Towards the end of june 1997
I was told we were moving to Hyderabad as my father got transferred. Just a month before that was my 4th birthday and i was already quite talkative. I was just getting to know things and i knew we lived in Delhi and the idea of moving away didn't sit well with me. I don't really remember the details, but i vaguely remember my last day in Delhi. The city i thought was my home.
We got our dinner packed from andhra bhavan (i think that's what it is called) and we had it and then started off the next day to Hyderabad. I, my mother and my sister were the first to arrive at Hyderabad and we stayed at my mother's aunt's place for a while until my parents found a place to stay and our stuff arrived from delhi.
Again, i vaguely remember i was put in a school - Priyadarshini public school (it doesn't exist now😜) near the house we rented and thus began my journey in this city.. Technically that was the first time i stepped out of my home and from the surveillance of my mother 😜
Apparently i knew too much to be in Lower Kindergarten but i was young for Upper Kindergarten(UKG) but my parents somehow convinced the principal to put me in UKG saying they could demote me if i wasn't coping with their "curriculum" (what curriculum in KG one may ask!)
It was fun being at school. A lot of kids spoke urdu and since i knew little bit of Hindi it was fine.
A lot of firsts happened that year. Like my first mono action / role play for which i won a prize, the first prize i won, the first school picnic.. i remember repeating the names of places in the same order - Golconda fort, Qutub Shahi tombs and Public gardens to every other person that visited us. Few months later we were taken to the zoo and i vaguely remember participating in a rhymes competition for which i had to wear a frilled frock 😂😂.
Also got the first scar on my face as i ran into few senior boys playing with a glass bottle or something and that year i stood first in class (😂). I had moved out of this school after a relative suggested another school which had a lot of extracurricular activities and thus ended my journey in my first school.
I had two friends here and i knew the names of all the kids in my class and would engage myself in imaginative play (realised it during MD), holding a toy phone in one hand and inviting them. (How imaginative play and conversations with myself became instrumental in introspection is a story for another day).
From someone who didn't really like the idea of moving to a place which was not "delhi" i was getting used to Hyderabad.
25 years later, i cannot think of moving out of this city and i cannot imagine how life would have been if my father hadn't decided on moving to a telugu state in 1997.
