💬 Old City or Gachibowli, where would you rather stay?

I grew up in the Old City, 2 lanes behind a bangle shop. We lived above a tailor. Now when I come home from Khobar, I stay at my brother's flat in Gachibowli. It has AC in every room. My parents' house has 2 AC rooms and my father sleeps in one of them with the door shut. So I get a lift, a gym downstairs, and wide roads that look like a different country. The first 3 days I love it. Quiet mornings, a proper parking spot, a coffee shop I can walk to. On day 4 I wake up at 5 and listen for the milk man, the bangle shutters, a scooter horn. Nothing. I take a cab to my parents' place just to sit on the step outside. My mother thinks I'm unwell. She said, you have a nice flat there, why come here? I said, I miss the noise. Last time I went to see my old school friend Sajid, who still lives 3 lanes from our house. He sleeps with the window open and says the noise doesn't bother him anymore. I sat in his room for an hour. The horns outside were so loud I lost track of what he was saying twice and just nodded. He said I'd gone soft, and he's probably right. He also said I'd forgotten how to cross a road. I did forget. I stood at the edge of a lane for a full minute while a scooter waited for me. The man on it said, come, come, uncle. I wasn't sure which of us was more embarrassed about it. I'm back next summer for my brother's housewarming. I'll stay at his place again, I think. Where do you stay when you visit, and does the old place still feel like home to you?

I will say Gachibowli, but only for the first week. The parking and the quiet are lovely, and then I start missing the noise. My parents live in Tolichowki, and I now stay with them for the last 3 days of every trip, mostly for the evening chai on the balcony.

Old City, for me. Hitech City has nice buildings, but nobody there knows your name. In the lanes near my grandmother's house, the bangle man still asks about my mother by name. I won't pretend about the traffic. Getting from Charminar to Afzalgunj can take 40 minutes on a Saturday. Still worth every minute of it for the haleem in Ramadan.