Toto, Just Where the Heck ARE we?

Now, to be fair, I did selectively choose this shot, but it is indicative of what you see virtually every day in Hyderabad. McDonalds has stores throughout Hyderabad. I’m on the lookout for the opportunity of the photo of a cow standing outside one of their free-standing stores. Baskin Robbins is considered a premium ice cream and has quite a few parlors around town. Subways are close to the number of McDonalds. Today we saw an ad for a local Subway stenciled on a boulder by the side of the road with directions to the store. The Colonel is here big time as well. Chickens have got it rough in India. Of course, there are a lot of protein sources that taste like chicken. Avoid the local food kiosks and stands.
House hunting, part three continued today when Deb got to see our short list which got shorter by one when it was leased on Friday. This picture is from the balcony of one of the apartments we're considering. Right in the center of the picture is Fort Golconda. We went to a villa of one of Deb’s colleagues, an Austrian who’s been transferred from Basel, Switzerland to Hyderabad for a two and a half year assignment. From our brief discussion, he may be wondering what he said to upper management cuz even with a nice three-story villa in a gated community with a driver, cook, and cleaning crew, it’s still the third world. Deb can still sing “I’ll be home for Christmas” and maybe even make it by then. This guy, his wife and little daughter will be hangin’ out with the local expats at their Friday night gatherings for a LONG time. But I’ve often thought about certain places like Fort Mackinac looking across the Straits of Mackinac at da UP, eh. I wondered what a young British Lieutenant in the 1700s might have thought, looking through the fort’s gate on a mid-January morning with the winds cutting through his mantle like an icy knife. Might he have wondered, “What the hell did I do wrong to be posted to this god-forsaken place?” “Did I say something inappropriate to my commanding officer’s wife at the last regimental ball? “ Of course, for a British Lieutenant, his thoughts could just as well be described if he were posted in the Kashmir, or Katmandu, or Khartoum, and on and on. Hegemony is only good for those doing the planning, not the operational guys. For those in the field, it sucks big time. But I digress.
Today we went to the Hyderabad International Auto Show. OK, it’s not Tokyo, or Frankfurt, or Paris. It’s more like the local auto shows that dealer groups put on in the US in places like Peoria or Edison, New Jersey at the New Jersey Convention and Expo Center. The NJ auto show goes on during the same time as the New York auto show at the Javits Center so nobody but Snooki’s relatives and friends would know about it. The Hyderabad auto show is like the New Jersey show.

There was a significant representation of the Deccan Heritage Automobile Association, owners of classic cars, both those of Indian origin and the odd imports. I say “odd” because a right-hand drive 1958 Dodge Kingsway Delux can only be classified as “odd”. Chrysler started exporting in 1932. To keep some semblance of price sanity in countries that levied 100% tariffs, Chrysler rebadged a Plymouth model with the Dodge brand which included adding the Dodge hood ornament and grille and gave it the Kingsway nameplate.
There were also models from the Fiat Classic Club of Hyderabad. Once again, I don’t have to tell you, but this club can be described as BOTH eccentric AND odd without being redundant. There was a 1924 Ford Convertible with right-hand drive. Again, an oddity.
In some of my other posts, you’ve seen street scenes with many motorcycles and various riding configurations such as “small child on handlebars, dad driving, small child, and mom on the very edge of the seat.” It scares the bejeebers out of me every time I see that. Of course, it may be a dharma-karma thingy. Oh, yeah, the motorcycles at the auto show. Suzuki, Yamaha, and Honda as well as brands I’ve not heard of all displayed their crotch rockets. As you can imagine, all the young guys were standing around ogling these models. The show doesn’t have the typical female models you would see at the big shows.

All the women working at the dealerships were either dressed in very poor-fitting grey suits for which they looked terribly uncomfortable or traditional saris and then they blended into crowd. Monsoon has decided to grace Hyderabad over the last couple days, so it has been raining steadily with winds that whip the palm fronds to and fro, making it look just like on the newsreels.
Ford had their vehicles on display that are assembled in Chennai (previously Madras but without the plaid-colored interiors). You can see Ford’s strategy right outside our hotel. All the new vehicles in Novotel’s transportation fleet are Fords. Looks like a rental car volume strategy to me, something I fought against for every new car launch I worked on.

Now as for sound, Indians do love their music, and I’m NOT talkin’ Ravi Shankar. I’m talkin’ Bollywood dance music – Indian Rave stuff. Well, can I tell ya how many sound systems there were? Harman Kardon had their own tricked out cars with sound systems to make anyone cruising on Belle Isle envious. They had the woofers with neon lights synced to pulse with the music. These mini cars must have weighed double with these systems in them.
People were crowding into the display of the Rolls Royce Ghost.
I had to hold the camera above my head to get a shot of the front grille. We were later told that they flew the car in for the show from Mumbai where the only authorized dealer is located. Deb and I were escorted into the Skoda exhibit by the sales people. Indians had told us that Skoda was a German car. I kept saying Skoda is a town in the Czech Republic. Well, sure enough, VW purchased them and quickly started telling folks that it’s a German car (One write up tactfully said “Skoda automotive suffered considerable disruption in production between 1938 and 1945”).
Then we went to the Volvo display. Once again, we were allowed to come in to view the two products on display. We told the salesperson we were previous Volvo owners. He was very open that the management had changed (from Ford to China), but that the heart and soul of Volvo will be produced in Sweden. I’m sure he meant the car itself, but then again, one container ship looks like any other. Sooooo, if the Volvo you just bought for 45 crore or about $120k USD, has its heart and soul in Sweden, but its nuts and bolts in some god-forsaken place in Szechwan province, well, embrace the heart and soul.
As we were concluding our auto show adventure, we were approaching the exit when a man stopped us and asked how we liked the show. He introduced himself as Sunil Talwar and was very proud to say that he had organized this show and ones like it throughout India. He told us he was a dealer in Hyderabad. He was sending his associates all over trying to find a card to give us because he had used them all up during the day of meeting people. (Later when we went back to the hotel, Deb found his dealership profile and Talwar is a BIG TIME dealer with several stores and a franchise for trucks as well as Volvo and Hyundai. So Talwar would be a good guy to know, if you were in the market for a car).
At the very last display of the show, we were looking at an Indian motorcycle, and I do mean the American Indian motorcycle from 1940 with a sidecar. It was a fire engine red color. A man looking at the product asked us “did someone really ride this or was it just for displays like this?” This was our introduction to Vinod Reddy. For the next 20 minutes or so, we talked about a number of issues. We learned he was from a farming community about 100 kilometers north from Hyderabad, but he lives in Secunderabad and has two grandchildren and he went to St. Paul’s school in Hyderabad and his dad had a Norton motorcycle that Vinod rode when he was 15 but his dad sold it 35 years ago, just before he died and Vinod has not ridden since but he has five apartments where he lives and just convinced is daughter and son-in-law to come live in one of the apartments with their two children so Vinod could be close to his grandchildren and he would very much like us to visit he and his family while we are here and would we like to come over tomorrow (Sunday). Gosh, that was almost Faulkner-esque, wasn’t it, but I didn’t want to go on for two pages without a period.


So that was our Indian adventure for the day. Hope you have a great day as well.