Rubble, Rubble

One of my favorite David Bowie songs is Rebel Rebel. Its origins come from when he was in the persona of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Well, while driving through the streets of Jubilee Hills and Banjara Hills, Manhapur, or Gachiboli. Ziggy keeps popping into my head with the words “Rubble Rubble”. I tried to shake it but it just keeps coming as often as the piles of stones, mud, trash, and whatever lies all around us. Not that this is unusual or unique to Hyderabad, but it is a dominant feature during our drives so far. Actually these smaller, more numerous piles are probably more productive for the trash pickers than the enormous trash heaps outside of Mexico City or Sao Paulo, or JoBurg or (the name of your favorite Third World City of more than 20 million goes here) reside. Now THOSE are trash heaps. Some people are born, live, and die on the same dump. Fortunate for me, I was only born and grew up on one. As many know, the dump outside Jerusalem was a Biblical metaphor for hell (Gehenna Dnoora) but then, Revelations was written before Detroit had Kwame Kilpatrick. Bowie, with that far away stare, on a rubble heap -- in that awful stretch leotard -- and the red hair that was a precursor to the mullet – it’s a bad visual.
During the first six months living in our townhouse in Raleigh, we had construction all around us as well, so we had the piles of debris with the perfunctory waste from the Mexican workers’ lunches purchased from the lunch wagon that played “La Cucaracha” over its loudspeaker. At night Deb and I would go out in our alley and shovel the gravel, nails, fish bones, and some undistinguishable, but fragrant stuff into a pile, then call the construction manager to come clean it up. We were is worst nightmare—activist owners.
We admit that New Jersey is not without ITS share of rubble piles. Some may recall The Sopranos episodes where Tony’s waste management firm was remediating asbestos in buildings in Newark and having some “issues” with the New York family not allowing Tony’s crew to dump out on Long Island, the closing scene is a dump truck pulling up to one of the lagoons off the NJT and dumping his load of toxins. Well if you ever take the Dover line of the NJT into New York Penn, you’ll see the same disgusting environments and without much effort identify waterways that have been fouled by multiple thousands of dump trucks of any number of hazardous wastes for decades. If you see Secaucus, you’re where you oughtn’t to be.
Hey Now (Talking Heads)
I want a bicycle, well a tricycle, for my service cart. All you need is the Bruce Willis equivalent of Die Hard character riding one of these carts, loaded with just about any material you can think of. We were behind this one carrying boxes of stuff on the way to the office. On the way to the police station we were behind one that was loaded with bamboo branches. These were probably once passenger rickshaws but everyone I’ve seen thus far is in some commercial purpose. Many of the loads are so heavy that the owners have to get off and push the loads up even slight inclines. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the ox cart we saw on Saturday.
Over the top
This evening, a Jain wedding was taking place in the convention center. A ballroom wouldn’t have been large enough. The hotel manager, Nagarajarao, took Deb and I through it. There were about 2000 guests. The bride was in a sari that probably had about one bar of gold woven into the material. Her attendants were in beautiful saris but not even close to that of the bride. There were alters, a palace, and tents set up in the hall and the ceiling was completely draped with billowing cloud-like sheets. There must have been well over a million flowers everywhere. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. OK, another stock photo, but since we were the only Caucasian wedding crashers in the room, I wasn't going to whip out my camera. Like I said before, I'm losing my edge. It was intimated that in USD, the cost was half a million at least. I thought the Jains avoided worldly possessions? Judging by this, I was way off. Must check my Joseph Campbell books when our shipment is delivered, I may have misread something.

Falling asleep at the keyboard. Night night.

Back again. Just learned yesterday we may be extending our Novotel stay by a couple weeks. Oh boy! I actually thought about this in the context of “Waiting for Godot”. Well, waiting at the Novotel is better than in a ditch. We’re becoming “family”. The wait staff knows us by name. Even the security people who pat us down and wand us every time we enter smile and greet us.