Lost In Hyderabad

I’m lost. I’m in one of the most populous countries in the world, with only snippets of a shared language, and I am completely, stonkingly lost. All I can think is ‘thank god I didn’t try this without a phone”.(1)

I’m on my way to my first real meeting with my new clients(2), Vandyaa and Reyka. They are the creative forces behind Ishma, a social enterprise which designs and makes amazingly funky jewellery using centuries old techniques. Reyka and Vandyaa are blazing new ground by being female entrepreneurs in a country where women are actively discouraged from working following college, and considered old if not married by 26.(3)

I decide to follow the instructions I’ve been given and walk up to a black gate. I stick my head inside and call out Vandyaas name. A small child runs over, and his mother follows close behind — there’s no Vandyaa here, she says, shaking her head.

There’s nothing else for it, I decide. I take out my phone and send the following photos:

And the message:

“I’m lost. I will be standing here very still waiting for you to come and get me”

Soon my phone rings. It’s Vandyaa — she has come out of her apartment to find me, and thinks I may be lost. I agree. She asks me to find someone nearby who she can talk to, and I practically throw the phone at a young boy walking barefoot towards me. Please — talk I say to him, flapping my hands in a way that is supposed to communicate something and he takes the phone and starts speaking in Telanganu to Vandyaa.(4)

He agrees to take me to meet her, and I soon find myself trailing along behind him, retracing the route I took in the Uber to get lost in the first place, until finally I see Reyka pull up on her moped, looking for all the world like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

She is going to take me to Vandyaas place on the back, it seems. I hope on, ungracefully, definitely not in any way like Audrey, and as she takes off feel my legs swing up in the air in front of me and I grab the seat to stop from falling off. She stops, exasperated but laughing with me, and shows me where to put my feet. We take off again, and go speeding, helmetless, through Hyderabadi traffic.(5)

As the back of a bus looms large in front of us, and we prepare to do two U-turns in quick succession, I’m not entirely convinced I’m not going to die. We finally arrive, and talking over eachother tell Vandyaa how we got here.(6) Vandyaa looks over at Reyka, and now they tell me the most important part of the story:

Reyka has only had her license for 2 months

Footnotes

1. Later it eventuates that my white-girl reliance on technology is what got me lost in the first place. Hyderabad didn’t exactly engage the services of urban planners when expanding, and so googlemaps is constantly a little wrong.

2. I’m in India working as a social impact consultant with Social Starters. This means working with a small to medium enterprise with a social or environmental purpose on their business planning to give them the best chance of long term survival.

3. I’m 34, and constantly wonder what the older generation think of me. Do they think I haven’t been lucky enough to find a husband? That I’m a spinster? Or maybe they think I’m a loose woman. “Don’t mention the divorce” becomes my personal motto.

4. Telenganu is one of the newest states in India, Created just last year by the division of Andhra Pradesh into 2 separate states. Most people in Hyderabad speak a combination of English, Telanganu and Hindi — all at once.

5. Terrified, all I can think of is the end of Alan Bennetts’ History Boys, when the teacher takes one for the team on the back of Hectors moped, and ends up with 2 broken femurs.

6. Here being the studio apartment which is Ishma HQ, and from which astounding work is produced. So glad to be working with these amazing women!