Cyberabad, Cipherabad, Hyperabad

But as the sun rises, the cackle of sparrows and peacocks reaches a crescendo. People walk carefully on the dry lake bed avoiding cowdung pats. This is Raidurgam village where a collision of pelf with penury throws up many unanswerable questions. Nobody drives under 100 kmph on the smooth four-laned road. Except for the cyclists on their way to get water from the community tap. Drive one way and you would reach Infosys and upcoming facilities of Microsoft, Wipro where sky is touched by a modern interpretation of Charminar by the Indian School of Business (fee just Rs 12 lakhs). Go the other way and you touch the old caravan road reaching Golconda fort.

In this microcosmic triangle the riddle of this elections is hidden. Talk to people and you feel you’ve touched the truth. A little later you’re not so sure.

We reach a warren of shanties shaped out of arched bamboo and polythene sheets. The shantytown was created during road-widening work. Though the work is over, some 20 families have settled down here. Shantamma and her two children lug their tricycle garbage van. It is only a few hours’ work but the family will get Rs 1800 at the end of the month. Nirmala works as a maidservant near Shaikpet. Her monthly take home is Rs 1500. Is she going to vote for Telugu Desam? She lets loose a stream of unprintables as she has received an electricity bill for Rs 2000. “Even rice has become expensive. School books have become expensive. Even if we go to a government hospital we have to pay,” she says. So is she going to vote for the Congress? “My husband will vote for Congress. I will vote for the party the colony people tell me,” she says. Some of the working couples have a take home salary of Rs 70,000 and it shows in their lifestyle, while Nirmala gets Rs 350 for her effort. One such family is Lalit Tyagi’s. “If the Congress wins we are in for trouble,” says the infotech employee. “I see a situation where IT will be put in the backburner.”

“These Congress people are talking of free power. If they come to power there will be no power,” says a retired bank employee KS Murthy. Not surprisingly, most of the IT workforce has never voted and they don’t see themselves queuing outside the polling booths. That’s 1.5 lakh lost votes of people who believe India is Shining. Drive downtown in the evening to Somajiguda and the transformation of the laid back provincial town into a bustling metropolis dotted with lounge bars, malls, discotheques and neon signs a la Las Vegas is complete.

Turn into an alley and you reach BS Makta a residential area overflowing with sewers and garbage. Here they know whom they are going to vote for. “This time we will make sure that Janardhan Reddy wins. At least when he was there we could walk on the roads,” says Narsamma a fishmonger, pointing to the dug up road. Even in Hyderabad, the trends point to only one thing: No definite clinchers this time.