Lost and found

The autorikshaw's in Hyderabad/Secunderabad have been on strike for about 36 hours. Yesterday morning I took the bus entirely incident-free (I take the bus home, but hadn't yet taken it in the morning since I carpool in an autorikshaw with my roommate). So this morning I waited at the theoretical bus stop (which actually involves less of waiting at a bus stop, and more or waiting in a general area and trying to spot the right bus number then chasing it down as it comes to a moving stop, depending of the traffic) and hopped on several 250's, and each of them told me no, we are not going to Rail Niliyam. I didn't understand why, but finally got on one that said although they were not going there, they would go to Secunderabad. 'Oh good,' I thought, 'I know how to walk to work from Secunderabad bus station.'

So I get out at Secunderabad, and find I don't recognize anything... I walked around and headed in the direction I was pointed by several bus employees. I saw a bunch of vacant auto's lined up along a busy road, and then about 50 men on foot holding red signs, formed a huge circle at the large intersection, and began chanting. Moving away from the striking auto drivers' movement and traffic-blocking tactics, I walked some more and found myself at - Secunderabad railway station. I was nearly late for work, and so I asked an elderly gentleman where was Rail Niliyam? He said, "wait a few minutes and I'll drop you there." So we waited for his daughter and son-in-law to arrive on a train, then they drove me to my work neighborhood, and I arrived only 10 minutes late to work.


I also lost my wallet last weekend, or the change purse I was using as a wallet so as not to lose all my important cards, so I only lost a bunch of cash and my Debit card (I'd visited the ATM to get money the day before I lost it).