Hampi (panoramic view)

And Memories of Andhra Were Made...

It was the 10th day of our tour and a final one. As soon as I had landed in Hyderabad I had spoken to Radha and Chanda my friends from school. I wanted to meet them and we had decided that end of my tour would be good time to meet. So this day we began by co-ordinating where to meet the two Annites and this was after 25 years! Radha had suggested a coffee place but since she had some meeting to attend she invited us to her office at the Hyderabad University Campus.

But that was at 10.30 am. We had lot of time on hand before that so we requested the driver to take us to the lake front, we meant Husain Sagar which we passed by earlier but had not seen it. Instead he took us to Osman sagar which was quite close to Taramati Baradari where we were staying. This is a lesser known lake but quite an expanse. We enjoyed the waterfront for half hour and then were chased off by cops, as parking was not allowed there. It was very quite but the Hyderabad sun was already glowing hot in the early morning. At evening time it would be more pleasant am sure.

Then we met Chanda and together we went to Radha's office at Gachibowli. Radha Rangarajan, is a Stanford graduate and a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Genetics from the prestigious Rockefeller University. She worked with Dr. Reddy's laboratory before she ventured out into drug discovery on her own. We were always proud of her and she continues her scholastic pursuits for it runs in her family, She is the daughter of Dr. C. Rangarajan after all! I found out she had 2 daughters and was married to Santanu Paul. I had read the story of her wedding here. I told her about it and she eagerly shared more about her family and old times.

Chanda Mukhi had worked with Citibank for 14 years and now is a homemaker. She has a daughter too. It was interesting how both Chanda and Radha's daughters went to the same school, they had bumped into each other a couple of times but only on this day they spent almost 1.5hrs going down memory lane. About all the mischief we did in school, the tug of wars at lunch time, Vidhya Jayaraman's jokes, our trip to Bordi and more. The three of us were very happy indeed and we planned to have a reunion in school soon.

After this we that is Dad and me drove back into the city and decided to lunch at Kamat when we spotted it while driving by. This was the last day in Andhra so one more time my order was MLA Pesarattu, it was a happy me at the end of the meal.

Finally after lunch we decided to spend time till 5pm at the Salar Jung Museum. The Salarjung Museum is the third largest museum in India housing the biggest one-man collections of antiques in the world. It is a very well looked after museum and even after spending 2hrs we did not manage to see the complete collection. There is a room for every theme.

We then decided to go to Kachiguda railway station early and await the train. Any station in India looks less crowded when you are are Mumbaikar. I spent some time reading a book on the platform as I waited. We had a first class booking and as we boarded the train we were in for a surprise, We were given the only Coupe' in the compartment as out of the 10 first class passengers we were the only family! So our trip truly ended on a high note as we settlled in for the night on the train.