You’ve been Stafl-ed!

“Stafalmandi, Stafalmandi…” the ring of the autowallah’s shout is something I can recall at will. I sometimes suspect it’ll stay with me forever.
Well, this ‘Stafalmandi,’ or Sitafalmandi, as it less-commonly, and more accurately known, has been my residence for the last year-and-I lost-count in Hyderabad. I moved here initially when I was doing a French course. That’s over, but you get the drift when I say ‘lost count.’
My office at Banjara Hills is a good 13-14 kms and Banjara Hills of course, looks like a different city to the lansdscape of Stafalmandi.
But, the station is close by and the train’s not all that bad, if you ignore the frequent delays and the crowd. But, that’s not the point of this post.
Every place has a landmark, right? Shyambazar in Calcutta has the Netaji statue, Panjagutta has Central, Lifestyle has well…Lifestyle, and so on. The most prominent structure on the ‘Stafalmandi’ main road is the road-over-bridge (ROB)…or what should have been an ROB already. Basically, it’s under construction…I hear it’s been under construction for 7 years! Yes, it’s “nearing completion” now, I hear, and the water dripping or shifting pits around it mean it may be operative in 6 months (I’m not guaranteeing that.)
Along with itself, this ROB has dragged a few other things into… limbo (in absence of a more-impressive jargon to illustrate my vocab). The lives of workers, for instance, who now form a settlement that looks like a post-civil war refugee camp. They live on the road and sleep on the sand dump, loose gravel mound, station parking lot and on vacant vegetable troikas. They’re mostly from Bengal, North 24 Parganas, going by the twist on the Bengali accent. And for all these 7 years or part thereof, they’ve lived here, cooking rice on the street and draining the starch into the drain right beside, sleeping on tarpaulin under the open sky, giving birth and having drunken brawls…all right here in ‘Stafalmandi.’
Besides, there are the half-broken shops and houses, unique of Hyderabad, wherever there’s a bridge being made or a road being expanded. There’s a curious front-porch of a house with a miniature temple that’s now been compromised for the bridge. Imagine…I actually walk through what was technically their house everyday now!
Localities like Sitafalmandi are, however, increasingly rare in Hyderabad. Narrow gallis, naughty urchins, poor lives and anna’s kiranas that still sell stuff for 50 paise – in limbo, without the polish the rest of this city has.
But I don’t seem to mind …even the sound of the autowallah’s confidently erroneous shout sounds like home now. Guess I’ve been Stafl-ed.