Hyderabad blues..

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Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong

-            Murphy’s law

Anything that can possibly go wrong, does

-            John Sack

Anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later

-            Alfred Holt

Everything that can work, will work!

-            Yhprum's law

Sometimes systems that should not work, work nevertheless

-            Richard Jay Zeckhauser, American economist

Do your duty and leave the rest to me

-            The Bhagavad Gita

The past two plus months have seen me visit Hyderabad four times. Each such time I have had to go to Hyderabad, something weird has happened with my phone or the network.

The first time, the data connectivity in my phone network suddenly stopped as soon as I checked onto the flight to Hyderabad. This has never happened before. After a lot of tries, I could speak to the Vodafone operator who said that they were having a major issue with data connectivity on some lines and unfortunately my number was one of those affected. So, for two days, there was no data connectivity and it resumed only later.

The second time, my phone fell in water – that was the first time I had dropped my phone in water in my entire life! - and I was not reachable for a day or two.

On the third occasion, I had given a request for porting my number from the Madras to the Bombay circle. This happened quite some time back and the porting request was not being honoured. Then I get a call from the Vodafone person informing that the documents that I had submitted for porting had been misplaced and I have to submit them again. So I provided my documents again. Nothing happened for ten days and then I was scheduled to leave to Hyderabad for my third visit. 

This is what happens then.....I check into the plane for Hyderabad at the Bombay Airport and I get a message that my porting request will be acted upon in a few hours. Once I reach Hyderabad, I find that there is no network due to the porting. Again, for two days, I had to stay without network connectivity.

A few weeks back, I had  to travel to Hyderabad once again. I charged my phone twice, checked for the network, paid all bills and strutted out to the Bombay airport. Strangely, the charge in my phone’s battery began to drop. From 44% at the Bombay airport, it reached 9 % inside the flight; all in 30 minutes! It has been the fastest drop in my phone ever!  Nevertheless, I switched it off with the hope that I could salvage the remaining 9% at Hyderabad. But once I reached the Hyderabad Airport and switched on the phone, it showed 1% charge and spluttered to nil even as I was seeing it and got switched off. There were some persons trying to reach me and for the next two and odd hours of uncharacteristic traffic when Hyderabad resembled Bangalore's Residency Road at 7 pm, the phone was off. I could charge the phone only after that time and the network took an hour to restore!

My next visit was in a month for a court hearing. I already made plans – with a power bank and backed up with another phone with a different sim card! But, my preparedness resulted in the hearing getting postponed!! 

I am not perturbed, but amused with my phone’s recent relationship with Hyderabad. A lot of things surrounding my connect with the outside world through the phone seems to be happening when I embark on a journey to Hyderabad.

Strange is life, stranger than fiction!