Client and Hyderabad Visit - Day 2 - 21/Oct/08

I reached the meeting room just on time this morning and in fact the clients had arrived a minute before I did. We went ahead with our breakfast and then resumed our meetings. Buoyed by the confidence I received after the presentation on the previous day, the demo I had today was a cake-walk. The client did ask few questions and I must admit that I came back with good responses.

We then had a walk-thru around the campus this day as well. But this time, the clients came out with their cameras and it was time for a lot of photo-ops. We even had the mandatory team pictures taken at a couple of scenic places.

We wound up for the day by around 5 and were out on the road headed to the famous Golkonda Fort. I think what happened after that has already been chronicled by me here.

In effect, I missed learning about the Fort and also didn’t get the opportunity to roam around the ruins. Anyways, since it was late in the evening, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it, though the authorities had installed lights at many places in the ruins itself. But these lights were only for a cosmetic effect and I think I have one more trip pending just to see this Fort.

We had dinner at a really fancy restaurant that was attached to the Hotel where our clients were staying. The food was outstanding especially their desserts. We split for the day and I finally reached my room by 11.15 PM.

Client and Hyderabad Visit - Day 1 - 20/Oct/08

Continuing my trend of waking up early on Monday mornings, I got up by 6.45 AM that day. Since I was going to get me regular filter coffee, I had to make do with the instant coffee that was available in the room. I then logged on to the Internet to check the morning newspaper of The Hindu. I took my time to get ready, but by 7.40, I was out of the room. We all then headed out to the office building where the meetings were arranged. After leaving our bags in the room, we then stepped out to receive the customers. By then, I was sporting my blazer and thankfully it still fit me (it was short even when it was first stitched 4 years ago). And I must admit this - the only thing that makes me look good is the blazer, but I think the blazer/coat-suit has the capacity to make anyone look good.

Anyways, the customers then came along in their car to the front of the building. We were introduced and I got a really knuckle breaking hand shake from the man. I don’t give a dead-fish hand-shake but this one was almost crunching the bones and I had to strain that extra bit to return the favor. The lady, however, gave a normal hand-shake. We then took them to the conference room and then we kinda started getting into the official portion of the visit. And a quick racial profiling - the guy is a Maratha who's settled in the US for almost 20 years and the lady is a red-headed Caucasian.

One of my senior managers gave a presentation about the organization and left the presentation about my unit to me! It was my first time presenting those slides to any customer. The only other time I'd even seen these slides was during a client visit in Jan '08, but my job then was to only click the buttons to move the slides while some other senior managers were doing the talking. So, when I had to start presenting these slides, I got a bit nervous and for the first couple of slides I couldn’t really do anything more than just read what was there. Luckily the senior manager was still around, so I deftly (or so I think) pointed to him and asked "Would you like to add some more?” I am sure he thought "Add? What did this guy say in the first place for me to add? I actually have to create not add." But he did bail me out for the first couple of slides and by the 4th-5th slide I regained my composure and was able to present a decent picture.

The rest of the day went quite peacefully with a good time spent on going around the campus. The campus at Hyderabad is quite a big one and needless to say, the two of them were really impressed. We ended the day around 4.15 PM and started the quasi-official part of the day. The plan was to take our clients to Charminar, but by the time we got there, the gates were closed. So we saw the monument from outside and spent the rest of the evening walking around the Chudi Bazaar (Bangle Market). There were quite a lot of small shops peddling bangles of various shapes, sizes, color, stones, artwork etc. All these were of course made of either glass or lacquer or glass or some metal and none were made of costly metals like Gold or Silver and none of the stones were actual precious or even semi-precious stones. And one had to bargain real hard otherwise we were bound to pay up some 4 times the actual cost.

We tried our hand at bargaining but failed miserably. While the language was not an issue - most of the shop-keepers spoke in Hindi and Urdu and my program manager's mother tongue was Hindi. So also the client. And I too could manage some amount of spoken Hindi though it may have sounded like Mehmood in Padosan! The real issue with bargaining was the very skill. And call me anything, but I think women are winners when it comes to bargaining. We were all given instructions to start at 25% of what the shopkeeper asks. But I found out that none of us could really ask that value. We men invariably started at 50%. And even on the odd occasion that we started at 25%, the shopkeeper simply refused to talk further and we too just walked away. I am sure women would have managed to keep the shopkeeper interested in the sale, but the only woman in our group at that time was a "Gori" - white lady - who didn’t speak Hindi. So that settled the matter and after an hour of walking around the bazaar we simply returned to the car.

We went out to some restaurant for dinner. Having stayed in AC the whole day, then being exposed to lot of dust at the bazaar and all this on a stomach that was rumbling with the food in the office, it was slowly getting into my head and I was not feeling too well. Even at the dinner table, I didn’t eat anything properly. We finally dropped off the clients at their hotel and when I returned to my room, it was after 11 PM. I still had some office work to do and I wound up the day after another 45 minutes or so.

Monumental bulbs

On the day that India was celebrating the birthday of M.K.Gandhi, Mrs. and Mr.Raghu and self, decided to go out on a long drive along the ECR. Our dear friend Nilu, however, couldn’t make it due to “prior commitments”. We weren’t really clear about where to go, but we were clear that the main intent was to spend time out of the house and not inside a mall/movie hall.

In October 2007, while returning from Vaitheeswaran Kovil by car, I had noticed a board near Kalpakkam that talked about the presence of a Dutch Fort. Since I have a mild attraction to archaeological monuments, I have been thinking about visiting this place ever since.

So I broached this venue to Raghu and he accepted it with no qualms. After working out the logistics, we decided to head out by 2.30 PM and believe it or not, we actually left by 2.50!

After we started from home, we first headed out to my usual petrol bunk at Adyar to fill in fuel. In what turned out to be a harbinger for the rest of the day, the bunk was closed. We moved on to another bunk nearby, filled up the fuel and proceeded with the trip.

We had a pretty decent drive, notwithstanding the efforts of an SUV to run over us a few kilometers after Mahabs. We finally reached Kalpakkam. But there was no sign of the board that I saw last year. We stopped over at a couple of places to enquire about the fort. And no one actually knew about it. Finally there was a cop buying some stuff at a shop and I approached him. He finally understood what I was looking for and gave me the directions to the “koattai saar. British kaaran kaalathula kattinadhu”. He obviously lived with the maxim that all Caucasians are British theory and I had no patience to try and correct him.

We followed his directions and after passing through the Kalpakkam Township, we finally spotted a rather small board that said “Dutch Fort and Cemetery” and had an arrow pointing to the left. We looked to the left and lo behold, there was this long wall which had shed its plastering and was proudly exposing its bricks. We turned left and took the road alongside this wall, only to find a longer wall exhibiting a similar constitution. We then reached the entrance.

After having reached the entrance, we were worried if there was some other way to go inside the Fort. The reason was the presence of a tall iron gate that was locked. There was a small gap in the fencing (by design) and there was something like a path that led to another of the walls I mentioned before. This wall however was different, because it had the semblance of a formal entrance in the form of a gate capped by a minar like structure and there were 2 canons on either side of this gate.

One thing that was glaringly visible was the ABSENCE of people. In a country that’s known for its density of population, it was scary to see nobody at a monument where some kind of history exists. There were no visitors. There were no officials. There were no sign boards other than the one at the main gate that said that this was a protected monument. The only way we knew that we were not trespassing into someone’s private property was the assurance from a local woman who looked like the caretaker of the place.

Even as we stepped inside these walls, I was still alive to the possibility of seeing some relics. Some more cannons. Probably a spot where some major fight took place. The place where they stored their ammunition. The place where chief’s office was. The place where they had their flag post. And all of this explained with lot of signboards.

But all I could see inside was a big piece of land with growth of wild grass and a few trees in the middle. There was this muddy path which was headed towards a few structures which were in a dilapidated condition. You just cannot say what these structures were meant for, by looking at it.



The caretaker lady pointed us to an area which was basically the Cemetery mentioned in the board we had seen 10 minutes ago. We went inside and came out in, probably, 39 seconds. Then, we headed inside the grounds I mentioned earlier. We went inside one of these structures and found them to be just rooms; rooms with windows and arched ceilings. The area we went to appeared to have walls that were plastered with modern day cement. Obviously some amount of restoration has happened, but then, the charm of the old building was lost. There were more ruins of course, but we were in a deep state of bulb to try and venture there.

We took the mandatory pictures of our presence in that place and made a hurried exit. The visit to this Fort would probably rank in the top 10 bulbs I’ve had in terms of expecting great things and getting sheer nonsense. In fact, it is high time the authorities call it the “Dutch Cemetery and an extended ruined compound wall around it”.

And thinking about the Fort now, it is clear why the Dutch never ruled us. Going by the reports in the article related to the excavations done here, this Fort seemed to have been some sort of a glorified club/watering-hole for the expatriates of those times. In fact, the fight between the Dutch and the Brits must have come up due to suspected foul play during a Tiger-Goat-game! Or else, this Fort was just a warehouse for the Dutch traders to stock their goods. And probably they sabotaged their stock to take the insurance benefit. Unfortunately, they may have insured with some Brits who found out the truth and took over the Fort/Warehouse.

Anyways, after we came out, we decided to head to Mahabs with the knowledge and assurance of being able to see ancient architecture. We stopped over for a quick cup of coffee that extended itself into a plate of vegetable bonda. We set out to the Shore Temple.

Unfortunately, that day turned out to be “Kaanum Eid” – at least that’s what I am calling it since I don’t know the technical details for that festival. You see, we Hindus in Tamil Nadu have this event called “Kaanum Pongal”. This is the day after all other Pongal days and families make it a point to visit important tourist spots. I called this Gandhi Jayanthi day as “Kaanum Eid” because there was a lot of crowd around the Shore Temple and most of these were Muslims. Since the previous day was Eid, I created this event called “Kaanum Eid” to equate my Muslim brethren with the Hindus.

Anyways, by the time we reached the Shore Temple, the authorities refused entry since the stipulated visiting hours were getting over in 5 minutes. We then braved the crowd and headed to the beach just for the heck of it. We spent some time in the Mahabs Promenade (c’mon there were merry-go-rounds, bonsai giant-wheels, air-rifles to shoot balloons, lot of small shops selling souvenirs and hell even an apology of a LifeGuard’s outpost) and after Mrs. and Mr.Raghucompleted their souvenir purchases, we walked back to our car.

Even as I was driving the car back home, I got a call from my team-member at onsite about a serious problem that had come up. Raghu being the great guy he is, he quickly took over the steering wheel and drove us back, while I chalked out some plan with my team-member.

The only good part of the day came after we reached home. We had decided to have dinner at Eden and as is always the case with them, we were not disappointed. The really good dinner helped round off what was otherwise a day filled with one bulb after another.

Note: The Dutch Fort and Cemetery is listed at # 66 in ASI’s list of monuments in Tamil Nadu.