This Thursday when I made a visit to Ameerpet Bigbazaar which houses Adlabs on the top floor, I was stunned to see a serpentine line in front of the Ticket Counter. The advance booking has just begun and people started thronging the place like some mad gold rush.

People have really accepted the Multiplex Cinematic Experience. But the saddening thing to be noted here in Hyderabad is the presence of only 4 Multiplexes with combined screens of 17+1 (IMAX). Unless you book tickets in advance or thru Internet, it is really impossible to get your hands on the tickets for a new release.

The demand has really picked up. Recently Prasads has opened up another screen taking his tally to 6. The market has also made a Popular Cinema (Narshimha) to use his 2 adjacent stand alone theatres as Multiplex and branding them as “TALKIE TOWN”.

Still I find the infrastructure to be lagging the demand. And today when I visited Adlabs again to get my tickets which were booked from my mobile, the same scenario!!. It took me more than 30 mins.

Is Adlabs enjoying the collection due to its prime location? We cannot be judgmental so early. Getting tickets in Prasads is even tougher. And so are PVR Cinemas. The impact of “PLACE” can be answered with the opening of CINEMAX at Banjara Rd # 1 and the one at the GVK ONE. But I feel people here won’t really mind the distance if the probability of getting tickets is high.

One thing which I am still unable to understand is why this culture/experience so slow in the city where more than 400 movies release every year, city where the favorite time-pass of majority of the crowd is watching movies and most of the students who bunk classes prefer watching movies. Taking their purchasing power into account and the presence of more than 20 engineering colleges and Post Graduate colleges there must have been hundreds of screens across.

So is there some good real opportunity in this Business field here in Hyderabad? Well there are 30 screens ready to mushroom across the city and their fate could decide the further existence of Multiplexes and the business related.

Yesterday evening on my way to Gym, i found the traffic at Paradise Circle completely out of gear. No one is bothered about the lights and so are the traffic constables. One can imagine the situation especially at that time when people return from their work and the policemen are completely mindless in minding the traffic. When I tried to search for the policeman, I found one busy chatting with the security guard of Paradise Take-Away counter.

The most famous and the common place for hanging out in Hyderabad is the HUSSAIN SAGAR. You can always spot huge gatherings on two sides of this magnificent historic lake. One is the Secunderabad main road which connects the twin cities and the other being the famous and the favorite one “Necklace Road”.

If Sec’bad Road is famous for its beauty and elegance due to the presence of statues of famous leaders, visionaries and other greats; Necklace Road gives a tough competition with the presence of EAT STREET, Necklace Rd Station, MILESTONES ( we call the couples sitting at a the parks near the road at an equal distance as milestones). All together they add to the beauty of the Necklace Rd.

Yesterday to have a break, I made a small visit to the same. I was completely taken aback with its beauty without the usual crowd; pleasant, serene, composed.

I then realized how a place changes with the absence of crowd.

This is a big concern for us Indians. We always try to avoid those places which are over crowded

because we can’t really enjoy but cannot stop ourselves in going over there. We are unable to enjoy the drives because the roads are over crowded; we cannot take the public transport for the same reason. So Infrastructural Development is indirectly proportional to Population.

India does have some beautiful places but the crowd is blocking its beauty from our view, just venture out in the middle of the night in your city. You will know.

I saw it last month, but I thought 1^st July is celebrated as “TRAFFIC VIOLATION FREE” Day. But today on my way to office when I saw these PLACARDS again, I asked the cop standing carrying a sandwich ad. He replied that this was a new initiative taken by the Hyderabad Traffic Police in spreading awareness regarding the traffic Rules.

Hmmm.. I couldn’t stop giggling. Back to my office I explained the reasons to one of my colleagues. Here they go:-

First of all, we all are aware of the Traffic Rules. Aren’t we? We just don’t give them a damn. After all we are living in a democratic country yaar. We have that right to drive as we wish.

The other thing is that we cannot curb this Traffic menace by being very soft to the violators. You just can’t give a rose to the violator saying “thank you for breaking the rule”. Was Kamaudi (Traffic Commissioner, Hyderabad City) inspired from Munnabhai? May be or may not be. The fact is that we need to get harsh on them. Serious punishments have to be imposed.

During my MBA classes I was taught about NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT. Why that model cannot be applied here. After all we are making the offender not to repeat the offence he has made, right?

The other thing which I have noticed is that these constables are not serious about the work they are doing. I was asked to mind my own business when I pinpointed a guy who was violating the rule just in front of the constable. Even if the constable gets hold of that guy, he manages to win over him in a verbal duel. So if you are too soft to them, will they able to realize their responsibilities of proper citizenship? I don’t think so.

We are just worried about our own transport and really don’t care how we do that

It will take years or to be more specific decades in improving our road infrastructure, and millions of generations to improve the mindset of citizens.