Talking about September, reminded me of something happened to me and Azher, I believe in 1969.
Disastrous Floods aka Tsunami in Japanese and Toghiani in Urdu.
First an interesting background. Anees had just migrated to USA in 1969, his father Mr. Yusufuddin Ahmed, our dear Phuppa as we called him assigned Azher and me to sell Anees’ motorcycle. Little did he realized that we two teenagers would do exactly the opposite. We both pretended to be busy trying to find a buyer for the motorcycle, but in reality we both used it to go to movies, restaurants and occasionally to college.
Fast forward to September 1970, Azher and I rode on Anees’ (still unsold) motorcycle and went to have Ice Cream at the famous HavMor. We both ordered their signature brand TutiFruity. As we both started to dig in, there was a very disturbing commotion outside the restaurant. Everyone was screaming Toghiani, the Gundipet river dam had a major leak flooding most part of Hyderabad around the Musi river.
Azher and I along with the other ice cream fans tried to rush out and to pay our bill. But the HavMore owner Abbas told us, “brother just run for your life, if you’re still alive tomorrow, you may pay me”. This comment scared the hell out of us.
We tried to head towards our house AB, but there was a huge crowd running against our direction forcing us to make a U-turn and go on opposite side of our house.
We then decided to go to Hyder uncle and Zehra aunty’s house which was the closed point from where we were. It was’t our day, there was another huge crowd coming from where Zehra aunty lived in Asif Nagar. So we were again forced to go the opposite direction towards the Secunderabad Katta (Bridge).
Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities connected by the bridge. As teenagers we were not very familiar with Secunderabad. We only knew two places in Secunderabad very well. The two movie theaters; Plaza and Tivoli, that only featured Hollywood movies.
Azher and I decided to go to the Plaza theatre since it was the closest so we could make a phone call home. There used to be a phone booth which was our only hope connecting to our home.
There were only two phones in entire Aziz Bagh, one was ours and the other was my Naana Mr. Ruknuddin Ahmed’s. We were used to calling and waiting while the phone rang 50-100 times until someone decided to pickup. While the phone was still ringing, a long queue had already formed behind us. People started to get agitated, one of them told me, “ hey Mr. your house probably flooded, put that phone down, let us use the phone”. OMG that was another shattered hope. We started to imagine all kinds of extreme scenarios.
Finally after several hours running around aimlessly fearing for our lives, we decided to take a chance and try again going towards our house.
Like a miracle, roads were cleared. By now we were at the Musi river couple miles from Aziz Bagh, we saw an Angel, it was none other than my dearest Aunty Razia, searching desperately for us all over the city. What are the odds of someone finding two silly teenagers on the middle of the road at night?
- We were all relieved and thanked Allah for a happy ending.