Monthly Archives: February 2011

Things that go Splat

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Sunday Morning

The Novotel is exactly the sort of place I really didn’t want to stay, but if you’re going to be in the middle of nowhere, four stars is a good way to go.  I’m out in what’s called Hi-Tech city, an area that only ten years ago was barren scrubland and squatters, and is now an area of barren scrubland and squatters punctuated by massive corporate campuses.  Google and Infosys are just down the road, and ICIC’s building rises like a glass Ayers Rock.  Every morning a stream of busses and little yellow 3-wheeled taxi drop off the thousands of works who populate the cubical farms behind the walled compounds.

After an Indian buffet breakfast, including a coriander chutney that was out of this word good, my driver took me out to Golkonda Fort.  It’s a massive structure, the outer walls of which stretch eleven kilometers in circumference.  Once the seat of power for the Turkic Qutb Shahi kings, during the 16th and 17th centuries it was the heart of the world’s diamond trade.  The Hope diamond came from here, which, when looking around today, is a bit of a surprise.  My driver warned me to be careful of the locals, but the only real issue was running the gauntlet of guides who were quite insistent I wouldn’t understand anything without their help.  I told them this was not an unusual for me, so I’d be fine.  What I didn’t count on was just how off the beaten track Hyderabad is.  Even the intrepid backpackers don’t make it here.  Perhaps they’re scared off by the tech companies.  Either way, it meant that a tall white guy stood out.  It surprised me at first when a group of pretty Indian high school girls all said hello and started giggling, but not long after another group came up and asked for a photo.  At one point I had five different cell phone cameras pointed at me as various friends and family stood with me to get in the picture.  Now I know how a Disney mascot feels.  At one point I started to wonder if I should be checking a mirror.  Perhaps I’d been burnt to a crisp and was glowing.  More likely it was that after six months of Canadian winter, I was whiter than anyone they’d ever seen before.  There friends will think the pictures got overexposed.

The world’s urban planners should come to Hyderabad and study what this city has accomplished in its race to develop.  Sometimes it’s best to see what not to do first.  In Hyderabad, and Indian in general, at some point every construction project it’s simply abandoned.  Sometimes it’s when work has barely begun and it’s not uncommon to see a vast empty hole where once a building was meant to go.  More often though it’s just before work is completed.  If a road is torn up to lay a new pipe, it’s never repaved.  If a building has a marble façade, the last few pieces are left shattered at its base.  Perhaps there’s some superstition around finishing a project. Even on the western style campuses, the further away you get from the main buildings, the more quality control is allowed to slip.  At the fringe of my office’s manicured gardens are abandoned bails of wire cabling, the sort that looks thick enough to be run under the ocean.

Even in the newest areas there’s a remarkable level of decay.  Between the roads and buildings there is a gap, sometimes as little as a foot, though often up to twenty feet.  This gap can only be described as a mini-apocalypse.  Regardless of how long in the past construction was completed, or how much money was spent; piles of construction detritus and garbage fill that gap.  It’s where wild animals live, and not only dogs.  Hyderabad also has wild goats.  I wonder if it has something to do with the Muslim population’s dislike for dogs.

Traffic here remains something out of Dante’s inferno.  I have never experienced anything quite like it.  And if I have, it’s been repressed.  There are no traffic signals, rules, or apparently fear of what happens when metal impacts flesh.  Perhaps it’s a form of population control.  Wives and children hang off motorcycles that weave wildly between the cars, tiny yellow three wheelers jockey for position, and once in a while you’re startled awake when there’s a brief flash of faces in your side window that are much too close, and have in fact just smashed into the car and are now lying unconscious on the road behind you.  You would think an ambulance would be called.  Apparently not.  In our case, people appeared out of nowhere, dragged the two limp men to the side of the road, picked up their motorcycle and waited.  A bit nerve racking actually.  After about five minutes the guys were sitting, a bit dazed, and slowly checking themselves over for new damage.  One was particularly upset by a torn hole in his shirt, the other seemed to have a lose tooth.  And then they were gone.  Done, just like that.

Tomorrow one of my coworkers is taking me out to a local breakfast stall for street food.  I can’t wait.

Hyderabad, a work in progress

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Frankfurt 6 AM Saturday

There are two types of airports I like. There’s the dirty old sort with cinderblock walls and disinterested soldiers standing about with machine guns slung low. Everything is stuffed into one room, there’s a woman selling warm drinks, and a dog with an unusual number of legs lies beneath the only functional ceiling fan. The dog might be dead, but no one really cares that much because the plane is five hours late and there’s just been a coup. It’s the sort of place where the previous flight let off an English rugby team whose first three stops after arriving were the presidential palace, radio station, and army barracks. It’s not the sort of place you bring the kids.

Then there’s Frankfurt Airport. Toronto may have the same number of flights, but the two airports are worlds apart. Pearson is clean, modern, and its gates are lined with boring little jets taking you places like Edmonton and Winnipeg. The tarmac in Frankfurt looks like the locker room at a bodybuilding contest. Super Jumbos line up at the gates pumped up and flexed, each one beefier then the next. The planes are from everywhere. Air Namibia, Royal Thai, Qatar Airways, South African. Looking at them all, you can’t help but want to take a year off. And then you spot it. Sitting between two 747s is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the aviation world, a massive white Lufthansa A380 looking like a stuffed goose ready to have its liver ripped out and served on a canapé. It reminded me of an apartment building with wings.

I’m typing this up in the lounge. No peanut butter, but plenty of nutella, and who doesn’t want nutella, cookies, and chilled Vodka at 6 am? (Bit of American imperialism here though…Word doesn’t know how to spell check nutella, but it does know Kraft, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Starbucks.)

Incidentally, the morning flight to Tripoli has been cancelled. Odd, that.

India, 2 AM Sunday

The first thing that strikes me when I leave the plane is the smell. It’s that same smell throughout the tropics; a heady mix of heat, plants, and anti-mosquito pesticides. DDT I imagine. It’s reassuring and I feel instantly at home. Otherwise Rajiv Gandhi airport is just that, an airport; large, modern, and entirely forgettable. My driver with his little placard that’s gotten my name entirely wrong, is waiting and we drive off.

On the way out, there’s a sign on the side of the road that says Work in Progress. That’s a nice way to put it. Immediately upon leaving the airport we pass a go-cart track where young Indian drivers can strap themselves in and drive like devils. It’s a bit redundant, actually. Given how my driver manages to narrowly avoid collision after collision, their cars must have breaking technology well beyond anything we have in the West. There are also sign against drinking and driving. No one in their right mind would drink and drive here, not twice at any rate.

Even in the dark, there are signs of growth and change everywhere, but it’s haphazard. The new highway from the airport is a monster 8 lane affair, complete with proper off ramps, signage and a divided median. The only thing missing are the potholes which seem to breed on Indian roads like rabbits. You’d never know you were in India. But then without warning the highway plunges down to a single dirt road in either direction and you’re instantly reminded as your head nearly collides with the seat in front of you. The dirt road continues for a rough hundred meters before the highway suddenly emerges again. There’s no obvious logic why this one section was left unbuilt, nor any signs this is about to change. Along the sides of the highway we pass half built concrete apartments. Some still have their wooden scaffolding, or a single light deep within casting eerie shadows. Rebar, rusting slowly, hangs limply out the ends of cement columns. There’s often little indication if the workers have gone home for the night, or the places will be forever abandoned.

The area I’m staying is called Hi-Tech city. Its home to US tech giants like Google and Microsoft, and a huge population of wild dogs who stand by the side of the road and watch trucks pass. You can see Darwin at work here. Regardless of the source breed, the dogs are all roughly the same size, about that of a large beagle. I guess that’s the perfect size for scavenging at the edges of society.

Half an hour later we pass through a security barrier, get an under the car bomb check, and arrive at the hotel. It’s Cricket world cup season, and the lobby is full of Indian cricket fans. Canada recently lost by some 200 wickets. Not sure what that means, but it can’t be good, even with the exchange rate at 30 to 1.

Hyderabad has roughly 6 million people, double what it had only ten year ago. Nearly half of those are Muslim, so it should be interesting to see tomorrow how all this mixes together.