Kya mujhse dosti karogey ? could be the worst pick up line; walk up to anybody and volunteer to be a friend, chances are that you will be called a chipkoo if you are a guy or termed ‘ chaala fast ammayi ’ meaning a girl of easy morals. So, what does one do, when young women land in a new city, where the roads are new, language is unknown and no one to call as family or friends? Apparently they rely on technology!
“Technology is solving most of my problems. I began with GPS on the phone so that I don’t have to stop and ask for directions and travelled from Gachibowli to Chaderghat as if I know the city like the back of my hand. I didn’t have to worry that I was being taken for a ride by auto rickshaw drivers or strangers. The other benefit of using GPS is that “it shows all important places and landmarks which we may otherwise miss,” says Neeta Sarmah, a techie who moved to the city from Kolkata.
Neeta had a tough time initially navigating through the city until her colleagues “literally forced me to see what the GPS can do. I move around the city stress-free on most routes and locations these days.”
Getting to a location can be just one of the problems of newcomers in the city. Some say they had to resort dining in their room at a guest house for months together until “a random search on ‘things to do’ in the city navigated me to a page on plays, music, events etc. While I browsed through what can be done in Hyderabad, I chanced upon a page of Lamakaan. I searched some more and in the next 20 minutes I reached the venue in casual clothes,” says chartered accountant Himanshu.
He adds, “I was delighted and pretty surprised at the friendliness of the people in Hyderabad. That led me to other groups and within a month I had no time to go home and refresh after work — I would be dashing off to some event or the other with friends.” Where earlier he would frequently escape to his hometown Delhi during weekends to escape boredom, he now hardly calls his travel agent to book tickets to Delhi.
If making friends isn’t on your to-do-interest list, what need does one have of pages and app? There are many reasons sites, apps and pages come to the rescue in a new city. “I began with suggestions right from the day I was to move to Hyderabad. I didn’t know a soul, none at all. I frantically started looking up FB pages and the internet to know how to find a house without having to take a ride on a broker’s bike. The amount of information I gathered from the pages was enough to make me like the city. Within a week of shifting to the new city, I was well equipped to even call my parents and suggest things to do,” recollects Priya Ravi, a HR with a pharmaceutical company. Gokul Krishna a cyclist and a businessman says that meeting like-minded people interested in cycling was only possible through social networking sites where the groups in the city announced their presence and plans. Same is the case with walkers and runners in the city. “ Members don’t talk just about rides and walks. From health tips to diet suggestions, some even discuss shopping and movies and it’s all possible because our common interest remains the same,” says Gokul.
Lonely in the city? Nah! Not anymore.
