Slumcow Millionaire

I must be losing what little of a photographer’s edge I ever possessed. Not that I ever considered myself to be remotely close to Annie Leibovitz’ mastery of spontaneity when she was on tour with the Stones. When I had two mechanical cameras, I always had one at the ready and one shooting. Note to self: I have to get a digital slide scanner to get rid of the thousands of slides we have in boxes down in the garage. I’ve also got thousands of B&W negatives that I should digitize as well. Oops, losing focus. Now, with the digital camera, point and shoot just takes the connection away. Then again, you also start thinking about how much time you have the power on, so when am I going to have to change batteries? Now photographers using digital cameras carry a power pack the size of a motorcycle battery, but they can shoot Gigs of photos and all with a power-hog flash.
I’m starting today’s post with the one picture of cows by the roadside I took on my way back from my first trip to drop Deb off at her office and I still have a number of activities that are yet to come. To start the day off, I surrendered my passport this morning, which makes me uneasy. I’ve sent a requisite e-mail this afternoon requesting letters of occupancy from the Novotel that I actually obtained from the duty manager yesterday evening. Don't think about it. I’ve been back and forth from Deb’s office two times already and beginning a third in a little over an hour from now.
My last trip back was for a signature on a huge pile of paper with three passport photos clipped to the top sheet. My third trip back will be to pick up Deb. Our driver has been instructed where to go. I thought I heard “old city” which makes me a little nervous, but I might get a chance to give you a shot of the Charminar that I actually took from the window of our car.

I'm BAAAAAaaaaaak!
OK, if you add Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet, Claude Rains, Cafe Rick's and put them in this environment, and you have a picture of where we were today. Think of HiTec City as "the burbs". The "Old City" is just that. The city center is about 400 years old with the Charminar at the hub was deemed inadequate for effective commerce nearly 200 years ago, so when you grow the population to about 2 million at the epicenter you've got one continuous flow of humanity.

But the real gem of the adventure, a honest-to-goodness hold-over of the British Raj, was the police compound. And THIS was right out of Casablanca. We met a third-party "facilitator" who helps Novartis foreign nationals get their documents cleared outside the gate of the compound. She quickly led us past a group of men outside the gate to a small cottage where two men were seated at a small table and a group of people were crowded around them. The facilitator motioned to them, one of the men looked up and waved us through a door into the central courtyard. We walked through the uneven ground to another group of buildings with a line of people outside the door. Once again, our facilitator walked right past the line into this old office space that could be right out of a Rudyard Kipling story. There, under a ancient, slowly rotating ceiling fan was another wooden table with one man seated on an old wooden chair. He was leaning back, looking at a young man and woman. A second man was standing next to the table. He was talking to the couple and pointing in the direction from where we just entered. Since they didn't have a letter in their hand, I think that their residency request was temporarily unfulfilled. Another young man was also standing at the desk. From his looks, I picked him to be a northeastern African, possibly Somali. As the young couple left, this man began to speak. The man standing gestured for this young man to hold on. Our facilitator motioned us up to the table. She told us these were our letters. The standing man gestured for Deb to sign. There were three places that required signatures. Then I went through the same process. We were done. The seated man had mumbled maybe five words and gestured a couple times. The standing man turned the pages and pointed to where our signatures needed to go. It took just about three minutes and we were walking out, back through the crowd that just saw us walk in. Now, I'm not a cynical guy, but judging from what we had to go through for our visas in New York, the two men at the desk in the office with the ceiling fan were so accommodating that we don't think it was a coincidence that we were in and out while these other people looked like they had been there for a while. Just imagine Claude Rains taking his casino winnings from the croupier as he was closing Rick's for illegal gambling -- and thanking him. Enough said.
Here are some shots from the markets surrounding the Charminar and a few of the structure itself.