Places on vnykmshr

Flying Thru the Motions

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Three months in. Morning walk around the block with whoever’s up, ending at the tea stall. Tea at 7:30, maybe 8. Office by 9.

Delhi is already hot – April heat, the kind that sits on your chest when you step outside.

I write code. I take a call with clients I have never met. I ship a release in the afternoon. I debug something small and stupid by 5. I am a dev and a deployment engineer and the guy on the call at once, and it has stopped feeling strange.

Chandigarh

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I spent a few days in Chandigarh.

Everything about it was right. Wide roads that don’t choke. Clean streets. Greenery that wasn’t an afterthought. The kind of city that teaches you what your own city got wrong.

I felt nothing.

Not depressed, not unhappy – just disconnected from my own responses. My reactions were running a few frames behind whatever I was looking at. I was there with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. Even that wasn’t enough.

Ping from Noida

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Hello from a slightly chilly Noida.

I left Hyderabad on Sunday afternoon. Landed Sunday evening. Joined the team Monday morning. Five days in. Still finding the bathrooms.

Hyderabad runs warm. Delhi runs to extremes – both ends of the year. I landed in peak winter with nothing for it. The first thing I bought was a jacket. The second thing was a thicker one.

The office looks like the comp lab from college – fewer machines, full internet for once. I have a desk. I have a login. I have someone who wants me to ship something by next week. Everything else can wait.

Goodbye 2010, Goodbye Hyderabad

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

New Year. Half-packed boxes. I am leaving Hyderabad.

Six and a half years here. Four in college on the city’s edge, two and a half working downtown. The first job out of college. The first bike. A flat full of friends – like-minded, carefree, the kind you don’t need a reason to stay up with. Concerts that ran past midnight. The city where I learned what it felt like to be free.

Rare Pictures of Hyderabad

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I stumbled onto a Flickr photostream of old Hyderabad. Black and white. Nizam era. Half of it showing monuments I’ve never been to.

Two and a half years here. Some of those places are ten minutes from the office. I’ve walked past the turnoffs for most of them. I never turned.

It’s an ugly thing to admit. You can live in a place and not see it. You treat it like a room you’re passing through to get to the next thing.