The year was 2004 and Gachibowli was a very sleepy place then. The AP Housing Board Colony at Gachibowli was built on a set of low hills around a lake. It was a very beautiful place with the famous Hyderabad hanging rocks all around. I really loved the semi forest like feel of the place but I must confess that I was afraid of the eerie feeling at nights. While most of my colleagues and friends felt this was a place for a fugitive, I chose this as my abode. Little did I know that I was going to live here for the next five years!
Singled in life I was trying to find my feet in a new city. As a single child this did not come naturally to me. Born, brought up, produced and developed in a super metro like Bombay I had never been tortured or subjected to household chores of any kind. Leave aside cooking, sweeping or cleaning, I had not much experience in even locking my room. There was always someone to take care of these duties at home.
In a suburb like Gachibowli what was most difficult to find in those days was a servant. I did not know any Telugu and thus could only practice dumb charades with the women who came to negotiate with me. Even after engaging with a few my life was a nightmare. These women would refuse to understand any instructions and keep to timings of their own. They would go unannounced on long leave and demand cash advances in the middle of the month. I also knew that I was paying at least 40% more than the market rate. My middle class neighbors who helped me communicate with my servants often took advantage of this and negotiated package deals with them to get the benefit of the higher premium I was paying.
Among all this walked in Shaheen. She was frail, lived far, did not impress with her work at first but spoke Hindi. The language barrier broken I managed to negotiate much better and soon we were in a deal. Shaheen as the name suggest was also a Muslim and with firm secularism celebrated every festival on earth. She would thus want leave every now and then. Also since she stayed a little far she found it difficult to keep timings. As I had hardly anything of value in my house I was open to the idea of sharing the keys to my place with her.
One day I found my TV on when I returned in the evening. I realized that my assets were being used without my knowledge. Since I would meet her only over weekends and on pay days the communication gap this time was of a different type. I also knew that confrontation would not help as she would just chuck the job. So that weekend I decided to very politely ask her about this.
While she dismissed the allegations, soon she started demanding some more privileges. She had inspected my refrigerator and candidly told me that since there are only water bottles in the fridge she should be allowed to use it to store some stuff occasionally. At first I was reluctant but she showed me the logic in terms of equal power consumption in both cases. I was amazed by her ability to analyze the situation and negotiate. I had no option but to give in to her demand.
I soon forgot about this arrangement as Shaheen would seldom keep anything in the fridge and I would rarely visit my refrigerator thanks to the Hyderabadi winter.
It should have been a night in early April as I remember clearly I was back from the ISB Graduation Day Celebrations. Hyderabad had just begun to get hot and I decided to walk into my fridge and pull out a bottle of cold water to drink. When I opened the door I saw two large goat heads wrapped in a transparent plastic bag staring right at me. I almost let out a scream and dropped the bottle in my hand before running for cover. Was this a scene from a horror show?
After collecting my breath and gathering my courage I decided to approach my fridge door again. The packets were still there so that was nothing paranormal about this. Now I started thinking and inspecting the stuff. The heads in my fridge were like the ones you would see at a butcher’s shop. While thinking I also realized that it was bakri eid a day before and thus finally I concluded that the culprit was Shaheen. I did not have to be Sherlock Homes for that.
I mustered up the courage to speak to Shaheen the next day but my aggression went for a toss when we both had a good laugh about the incident. When my neighbor’s kid inquired about my scream the previous night, I taught him to play this practical joke on his folks at home. Alas they did not have a fridge nor did we have a spare goat head so he found some other carcass from the garbage nearby and tried the trick by putting it in his dad’s trunk. The foul smell was a giveaway and the beating he got actually made me feel sorry for him.
On a ten point scale this blog would only score a Five. To read some of my higher rated blogs click on http://tbgfl.blogspot.com/
To read my views on the news click on http://llewellyn-desouza.blogspot.com/
To read about my adventures in my Yellow WagonR click on http://adventureswiththeyellowwagonr.blogspot.com/
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