Hyderabad is the sound of barking dogs, accelerating
motorbikes and blaring horns amid swaying palms and fig trees. The hotel serves
scorching hot curry for breakfast. Every office building is walled off and
gated from the streets. Private security at every building checks every
entering vehicle for bombs. A million people
demonstrated yesterday seeking the formation of a separate province near
Hyderabad. Indian banks are paying 7% interest on savings. In Hyderabad
everything seems to work
________
The Westin where I’m staying is one of the nicest hotels in
Hyderabad and located in the most modern part of the city, an area called hitec
city. Across the street is a huge Verizon building, next door Qualcomm,
Deloitte, and further down the street Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and the other
giants of American technology. Yet for all the luxury of the Westin and the
software fortunes across the street, stray dogs stand in front of Verizon
patiently begging food, and a constant stream of people trudge up a long dirt
road to the corner of the Verizon building where the pavement starts, and past
the high tech centers on their way to work.
________
This is a city of tightly compressed traffic where pedestrians,
motorcycles, very small cars and auto rickshaw taxis all compete for space on
the streets. Motorcycles are small and economical. I passed one parking lot today that was a sea
of motorcycles—called bikes over here—there must have been thousands. The bikes
are all maybe 50cc’s with a single cylinder. I’m not sure you can buy a motorcycle
that small in the states. Here, they are the only vehicles that run on gas. All
the cars, trucks and minivans have diesel engines. The auto rickshaws,
three-wheeled motorized versions of human powered rickshaws are everywhere,
weaving in, out and around the cars and pedestrians. The cars are tiny, mostly
Toyotas the size of a Yaris. A Honda civic is a big car over here. The rickshaws
all have open sides and convertible tops; they are powered propane or natural gas.
Indians drive like Italians only slower to conserve fuel. The vehicles use
their horns liberally to squeeze about eight lanes worth of cars, bikes and
walkers into the two marked lanes, and everything seems to work. The traffic
flows albeit slowly in a gas-conserving way.
The Westin is nicer than any hotel I can remember and on a
par with Ashford Castle in Ireland (doubtless one of the finest hotels in the
world). The service here is impeccable, the food absolutely amazing; every
dish, even the lowly waffle is raised to a higher plain of foodness. The
kitchen turns out fresh warm croissants that are as rich and sinful as what I’ve
had for breakfast in Paris. And, the wait staff serves as only the French can
set and serve a table.
________
Security is very high in Hyderabad, and probably all Indian
cities after the Pakistani LeT terrorist attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008
that killed 168 people. Every building is walled off from the street, with
barrier gates at entrances and exits. Private guards protect the gates. When a
car pulls up to the gate, the driver must pop open the trunk, and the guards
use explosive sniffing devices and under car mirrors to check under vehicles
for bombs. The Westin has an airport baggage scanning conveyor for luggage,
purses and computer bags, an airport metal detector that you must step through,
and hand held metal wands. You go through this procedure every time you go out
and return to the hotel, no exceptions.
________
At night the poor side at the edge of hitec city is dark, no street lights and only dim lights in the buildings. The dirt road leading away from Verizon and the hotel is black and scary. People are still walking home; the dogs bark and howl in the night—a few lie in the street in front of the Westin, dog and man mutually ignore each other. The city has running planned power blackouts, and the Westin, Verizon and other buildings have generators running throughout the night. At midnight a dump truck rumbles up the dirt street and dumps a load of broken concrete in a field behind one of the poor side apartments; the racket is enough to wake the dead, but neither the dogs nor the few walkers notice.
________
During breakfast it drizzles outside, yet hotel
employees clean the fronds of palms on a patio overlooking lush green gardens.
The hotel is constantly cleaned inside and out; the Westin employees care for
it as if they owned it (what a concept). The newspaper this morning reported
the city had a little over an inch of rain yesterday—there's a low pressure
area over the Bay of Bengal that is forcing weather over southern India—and three
souls perished from storm damage. We in Florida, or most anywhere in the US
think that an inch of rain in a day is just annoying weather; roofs don’t
collapse, rice paddies don't flood and adults aren't washed away down storm
drains. The reality of an inch of rain actually killing people makes me wonder
about the fragility of life outside our bubble. How devastating is a real
tropical storm, with gale force winds and many inches of rain? Speaking of
newspapers, that industry may be dying in the west, but here it reminds me of
earlier decades when all the news was reported, and editors truly represented
the fourth estate. It seems that India is much like America in its appreciation
of its own freedoms and the nation’s right to disagree and protest, to assemble
for change. The newspaper headlines remind me of the late 60’s in America with
story after story of protests, civil rights issues, public pressure leveraged
onto politicians and their non-answer responses.
The rain has stopped, the sun is peeking out and the stray dogs are happy and unusually loud. They are interesting dogs: all about the same size, maybe around 40 pounds, and either light brown or white, short haired, and all with tails that curl up over their backs like huskies. They don’t look or act like they are starving, but do look hungry as strays usually do. They remind me of the feral dogs on Abaco Cay in the Bahamas. The big island is filled with stray dogs and cats that the islanders can’t afford to feed. They call the cats a nuisance and the dogs are called potcakes. Potcakes all look the same as well, and are very similar to the strays down on the street here; the same size and coloring. The potcake name comes from what is stuck to the bottom of the cooking pot—that baked on stuff, the cake, is fed to the dogs. The potcakes appreciate any bit of food or attention they can find, and make very loyal pets to any family that can afford food and care.
The rain has stopped, the sun is peeking out and the stray dogs are happy and unusually loud. They are interesting dogs: all about the same size, maybe around 40 pounds, and either light brown or white, short haired, and all with tails that curl up over their backs like huskies. They don’t look or act like they are starving, but do look hungry as strays usually do. They remind me of the feral dogs on Abaco Cay in the Bahamas. The big island is filled with stray dogs and cats that the islanders can’t afford to feed. They call the cats a nuisance and the dogs are called potcakes. Potcakes all look the same as well, and are very similar to the strays down on the street here; the same size and coloring. The potcake name comes from what is stuck to the bottom of the cooking pot—that baked on stuff, the cake, is fed to the dogs. The potcakes appreciate any bit of food or attention they can find, and make very loyal pets to any family that can afford food and care.
________
It is estimated that there are 100 million people in the Hyderabad area.
According the government reports only about 60 percent of India, or around say 700 million people, have toilets; the remaining half billion go without.
I believe I saw a dead woman, in rags, on the sidewalk driving back to the hotel. No one seemed to notice.
Department stores in Hyderabad sell you shopping bags to carry your purchases. Cost about 10 rupees per bag.
Hyderabad, a land-locked city, is considered the world capital for pearls.
