hear from her, though she didnt sound too pleased with life. Unhappiness, some say, is a byproduct of intelligence.

Monday, May 28, 2001 (contd.)

We went to work, mondays being meeting days, early in the day. there was a wedding today of two people from the office, the first love marriage among our staff themselves (chandramohan and shantha), so ramkrishna, ajay, shobha and i went for that. Shai said she needed to do some shopping for the home. She and i returned home almost together. The wedding was a little reminiscent of ours not only because it was two transciption professionals getting wed, but also because how the common friend circle invited pretty much covered half of the transcription industry in hyderabad. I was remembering how two companies (DTS and Chouhans) had declared a holiday on the day of our wedding in bangalore.

The house is in a good mess since we have been trying to redo the living room. the study is in chaos. since hurting my back, i haven't really had time or the courage to get to cleaning the place. on top of that, Shai started stitching cushion covers today. so it is like a madhouse. Tomorrow is a holiday for us on account of memorial day in the US, so we will fix things at our leisure.