There was a time when the Hyderabadi concept of time was legendary. The whole laid back, Nawabi culture was charming and was built around the belief that nothing could be achieved in a hurry that couldn’t be achieved at a more relaxed, gentlemanly pace. We enjoyed the amusement of realizing that ‘parson’ (day after or day before by definition) could mean a few years back as much as a few years from now. After all, precision and time was a bourgeoisie concept. And we were all royals…by descent or by definition…or worse, by self declaration.

But hey, wake up…and smell the steaming hot cup of Irani Chai…things have changed and it is time to redefine definitions, reorder priorities and reinvent ourselves.

Hyderabad is now the capital of a new state. It is a state that has been won after a long drawn fight for independence. And victory has been ours at a huge cost. We have, as a populace, surrendered to the whims and fancies of political greed and pecuniary pleasures. But we did that, hoping that life as we knew it, would improve tremendously…and that our children and their children would benefit from our sacrifice.

But Hyderabad, the battle is only half won. Getting possession of a city is nothing…it is the baton of a brand that we have in our hands today. And we can either take this brand and run with it towards greater glory or drop it, complaining that it is too heavy a burden to carry. And remember, no one else…no XYZ, ABC, 123, 456 or anyone is going to run for you. They will be too busy distributing the booty. The onus of reinventing Hyderabad and making it a viable, vibrant entity in tomorrow’s world rests entirely with you.

And the first step you can take in the right direction is to learn how to deal with time. The days of Rip Van Winkle are over. The days when time was a stretchable commodity have gone. This is the age of schedules and timelines. This is the era of commitments and clockwork.

No more ‘kals’…no more ‘parsons’…only the ‘abs’ are acceptable in this new dynamic. The ‘chalta hai…dekha jayega’ attitude has to be given an urgent burial (and let us not waste too much time discussing the modalities of that burial).

The day the world wakes up to this new, more time conscious, more quality conscious, more precise, more dependable Hyderabad is the day when we can all sit back and congratulate ourselves on a battle well fought and a victory well deserved.

And the call my friends cannot anymore be “Come On We Can Do It”…it has to be “Come On…We Have To”. This is our chance, our only chance. Let’s not ‘d’uck it up.

Let our city, our culture, our reputation no longer be one of ‘baad’ as in after…but instead let us, each one of us, revel in the happiness of a Hyderabad reinvented into a city that always races the clock forward, and indeed sets the pace for the world.