The dry and arid conditions stare starkly at me as I tour Telangana's Medak district, a district that has been the worst hit by drought. Maize, rice and cotton crops... all have wilted under nature's wrath. Farmers with moist eyes recount their tales of woe as I stop to take pictures. They mistake me for a Government official and reel out the spend and borrowings they made on the cash crops.
Induri Chandramma of Gadipeddapur, on the way to Narayankhed, 80 km from the district headquarters of Sangareddy, is in tears and bemoans that timely power could have saved her crop of maize and cotton.
"We voted a popular Government in Telangana and this is what we get - no power," her husband Kistaiah rues, holding the withered cotton flowers.
''There is no grass for our cattle, no water for our crops and no one (politicians) to listen to us, as the severe drought in the region (43 per deficiency) has made me a pauper,'' laments Vanni Shankariah of Kansanpalle, a nondescript hamlet near Andole Mandal.
And as I drive back to Hyderabad, the sky darkens and clouds hang (following a deep depression in the Arabian Sea) but the damage is already done.
Photos and text: PV Sivakumar