When my office shifted its location to Hitec city it was too far for me to compromise with. 20 kms in the city traffic to and fro was so much of a compromise at the cost of at least one hour of less sleep plus 2 hours of extra travel and the result would be an outworn me. That is when we decided to move from the Secunderabad house where we lived for 5 years. The search for a new house ended at Pragathi Nagar, a place which literally deceived us with its beauty. You are welcomed with a lovely sight of a vast lake with tranquil light green water on either side of the road, when you enter Pragathi Nagar. The rock stones that peep from the middle of the lake make residence for some small bushes and numerous variety of cute birds. Once you cross this lake you are in Pragathi Nagar. It is actually a panchayat which is the first one to receive ISO 9001:2000 certification. It was only 8 kms from the office which means a 15 minutes drive.
The house we saw in Pragathi Nagar was an independent duplex house in a gated community of 30 neighbors. The resemblance of our houses in Kerala and the sight of a small soil compound attached to the house tempted us to finalise that house. I used to feel sorry for what my son was missing for being brought up in apartments when we had our childhood so free in air, soil, mud and water. This small piece of bare soil made me happy as my son could play with it as we did in our childhood. It was a neatly maintained community and was gate watched. The house was not occupied by anyone else before. The sight from the kitchen windows and the bedroom balcony was so nice like a painted scenery. Little did we know of the problems we were going to face at the time of finalizing the deal with the house owner.
The night after the first day in the new house we realised that we are sharing this house with some others. Some others meant a million others. 1 million mosquitoes! Advantage no: 1 of having a big beautiful lake next to your residence. We partially solved the issue by fixing mosquito nets on all the windows. But the dream of spending easy evenings in the society's gardens outside the house turned out to be a fanciful one. We neither wanted to be seen with elephant legs nor to end up in hospital with dengue fever.
The first day morning in the house I realised that the scenery of the small green rocky hills from the kitchen window in the morning had special appearance of artists performing their morning pooja with a cup of water. I knew about the labor colony at the base of that hill but never imagined they had this mass pooja performed behind the small rocks and bushes on the hill. Yes, convenient for them - fresh air, abundant fresh water in the lake - such a relief. They must be singing the film song aa aa..aa aa aaja.. piya tu ab to aaja.. I was sure, indeed in relief. I never opened the kitchen window again.
Soon we realised that the promised 24 hours bore well water supply was not valid for summer. Society made it clear that they would release water only from June or July that too as per the availability of ground water. Did they expect us to wait for 2 or 3 months to take bath as they do? We had to start depending on water tankers. That became an additional expense and an added head ache to call them, wait for them, watch them not stealing water from our tanker and sell it to someone else.
I have to say that my son enjoyed playing outside and started digging the soil, filling the well he made with water (that we buy for a price) and molding different shapes with mud. We were happy for him, till the monsoons. We were happy to see the monsoon nearing so that our water tanker events could come to a halt. But the monsoons brought us new guests at home. They appeared from nowhere and scared us. The small hill top that we were staying was recently developed prior to which it was a rocky bushy jungle. The locals were not so happy for the new occupants and they had not left the place. They were hiding till then and came out to enjoy the rains. My son's play in the garden was then stopped. After all the water snakes and scorpions were not so fun to be with.
From then onwards everything was a problem. Or we felt so. The road from this panchayat to the main road was so broken that it made the commute very difficult. The original road to the main junction was so broken that we had to take an alternate route which added another 15 minutes to the journey. I had 2 accidents with my 2 wheeler both the times I was nicely injured. As if the gutters are not enough they had speed breakers every 200 meters. Our 4 wheeler had to get serviced twice. The panchayat roads were all cement roads, not black top tar roads which made them very very dusty. How come we did not notice all these before the decision was made? I told you that lake, like an appealing slut with her charming smile invited us and we were trapped.
The panchayat being an award winning one they were not selling any alcohol. Leave alone liquor or anything alcoholic, even fizzy drinks like Coke, Pepsi etc were also not sold in shops. Though this did not particularly bothered me, it was the prime reason for my husband to find the place as 'not livable'. Most of the people in this village were not speaking anything other than Telugu made our problems to double it. Those days how I missed the 1 pm Sunday doordarsan news(for the hearing impaired)! The housing colony that we stayed had many houses vacant. Among those who occupied more than half of the house wives were also Telugu only-s. (Though the husbands are all placed in MNCs) This limited my interaction with the neighbors .
If you dislike something , the more and more you start finding faults with it. Same happened to us with Pargathi nagar. We started feeling that there was something wrong with the house. Someone or the other at home was always sick. To add to that I had 2 accidents. Another strange thing was that the grains I stored in closed containers were found to have worms and insects even if they are fresh and I would end up throwing so much of stuff. Then I read somewhere that if the soil is not pure, or if the earth beneath the compound is not clean enough it affects your life badly. The worms in food items were an indication of that it seems. I was not a believer of all these. But it is experience that make you believe.
I no longer wanted to stay there. My husband was also like 'enough is enough'. We said bye-bye to the award winning panchayat after a mere 9 month's stay there.
