Tag Archives: hyderabad

Dosa, or things that make me go hmmmm.

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Amar is a Punjabi native who grew up in Delhi.  His family lost their businesses back in 1947 when India and Pakistan were partitioned.  Nearly fifteen million people were displaced and half a million killed.  The British Empire brought many good things to the world. The Latex condom was not one of those things, neither was figuring out how to peacefully divide populations into nation-states. The scars of partition still run very deep here.  It doesn’t help that the Pakistanis have a tendency of sending suicide bombers deep into India, the Taj attack in Mumbai being the most recent large scale attack.  When I asked what Indians think of Pakistan today, the universal response here was we hate them.  Room for improvement, as my school report cards used to say.

Although Amar’s past is a little more tortured than mine, he shares of a love of food and offered to take me out for breakfast to get way from 4 star dining and eat some proper street food with the students, truck drivers, and call center works ready to start their day.  Of course I would go, I told him.

The breakfast place was a small hole in the wall beside a noisy road where motorbikes and cars sped by, their horns blaring as they jockeyed for inches.  You never see an Indian driver shoulder check or have any obvious regard for the world, the horn does it all.  Perhaps it’s a form of echolocation. Even the pedestrians are equally adapted. They stroll across major highways, seemingly unconcerned by the cars which whiz by with only inches to spare.  It’s a remarkable skill.  Of course, I’ve been in two serious accidents in three days, so maybe they just think it’s a skill.

Amar found us a cramped little table in front of restaurant (I use the word restaurant in its broadest sense), and numerous times he went to the serving window and brought back dishes laden with all manner of South Indian foods.  Once seated, he would identify the new dishes for me, and we were off.  After I’d finished three servings and was feeling rather full, he looked up with obvious disappointment.  We’ve just begun, he said in surprise at my lack of fortitude.  Amar, I should point out, was not a small man.

South Indian food is strongly infused by spice, dal, and rice. This is unlike North India food which is cooler and based on wheat.  Sitting at that busy little truck stop, we had snow white Idli which are soft as clouds, stuffed Dosa, a crepe like dish with potatoes, Vada, a savory donut, Uttapam, a thick rice flour pancake stuffed with red onion, and finished off with Puri and Paratha, both flatbreads dipped into a cilantro chutney.  Having finally exhausted the menu, I told him I drank neither tea nor coffee, but he insisted I try at least the tea, which I did, and it was remarkably good mainly because it tasted nothing like tea. Any tea flavor was well hidden by warm milk and honey. The total price of breakfast was less than five dollars.  There are worse ways to start the morning.

Handcrafts, Mosques, and Car Accidents

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Unless you’re eager to see the inside of an Indian Emergency room, Hyderabad is not a city for walkers. It’s not a city for drivers either, not skilled ones at any rate.  It was on my way to the 16th century mosque called Charminar that I was in my first car crash, the one I mentioned a few days ago. There was also a second a few days later. For the second, I was in a car driving down a typically chaotic multilane road and was startled by a thunk from the rear of the car. I turned about and was surprised to find a rather angry Indian man staring back at me from his position sprawled on the car’s trunk. We were still moving at speed, so this was somewhat concerning. His motorcycle lay crumpled on the road behind and was about to be run over by a truck. I yelled for the car to stop, which we did, only long enough for him to get off before we sped away. No good would come of sticking around, I was told. So that’s India; the journey here is often more exciting than the destination. Which brings me back to Charminar.

I had seen many photos of Charminar and its four towers set proudly amidst a major crossroads. It’s an iconic landmark in Hyderabad and the heart of the mostly Muslim old city. If the photos were anything to go by, up-close it had to be spectacular. Traffic was terrible, but we did manage to eventually snake our way to the site. Charminar, like a woman from an online dating service, looked better in its photos.

Charminar’s granite and marble facade, like much of Hyderabad, is covered by a layer of grime and decay. No doubt being surrounded by never ending traffic doesn’t help. For a small price you can climb the Charminar and stand amidst the jostling crowds that look down from a high parapet, a parapet that has no barrier.  The ghost of Darwin floats nearby I am certain. I chose to explore the streets instead.  They sprawl out in all directions from Charminar’s base. Hawkers sell fresh cut fruit, Muslim women in black Hijab’s go about their shopping, and shop keeps shout out trying to sell you a score of colourful bangles for which you have no need.  I didn’t stay long.

When I was in Mumbai, I was stuck by how everyone had an angle, be it the holy man looking for alms, or the guy on the corner offering to sell business receipts.  Although Hyderabad isn’t as accustomed to tourists, they make an admirable effort for your money.  On the way in from the airport, my driver Abdul had repeatedly asked if I liked handicrafts and purses.  I tend not to carry a purse, I told him.  Abdul, while not killing motorcyclists, seemed a nice enough man, but this was not the answer he was looking for and he was not about to let it go.  On the way back from Charminar, he again mentioned handicrafts and purses, and I again said no, though it seemed we had taken a circuitous route back to the hotel which just happened to pass by a very famous store selling handicrafts and purses.  Despite one accident, he’d kept me alive, so I relented. Aside from a tiny collection of handicrafts and purses, the store mostly sold five thousand dollar rugs.  If Abdul thought I was going to buy one of these, he is apparently not a very good judge of character.  I had no intention of explaining to my wife why I was bringing home a five thousand dollar carpet when our downstairs toilet still didn’t flush properly. I played my part in the charade though, and dutifully walked from floor to floor, before climbing back into the car only to learn that if I like handicrafts and purses, there was another very famous store just ahead… I understand that India is not a universally rich country, and I don’t have a problem with someone making a suggestion for profit, but once I’ve said no, that should end the conversation. Incidentally, on the way to the airport, he asked that question once more.

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.