17th
September 1997 was the day when I first came to Hyderabad. An appointment
letter from the World Health Organization and a suitcase in hand, I boarded the
Indian Airlines flight from Chennai and reached Begumpet. Took the ambassador cab which had
to be pushed by couple of others to start, only to reach the nearest petrol
station where the cabbie filled all of 1.652 litres of petrol just enough to get
me to Koti. It took me 2 hours to reach, since Lord Ganesh was getting his
customary annual immersion and the poor soul from Pondicherry was not aware of
this practice.
Anyways
checked into Hotel Siddartha at Koti. Have to mention that the reception
guy asked me strange questions and the bell boy gave me stranger looks. It appeared
that this was the first time a young (pretty)woman checked into this hotel all by
herself and probably stayed all by herself for a whole week! Ahhh…I felt like a non-pregnant Vidya Balan in Kahaani, on a mission. Technically I was on a mission too - a
mission to eradicate Polio. I was given 14 districts … entire Telangana and
Vizag,Vizianagaram, Srikakulam, East and West Godavari. My job?...Well .. was
to set up a surveillance system for reporting cases of paralysis among
children. That’s how things work. We had to have a full proof system to
establish that all cases were reported. If we only trusted our Indian Govt
officials and politicians to do this, we would eradicated Polio ages back… at
least on paper.
Now back to the first day in office. I had to report at the Commissionerate of Family Welfare
at Koti, I took the manual rickshaw (where
one has to almost squat …these things are now extinct) from the hotel at
8.45 am. Reached the office at 9.00am, only to find no one there. It was a
scene out of Will Smith’s ‘ I am legend’… eerie..humanless and yes there was a dog. After almost an hour there appeared some one who looked like an officer, but later I came
to know he was the attender but as good as a officer, since he did most
things in that office. The cleaning lady came in at 10.30 and brought out at least
50 cigarette butts from no where. The rest of the govt. guys came in between 10.45-
11.am. I introduced myself. Then at 11.30 almost everyone disappeared ... no.. not in the ordering of reporting for work ... they disappeared all at once. It was apparently the GREAT HYDERABADI TEA BREAK. Anyways I introduced myself again after the tea break. Clearly I was not welcome there since I did not know
Hindi, Urdu or Telugu ... neither did I smoke nor like Irani chai.
But
the next few months changed it all. A hefty salary with perks, a 540 mm
Mahindra jeep, a laptop, pager, mobile and most importantly the access to
control nearly 30 lakhs for training all the govt doctors works like magic. Felt powerful driving the
non-power steering jeep and felt important being the second person to carry the
laptop to the govt meetings, after Mr Chandrababu Naidu. Btw, both these helped
to me build my biceps … yepp those days, laptops weighed 5 kgs… and I was only 45 kgs then :-(
The
next few years saw me travel to the cities, towns, districts, mandals and villages. Stayed at
hotels with room tariff of Rs 100- Rs10,000/ night. There were hotels with beauty parlors, some without and one low-budget hotel in a town in Adilabad district where the door bell rang at 6.am. I opened the door and saw this
middle aged, strict looking man with a bag in hand and a scowl on his face. He introduced himself ’ Main Barber hoon, shaving karna kya?’. Don't know who was more shocked ... me or he when he realized I was the sole occupant of the room!
I can
go on and on, but you guys would get bored. So I am cutting the long story short.
I thoroughly enjoyed my work in this state. People are very warm and loving here. Never thought that I would settle
here permanently but I did . Andhra Pradesh not only gave me a new life ... it gave a partner as well!
