Mapping the city

I have been to Pune ‘n’ times during the last 15-17 years but I never knew how to reach from Pune railway station to my relatives place scattered all over the Pune city. I used to trust the rickshaw driver and he used to correctly drop me at the place where I wanted to be and I used to get charged according to the meter. Even if we had gone to Pune by our car, my relatives place was so near to the NH4 that I never needed to enter city. Once in my relatives place, they used to take me all over the city. In the comforts of an AC car and chit-chatting with them, I may have toured the whole city but never knew which route they took because I never bothered to remember and note down important landmarks in Pune. I never travelled in ‘Pune Municipal transport’ buses. When these buses used to take a circular round on a traffic island, I used to comment that PMT buses have a very long and dangerous tail. In short, I never mapped Pune in my brain.

And seven months back, a new city, Hyderabad awaited to welcome me. From somewhere, the virtue of alertness came in me. When you want to get dropped at some place in Hyderabad whose name you can’t even pronounce, saying that name to the bus conductor wrongly and getting stared from your co-passengers became a routine thing to me. The transport system was tough to deal at the start but it was the cheapest way to roam the city. Unlike Mumbai, the rickshaws in Hyderabad don’t go by meter even if they have meter installed in them.

I used to remember important landmarks in the whole city, be it an historical building, KFC restaurant or a small tea shop and used to carefully listen what other people are saying to the conductor and where they used to get down. In this way all the stop names became clear and I was able to say them clearly like a native. Once I boarded a bus to go to ‘Punjagutta’, but the conductor said that the bus will go to NIMS and not ‘Punjagutta’. I blatantly said yes to him and took out my age old smartphone, searched what NIMS meant (It’s actually Nizam’s institute of medical sciences), tracked down how far are both of them and got down at the proper stop which was walking distance from where I wanted to actually go. Such quick decisions really helped me. I also tracked down a bungalow in a posh locality in Hyderabad which had a Rolls-Royce and it was my landmark when the bus passed from the front of the bungalow. Plus once I sat beside the conductor when the crowd in the bus was thin, and the good guy explained me all the bus routes in Hyderabad. After that, traveling in Hyderabad was a cake walk for me. If you meet good people in your life, it can make things really simpler.

Last month I covered all the major roads in Hyderabad in the public transport system. I can say that I mapped Hyderabad in less than 6 months flat. The situation is so good that I can direct a new comer in Hyderabad. A sense of achievement and satisfaction of taming a city is immense and one should experience it at least in our own country or a completely a foreign land.   

:D