Ghar banake dekho ; shaadi karvake dekho!!

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To a typical hyderabadi, these two phrases mean a lot. You must be born and brought in Hyderabad to understand the importance it commands.

'Ghar banake dekho' is a phrase to describe how difficult it is build your house. I have built my house, though not completely but I know how one has to run from pillar to post, nag, beg, borrow and sometimes steal !!! Negotiate with angry neighbours is probably the worst part of the whole exercise. Neighbours seem to be jealous of your home and they do everything in their capacity to create hurdles while concealing themselves behind smiles.

'Shaadi karvake dekho' Now this is a phrase I can vouch for !! Believe me making arrangements for a marriage makes one to age very quickly. I think I must have aged 2 years in 3 days. It was such a harrowing experience dealing with a muslim cook that I can barely comprehend what he was doing. These guys were reluctant to cook in a Hindu marriage and yet they were hired by us. A bawaarchi is my definition a guy who is at a great disconnect with intelligence and common sense. They have no idea about menu estimation, they just give wild numbers for you get and then they don't use many food items in any preparations, wondering whether it is you who is the fool or him!! Just to start it our cook could not estimate the amount of oil and overestimated the amount of rice to be cooked. At the end of the day more than half of food got wasted, not only because there were fewer guests but our baawarchi could not get it right.

I must thank my stars that I had my cousin brother (Vidya Sagar) at my disposal. He is one of the guys who can be trusted with any task. He can multi task, posesses good talking skills and has very very good set of friends/contacts. Just imagine the scene : My cook wanted 400kg of dry 'imli' ka firewood in the month of August. I thought this guy was fooling aroung, so ignored him. At around 2 am he calles me and aske 400kg of dry firewood. Now tell me, who has 'dry' wood in the month of August apart from someone sitting in Sahara desert !! I must say that our Hyderabad has got everything except positive culture. I got 500kg of firewood at 3 'o clock in the morning when the marriage muhurat was at 9:30 am, just six-and-a-hours later!! It was sheet luck that i happen to come across drunk firewood seller who was returing home. I am sure had he not been drunk he would not have opened the shop for us :) . My cousin immediately called for the AP Transco lorry to ferry all the wood. At that time there is harly any transport available and so I thank my stars once again!! I had to literally run from pillar to post for this. Really really harrowing experience to me , I must say.

Then apart from this we had a house full of useless relatives who routinely find something that they don't like. We thought they would participate in our chores but they became a big headache to us. Must say friends are much better than these jealous relatives. Our family friends from Sirgapur and Kohir were much more helpful.

I think at the end of the day, me and my cousin run the show. We are very proud that we could manage most things in the nick of time. That photo is one happy family!!!