Reddy, Reddi, Reddy

It's been a few days, but we're in the throes of getting the apartment where it is almost home-like. As Deb and I have started to explore the MLA Colony on foot, there are a few things that stand out. First, there are far more Reddy's and Reddi's than Patels or any other names for that matter in our neighborhood. We know this because virtually every home has a placard posted on the gate with the family name and, in some cases, what the primary head of household does or did. Most of the doctors have this on their gate. The former police commissioner of Hyderabad proudly posts this on his gate. We generally walk early in the morning, so the maids, servants, gardeners, and drivers are out and about preparing for another day. The driveways and cars get a daily wash. Many of the homes have a servant draw a Rangoli on the driveway in chalk.
One of the most noticeable features virtually anywhere you go in Hyderabad are the feral dogs. A few homes have domesticated pets, but the dogs are ubiquitous in every neighborhood. And when you use the term "mangy lot" in describing a group of animals or people, the dogs of Hyderabad should be your paradigm. If you've seen the animated movie "Ratatouille", the brother of the rat-hero Remy, Emile gives you an image of how discerning these dogs are when it comes to just about any aspect of life on the streets. Disney's "Lady and the Tramp" would need to be titled VERY differently, cause these female dogs ain't no ladies. However, to give you another visual, maybe Dog and his wife are a good example of the look of many of these street creatures. One of the many nursing females uses the dumpster down the hill from us for her buffet meals and while I don't have a shot of it, this is not a pretty sight.

We'll be in Chennai on Thursday, so I'll have some things of interest to write about shortly. Have a great day.

A Disappearing Number

After our arduous trip to the Global Peace Auditorium, and by good fortune, we secured our tickets and prepared for entry to the auditorium. The auditorium is part of the facilities of the Shanti Sarovar Brahma Kumaris, a Hindi order with nuns and gurus whose purpose is, John Lennon may you rest in peace, global peace and harmony. They sponsor retreats that relieve the individual of stress and anxiety (as well as substantial amounts of wealth I assume). OK, I’ll try not to turn a jaundice eye to this. I’m sure that John found as much inner peace with his guru as he did with his heroin addiction. Casey Jones, we’re movin’ down the wrong track! Jerry, pull me back!
Whoa, that was close. The vortex of life power generated from the inner peace that surrounds the auditorium began to pull me back to 1967 but I managed to escape its surge. It’s much like the time Deb, the kids, and I were in Sedona, AZ. We stayed at this motor lodge on the mesa just about town. There was a beautiful red rock formation on the vista from the office. As I was probably foraging for breakfast stuff in their lobby area, I overheard the conversation between two people I assumed were fellow lodgers and the front desk clerk. The guests were asking where the life power center was nearby the motel. The desk clerk explained how the guests simply needed to go out the door and the path was just off the parking lot. The guests were to walk a short distance and they would begin to sense the center’s presence. That was one of those moments I just wanted to have a spiritual bookstore on the main drag in town.
Boss, de play, de play!
A Disappearing Number got to India and specifically to Hyderabad after three years of negotiations and efforts from the University of Hyderabad Mathematics Department. How appropriate that this play, with part of its storyline highlighting the collaboration of British Mathematician G H Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the brilliant Indian math theoretician, could be here during the International Congress of Mathematicians. The auditorium had all the comforts with theatre seating, but no cup holders. The stage was reminiscent of the lecture halls with the multiple writing boards. One of the actors came on stage easily 20 minutes before the last person was seated. He sat looking through a book. He wore a parka with the hood up. The auditorium was kind-of air conditioned and I was a little uncomfortable (and still wet from the soaking rain nearly an hour before). There were more Anglos in one place since we left the Frankfurt airport seven weeks ago. These were math geeks. They were all wearing their congress badges and carrying congress shoulder satchels. There was a distinct difference between the imported geeks and the locals that were there to see the play. Layer on top of that the neo-rococo décor inside and you have the theatre crowds on Broadway in New York, but the majority is Indian. That’s going to be important during the play.
As the play starts, one of the first people we meet becomes a partner to the current-time storyline. She is a mathematician and shows a fascination with the concepts of Ramanujan and philosophic perspectives on mathematics of Hardy. This continues throughout the play. The second character we meet eventually reveals himself to be a physicist of Indian origin. This character addresses the audience with the premise of the play: that only the math is real and constant. The original actor who came on stage beforehand is finally introduced as what will become the other part of the current-time story, a non-resident Indian who has infinity phobia, but has the hots for the math chick. There was a dry British wit that was woven throughout the play. Guess what – totally lost on the Indians. Actually I didn’t hear many guffaws from any of the math geeks either. One of the math guys we noted before the play started looked as though the 60’s were good to him.
Anyhow, the play did include multimedia effects, two story lines and nearly half the cast is run over by a lorry or oxcart by the end of the play. I’m not going to be a spoiler. You’ll have to see or read it to actually know what goes on. Let’s face it, the only play that really has a storyline you describe in the same length of time it takes to perform it is Samuel Beckett’s “Breathe”: twenty-six seconds.
As we were exiting from the play, I phoned the cab driver who started yelling on the phone, “I coming, I find you.” We moved slowly out of the hall and out onto the marble entryway. The smallish courtyard in front of the auditorium was pandemonium with buses, cabs, and people all moving around. The police were there making a feeble attempt to move the buses and cabs. I saw a cab, but the driver wasn’t wearing his cap. Deb was looking and saying, that’s not our cab, but the driver was waving frantically and yelling “I find you, I find you”. We jumped in and off we went for the second part of our adventurous city cab ride. Traffic was much lighter going back and many of the rivers of water from the earlier deluge had become trickles. So our driver had a much easier time, though he still was heavy-thumbed on the horn. However, we could tell he was relaxed when he put in a CD of Bollywood favorites (well, we think they were Bollywood favorites) and he began singing along. Sometimes even in a falsetto. It was almost charming – almost.
He made his way back with Deb’s directions of “rights”, and “lefts” and “straights”. He pulled into our parking garage, got out to open our door, and was saying “anytime, you call, I come for you”. I paid the contract fee and gave him a tip just for finding us and getting us home with entertainment.
I’m exhausted just remembering these events. Next posting is about our new produce shopping experiences in the local markets. They’re more experiences on the list. Stay tuned.

Hyderabadi Taxi Part Two

The rain was subsiding as our city cab from City Cab arrived, an older model Tata Vista. It was white and as I indicated previously, the side windows had the blackout film on them. The driver was smiling and thanked the young man that helped get him to our place. It was about 20 minutes to six. OK, we’re about an hour later than I had planned. I was mentally going through the calculations, “25 minutes to Deb’s office, another 15 to Gachibowli, if all goes well we’d still be about 40 minutes before the play started. We’re still OK.”
We drive out of our parking garage underneath the apartments, turn onto the street and start our journey. Just as we turn left onto the street with the steep grade (at this point we’d be going down, fortunately) our driver stops in the middle of the road and takes out his note pad, writes down his mileage and time. I guessed that this started the clock ticking for the six hours we had contracted with City Cab for a city cab.
The back seat was damp. Deb contends she was sitting in a pool of water, but I could not confirm that when she moved to allow me to bail. The front windows were open and even going slowly, the moisture from the car was being sprayed into the back seat. Deb asked the driver if he could roll up the window as her carefully combed and styled hair, already falling from standing in the humid garage, was continuing to wilt from the heat and humidity in the car. The driver turned on the AC. Well, the light by the snowflake symbol lighted when he pushed the button. I contend that the car had AC. It has an 1172cc engine. With three passengers (and one consisting of about 2.5 of our driver), that engine was doing everything it could just to move forward. Most of the motor scooters have nearly that displacement and weigh a fifth of the curb weight of the Vista. So I do not fault the AC. We asked for an AC equipped vehicle and we got one.
I should have taken a clue from the way the driver said “GAAcheebowleee” when he asked, once again, where we were going. “Gachibowli, the Global Peace Auditorium,” I answered slowly as if saying it slowly would actually make him understand where we were going. I knew enough not to raise my voice to a loud volume as a means of making the location understandable. Off we went, down the steep hill, up the narrow street, past Apollo supply, and onto the road-with-no-name. Back on Road 12, the one everyone assumes we live on, we turn in an opposite direction than the one Ashraf normally takes Deb to her office, which is in the same direction as GAAcheebowleee. Deb panics, “He’s going the wrong way. We’re heading east.” Well, the driver did have a general idea of where to go, but we were taking a real roundabout way. I mean roundabout. I became suspicious that he was padding the mileage. We got an allotment of 50 kilometers along with our six hours. I had a sense that the most distance as the pigeons fly (really haven’t seen any crows, starlings, or ravens) is about 12 kilometers.
I have mentioned in previous posts on the necessity of using your horn while driving. Ashraf uses his liberally with what could be a code, but I haven’t deciphered it yet. But this cabbie was definitely “heavy thumbed”. In fact, I believe the tip of his left thumb was almost bulbous in shape and there was an indentation on the left-of-center in the steering wheel that neatly fit the outline of that strangely shaped digit. I must admit the Vista’s horn is particularly recognizable if not one of the most annoying. And believe me, I’ve heard so many variations of pitches, vibratos, and durations that I can fairly say the Vista horn dominates the “God, please make this hellacious noise stop before I stick a sharp object in my ears just to make the sound go away” category. But the driver had the horn inextricably integrated into his shift, clutch, brake, accelerator routine that I had to give in to the realization that this was what I asked for. Deb suggested as part of our continuous process improvement debrief after we got home: If Ashraf wants a day off, he is to make the necessary arrangements with appropriate directions if we need transportation.
I’ve been driven out to the Gachibowli area now about half-a-dozen times. Three for the University of Hyderabad events, one at the Indian School of Business (ISB), and two excursions looking for housing in mid-July. I’m now in the habit of marking landmarks when I go places. I looked up the Global Peace Auditorium on Google maps and had a general sense of where it was relative to the ISB: same road, different sides. After what seemed like a half-hour of driving, we came to a road with a fly over that was being constructed. I recognized it as well as the entrance to a beltway road named after a Nehru family member. The driver turned in what I thought was the right direction. We traveled past the soccer stadium which I had seen on my trips to UofH. But I didn’t have a good sense of which road to turn on for the IBS as it was a dark and rainy night when I took my first trip there. We went past the UofH entrance and I sensed we had gone too far. Our driver stopped at each successive bus stop and asked someone for directions. We had about 5 “I don’t knows” and two Möbius strip head bobs. Finally, a distinguished-looking man waiting for a bus was able to recognize what we were talking about and got us back on the road in the opposite direction with a better sense of destination.
Now, I will not ascribe my early actions to divine intervention, but as I was assembling all the items to take with us from a checklist of: umbrellas (VERY good choice), camera, ticket receipt, binoculars, etc., I thought I should drop my glasses in the bag. I have not been wearing glasses or contacts while here in India because someone else is always driving and frankly, from our balcony everything takes on a Renoir-like fuzziness that adds to the charm. As we were backtracking to the road which we should have turned on BEFORE the soccer stadium, I reached in my satchel and pulled out my glasses. The light was beginning to dim (remember, 6:30 is sundown) so I put them on. We turned onto the road which I now recognized from its boulevard lighting as leading to the ISB. OK, we’re going the right way. It was now about 6:24. The driver is briskly cruising down the road because there are no speed bumps when I chanced to glimpse a small sign posted on an electrical pole. The sign was a saffron color and the lettering was red. Not a great combo, but there was an arrow pointing to the left and I thought I recognized “Disa” as one of the words. I called for the driver to stop. He did, again in the middle of the road. I indicated that I thought that the road not too far behind us was where we wanted to turn. So he backs up about 500 meters. There were two policemen standing at the intersection and were not pleased by our driver’s maneuver. However, during the time he was chastising the driver, I noted that the sign did refer to our destination. The policemen told the driver to make a U-turn which was down the road right about where we originally stopped. Dutifully, he pulled ahead, made the turn around, drove back to the road we needed to be on and turned. Within a half-a-minute Deb saw the auditorium to the right. There was a short line of cars waiting to get through the gate. Once through the gate, there was a relatively short driveway that lead to the steps of the entrance. There were probably three hundred people milling around the entrance, but there was no distinct lines. Am I not surprised?
The auditorium has an impressive exterior in its whitewashed cement golden-tones around windows on the second floor and large brass doors. The detail on the doors reminded me of the doors to the Wizard’s palace in the movie version of the Wizard of Oz. The steps leading up to the entrances were marble and still wet from the deluge earlier. We stepped out of the cab and made sure the driver was going to stay. He was. We walked toward the steps. I could sense Deb was nervous when she saw the wet marble as a wave of bad memories caused her to grab my arm so tight that by the time we walked up the dozen steps my entire forearm was blue and I had lost all feeling below my elbow. Some of the doors were open and there were people milling about in the lobby.
We looked around for something that resembled a ticket office and finally sighted an open door with a circle of tables each with a number on top of a pole. That was the amount you paid for your ticket. We went over to the appropriate table. There I had to sign my receipt and another form (this high tech country really needs to wean itself from its paper, but the litter lobby would probably riot). We now have our tickets in hand. It is 6:35. We’ve missed the rush for tickets. We can get ourselves freshened up and ready for the play. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Hyderabadi Taxi versus the Tiajuana Taxi

Last night (and most of the day, really) was an exciting experience worth sharing. I needn't remind you that it's still monsoon. The pattern has now shifted to one of warm day, some sun building humidity with relatively warm temps (mid-80s). The easterly winds drive in a storm each evening with a heavy downpour followed by some cooling in the late evening. Now this meteorological description might not seem really relevant until one is standing in the deluge with a river running down the street trying to get a non-English speaking security guard to talk to a semi-non-English speaking cab driver giving him directions to our apartment building. Our address says "Road 12" which is a major artery through Banjara Hills. We're talkin' 14 lanes. Well, six actually, but 14 cars, motorcycles, and motorized rickshaws can line up next to each other without physically touching, but the distances between vehicles are measured in microns. Anyhow, the majority (probably 99.8%) of the 4 million inhabitants of greater Hyderabad mistakenly believe we live on Road Number 12. Wrongo-bongo! Our apartment is nearly 2 kilometers off Road 12 and not just a straight shot off Road 12. The first road off Road 12 to get to our apartment has no name. Kind of like a traffic version of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". But instead of our road-with-no-name wearing a Mexican serape, it has a distinctive, three speed-reducing devices at the entrance to the MLA Colony which is another part of our address. The MLA stands for the "members of the legislative assembly" which is the governing body for Hyderabad, much like the Detroit City Council, but without the extravagant drama. But before you get to colony entrance, you have a gauntlet of people at the hospital and the chai vendors, Fast Chinese vendor, and other various eateries (all mobile establishments) who line the opposite side of the road from the hospital entrance, a private school entrance, a banana vendor (also mobile) and another office building of unknown occupancy. At lunch time, this is THE happenin' place on the road-with-no-name. There are literally hundreds of people on the street, most walking from somewhere to one of the vendors whose various methods of producing their menu items create a choking smoke screen that adds a degree of difficulty for any driver when maneuvering through the lunch crowds. Once again, as a passenger through these crowds, you notice the ballet-like dance that the cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and pedestrians all gracefully move in this close proximity.


Once you pass the entrance to the colony, you drive about a kilometer over a rough partially-paved road. The monsoon rivers that flood the street each night gouges out holes that will eventually swallow the front wheel of a rickshaw. As the road-with-no-name makes a gentle curve to the left as it intersects with another street, you see one of the landmarks required to get to our place: Apollo Supply. You turn onto the street next to Apollo, it's a event supplier. Sometimes you will drive over their carpets they have lying in the street to dry or perhaps a woman will be sweeping off the litter with the brooms that she sweeps the streets at some other point in time. Now you must turn left at the next street which is a short block and narrow. It can only handle one motorcycle, rickshaw and a car at one time, that is if two cars aren't parked on opposite sides of the road. Then only the vehicles whose drivers are agile enough to maneuver will get through. The street dead-ends into a home. You have to turn right. The road narrows. Now we're on a street that makes an alley look like a freeway. You come down a hill to a dead-end. There is a small shrine on the wall in front of you. You turn left. Going uphill on a pretty steep grade, you traverse two speed ruts. Well, maybe they are utility trenches that were never repaired. Regardless, they slow your progress going uphill as well as the chickens and dogs that roam this street. As you near the crest, you see the top of a temple in a private home's front yard. You turn right and start down a slight grade and you are staring at the bottom through a vacant lot out on the city. Nearly everyone I have driven with at this point are taken by the view. Just hope the drive isn't distracted. You turn left and come to the end of the road, in a literal sense, and you're at our apartment. If you're completely confused, now you know why I was standing in a downpour last night trying to get our security guard to help the driver get to the apartment as he was driving through the flooded street-with-no-name.

Why, you now ask, wasn't Ashraf driving us? He needed an evening off so we contracted a city cab from City Cab to pick us up to go to the play "A Disappearing Number". I had built in two hours to get to a venue that was less than 10 kilometers away. But our little buddy driver was enthusiastic if not clueless each time I called to see if he had found the next landmark. Each time, he was 5 minutes away. That 5 minutes turned into 45. Deb stood in the parking deck of our apartment to stay out of the rain. Finally, one of the younger guys who works for someone in the building or lives here or somehow is connected to someone who works and/or lives at the building talked to the cab driver on my phone and then ran up the road, coming back with the driver in his TaTa which was ostensibly air conditioned. When we got in the back seat the Hyderabadi driver had left the windows open, because all four side windows had black film on them. You couldn't see out. But he was in a pleasant mood which was directly opposite of Deb & mine. But we started out on our journey to Gachabowli and the Global Peace Auditorium. Tomorrow I will try to describe the drive and how the rain, our driver, and God actually made the timing of our arrival fortuitous.

When governments work in spite of themselves

Last Sunday, Deb volunteered to be part of one of Novartis’ sponsorship government school’s celebration of Independence Day. And yes, one of the cable stations carried Gandhi and one station carried Independence Day. But Deb’s experience certainly was worth noting for two reasons: (1) she was at the school from where our charges during the zoo excursion came from, and (2) she was the center of attention – again. She did try to blend in, but come on, you call THIS blending in?
One of the dignitaries on hand was a graduate of the school who went on to become an important civil engineer in the state government. Like we discovered in our trip to the zoo, there are roses among the thorns, but, damn, you had better wear thick leather gloves when you search. OK, not leather, that would be a no-no.
I’m seated at my workstation looking out to the east at the old city and watching a storm move in. Over the last week, it has stormed every night. The locals say that this is the wettest season in about 4 years. That’s good, because the last two have been near-draught conditions.
The fan in the room is cranked up a bit to help spread the humidity around the apartment. It’s so thick that it can be felt. I imagine it as the invisible version of the Cecil B DeMille’s tenth plague from the Ten Suggestions, the Hollywood re-titling of the Ten Commandments to be more inclusive and non-judgemental. Here are some additional photos of Independence Day.





The class size is about 60 pupils per room. There is no running water and, of course, nothing but latrines. The courtyard is dirt (with the ubiquitous litter)but these children have a chance (and many have the desire) to break out of the deprivation from which they come. Eventually I will get around to the issue of poverty versus deprivation.

Type and Sweat, Sweat and Type

A colleague of mine reminded me that I wrote my thoughts from my time in Barquisimeto and as I recall, I had a similar headline for one of those pre-internet musings. But from every account, I’m glad it’s not summer in Hyderabad. I was listening to Janis Joplin’s cover of Gershwin’s classic "Summertime" today as I was continuing to help refine the Indian definitions of “clean” and “paint” as they were executed in our apartment.
But progress is being made. Electricity works (mostly) and what doesn’t work, I’ve eliminated – literally. One step forward, two steps back. Yesterday I went to a one-man performance of “The agony and ecstasy of Steve Jobs”. It was staged at the Indian School of Business and I was invited by students from Hyderabad University. It was a very funny account of an Apple cultist’s experience over the last 25 years.
But I wanted to get back to one of my initial anticipations of our trip to India and that is of my spiritual journey. Now, I can start from any of a number of perspectives, and I chose that of being a minority religion. And Christianity is the minority’s minority in India. About 25 million Indians are Christians. But in a country of one billion, it doesn’t even come onto the radar screen. I mentioned some of my perspectives on the various churches at which we attended mass. This is patently church shopping. Not gonna lie. But the criteria for selecting the church we’re likely to attend the most during our stay is worth some scrutiny. However, the process reminds me of some of the rat lab experiments in the 50’s and 60’s, some of which I got to observe at UofM. Those were some of the classics: white room, black room, low voltage grids on the floors, food at far end of the room. Rat wants to eat, food is in the black room and the floor is electrified. Results: generally stressed hungry rat.
What, you might ask, does this have to do with church shopping? Well, we’ve been to three churches: St. Joseph’s in Hyderabad, St Mary’s in Secunderabad, and St. Alphonsus in Banjara Hills. I’ve shown you the Pieta on steroids at St. Mary’s. St. Joseph’s is the center for the Archdiocese of Hyderabad which stretches east out to the coast and south for quite a distance. St. Alphonsus is the closest. However, it has its “dark room, electrical grid” drawbacks. You’ve probably seen or experienced the type of church in the US that is the “Baby Jesus Bar & Grill”. I took this picture surreptitiously before mass to give you a sense of the interior.
I’ve given some perspectives on the music of the “choir” which consists of some of the students from the school. The music is eclectic, to say the least. I’ve heard one hymn that was familiar but that was only after listening to at least two verses.
The exterior of St. Alphonsus is a mud courtyard surrounded by a mud stucco wall that is only punctured by one gate and one driveway which divides the church from the school. In the gateway, there is a gauntlet of beggars. From a suggestion by one of the expat association members, we purchased biscuits to hand out rather than cash. Well, can I tell ya, beggars CAN be choosers? Some give you a thank you, but a number of them give you a Telugu version of the raspberries. Cue the Flying Lizard’s cover of “Money”. Deb’s driver, Ashraf is pretty adamant when we’re at a stop for an intersection and the beggars come rapping on the window. “Don’t give them anything” is his constant counsel.
Now here is a picture of the exterior of St. Alphonsus with the old boy himself standing in the bushes of the courtyard, the only place where there isn't mud. It really is a contrast from the interior, but, hey, it’s India. Old habits die hard or better still, are reincarnated in successive lifetimes as something vaguely familiar but still garish. You can bet that St. Alphonsus is carrying over some heavy karmic matter from the previous life and it manifests itself in the orange paint and the neon cross. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I’m experiencing another “Waiting for Godot” moment as I received a call this afternoon telling me to expect a delivery of the furniture that was supposed to be here on Monday last. I am to receive a call at 11:30 tomorrow to let me know at approximately what time I should expect the driver whose name and mobile number I will receive at that time. Now why 11:30? That is when the store opens as so many retail shops do. Deb has started driving to the office via a specific store just so she can get something that she would otherwise have to wait for 11:30 on the weekend at which time half her day is over and by the time she gets home, three quarters of her day is over and she just wants to plop down and take a nap. Vicious cycle, that Indian shopping thingy.
We’re looking forward to this weekend as we finally procured tickets for “A Disappearing Number” which is on tour. One of Deb’s BFFs had seen it in A2 and told Deb to see it at some point. So why not here? And the reason we’re going now is that the International Congress of Mathematicians is holding its global event at the University of Hyderabad. Go figure. Anyhow, I will not go through the agony it took to procure them, but suffice it to say we got ‘em, and we’re going.
I’m going out on the balcony and gaze at the lights of the city. I hope you have a great day and I will be back soon to let you know that the plays the thing.

We’ve got sunlight on the sand

I realize it’s been a few days since I last wrote, but our move to the apartment has been a whirlwind of activities. Deb’s driver, Ashraf has shopped with us more than he has with his wife since they were married, but his help has been very valuable. But as you know, the transition has not been without its challenges. Power and water have been two of the issues that have started to align with expectations – operative word is “started”. You were treated to our first evening’s experience, but we’ve come to believe Buchi Babu is in league with all the local tradesmen and service personnel, not unlike Tony Soprano’s harmonious relationship with the unions.
Now the vacant lot next to our apartment, one of two lots that remain open to the same view we have, is being developed. It is an interesting combination of old and new technology in laying the foundations. The construction workers are living across the street from the construction site. But since there is a Benz outside the tent, I assume they are doing alright. OK, I can’t confirm it’s their M-B, but the image does have some impact. Some of the women living in the tents carry dirt from the site in baskets on their heads. I have seen this several times now around Hyderabad, so it’s not unusual to see women working in such rudimentary roles.
Our military base has been very active for the last four days. On Friday, they began some maneuvers through the cow wallows. The trainees have been waist high in waste water for the day. Toward late afternoon, the target practice started followed by an artillery barrage – literally. Saturday morning, the trainees were mustered onto the parade ground, an area of about 3 soccer fields long. The transport lorries are parked at one end of the field in a U shape formation. The troops are in ranks of about 100 each (I assume it’s a metric thing) and a drum beat begins about 6am and lasts for about 3 hours. Now THAT was annoying. Late in the afternoon on Saturday, a new artillery barrage starts. Deb gets to experience it herself for the first time. After the first salvo, she levitated off the floor, but the barrage only lasted about 15 minutes. That was long enough until the first evening call to prayer started with the dueling imams. Our daughter, Leigh told us that one of the documentary programs actually talked about mosques sending their criers to a music school so that they wouldn’t need to listen to someone who sounded like he had a serious flare of IBS. When you get a cluster of mosques calling the faithful to prayer it is as if Verdi was composing one of his famous choruses after he dropped acid.
But how about the apartment? Well, we’ve been in the apartment 6 days now. Buchi and my little buddy, Mr. Gums, are out on the balcony installing some roll up shades. Now, I’m not sure if these are a substitute for not getting the electrical problems solved or if they are just a nice addition to the balcony. They come from somewhere else, that’s for sure and guess what! They don't roll up! They are different lengths and they are blocking my view. Buchi, now you've really done it! You have to realize that while the geography is high desert plateau, during monsoon, the humidity stays about 95 to 100 percent 24-7. Maybe that’s what they promised when we asked for water 24-7, which is a luxury here in Hyderabad. Due to the high humidity, the flora flourish here from the bamboo that people simply stick in the ground to forests of Eucalyptus trees to, of course, mold. The consequence of this is that all floors are marble (or mud depending on your income level). You’re not going to see a lot of shag carpet save for some discarded remnants that traveled from who knows where are are used as one layer of cover on the tents of the squatters, er, construction families.
I mentioned that the standard configuration for families is what is known as 3BHK or 3 bedrooms, a hall (translate: living room) and a kitchen. Our apartment is very spacious with about 1800 square feet, but as you will see, there is space that is unusual and so we’ve re-configured the furniture to give us the main living area, the Indian equivalent of a great room where we have the dining and TV viewing. This leaves the “hall” which we would consider a living room as a stepchild with a sitting area and some built-in cabinetry that is our greeting area off the entrance. Service people have spent more time in that space than we have.
Our kitchen is a galley with marble counters and marble floor. Now, the owners have had cooks throughout the time they lived here, and the cook’s idea of clean was formed in a galaxy far, far away from what Deb and I expect. Sooooo, I’ve been cleaning ghee film from every surface except for where the painters painted OVER the ghee film. It’s an Indian thing, I’m sure. Last evening, we had our first real dinner. I cooked up some pasta sauce using the local Roma tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, and peppers. We actually sat down to dinner at the table. Now this brings me to one of the central issues that we have found living in Hyderabad: Americans do take for granted so many things in our everyday living that are scarcities in most other parts of the world. In the many years of international travel, I haven’t experienced these everyday living challenges as I lived in hotels and even when I was in a remote facility, our food and water were catered in. Please don’t get the impression that I’m complaining. In the morning, I get up and start my coffee, the electricity permitting, Inshallah. I go out on the balcony, and survey the landscape before the troops start exercising and in between the calls to prayer. It’s damn nice.
Our “great room” is now our main living space. We have our TV viewing space at one end and our dining area at the other. Our office is the smallest bedroom. We’re still in need of a second computer desk, but since my experience today, I will gladly give up this desk for the dining room table. Cause, can I tell ya, I had a mind-altering experience. I mean, we’re talkin’ Bladerunner-type subterranean maze of vendor booths. I’m going to go back to take pictures, but this was absolutely the most bizarre shopping experience I’ve had – but it was a success. For 200 Rs, I’ve got WiFi again. Damn, life is good.
I’m going to close for now. The pictures will tell the story. Have a great day.

Kind of in the Dark – Buchi is no Fred Astaire

Well, Artie Shaw and his band won’t be playing this number, but I shoulda known something was up. Buchi Babu, who works for our landlord, is their facilities manager and responsible for getting our apartment ready for move in. But I’ll get back to that later.
Leaving the Novotel nearly one month after our arrival was a definite marker in the events of our stay in Hyderabad. We were pampered, to say the least, with great service, a comfortable-if-slightly-cramped guest room, daily laundry, breakfast, dinner, and the list goes on. My only other experience with Novotel had been my stay in Offenbach Germany in 1988 and that experience was one of the factors prompting my fateful flight change from Pan Am 103 to Lufthansa a day earlier than scheduled. My description of that Offenbach Novotel was the “Stalag Novotel”. The post war rebuilding of Germany gave rise to architecture whose roots were in the Bauhaus school of post WWI Germany. There was a certain utilitarian, egalitarian ethos to the design (read: boring at best, dreary was the norm). So when Deb got her travel arrangements that said “Novotel” I was apprehensive. But the stay was most enjoyable once you became used to the daily power interruptions.
Oh, my, the call to prayers from the local mosques just started at 5 am over their loudspeakers. There are dueling canters as well. It was somewhat exotic at 7pm. I’m gonna hear about this. It’s been going on for about 15 minutes. I also hear a peacock not too far from our place but fortunately it is not using a loudspeaker.
Ashraf, Deb’s driver, has been immensely helpful. He is the third generation Hyderabadi, living in the old city, and knows the area very well. He has a sense of where and how to turn on these narrow streets that bob and weave through each of the townships. But he knows where to go shopping as I learned that his monthly rent is 200 Rs per month for a two-room flat where he lives with his wife and two young daughters. He has been a trouper over the last two weeks as we have search for a place to live which brings me back to our apartment – and Buchi Babu.
The first apartment I visited here at Hill Top was on the front of the building facing the street. This is a dead end street and we are the last building on one side of it (I mentioned it previously along with a reference to Lou Rawls). There is a building just under construction that will be our penultimate neighbor. While the traffic is limited, the street is not without character, like the workers’ tents pitched in the vacant lot across the street from the construction site. These folks live without electricity or running water so the street view is not very attractive from your balcony. But now that I think about it, our relocation guy, Vinayak, set me up. He said, we could look at another flat that was available at the other end of the same corridor. Well, the rest is history. I may be as well, but I’ll leave that till later.
I alerted our movers that we were moving into our apartment to arrange for our shipment of stuff from Jersey to be delivered just before we left the hotel. The day before, I was at Big Bazaar, the local Wal-Mart equivalent known by the locals for its variety and low prices. And how, you may ask, does a store in a third world environment out-perform its competitors on everyday low prices? Well, it’s the same as Wal-Mart. You look for the lowest cost providers. How, again you might ask, would you do that if China is your economic arch-rival and they are the world leader in bringing the world the lowest cost goods using the dedicated government-sponsored workers who are currently living communally for their re-education and fulfilling their obligations to the People’s Republic? Why, you’d listen to Country Joe McDonald’s exhortations echoing from Woodstock and go to: Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Myanmar or even Bangladesh. Yes, Big Bazaar brings you goods that help anchor one terminal point of the quality-value relationship. To my amazement, I could not find a recycle label on any of the plastic containers. You’d suspect at the least to find the triangle with a “14” or “72” on it. Coincidentally, last Saturday we passed a “recycling” station that you might have mistaken for yet another litter rookery, but the litter was contained in various-sized bags which themselves had been recycled several times. The multiple recycling could also apply to the folks working on these enormous pillows of “mixed materials” destine for the reprocessing plants near Ho Chi Min city or Rangoon or where ever.
But they all have such bright colors. You might be mesmerized by the bright hues of, of, of the oranges, neon greens, vermillion, and infra reds. And speaking of Reds, the Naxals are harassing the countryside folks this week. They are really extortionists dressed up as Maoists. Years ago I read Andre Malraux’s books on the communist insurgencies in Southeast Asia. He sympathized with the revolutionaries. He could, he was French and political anarchy is a central tenant of the French set of democratic suggestions. Now, the leaders of the movements like the Naxals must redact the sections of Mao’s Little Red Book that talks about the fact that once a revolution is won, anarchists are an unnecessary commodity and should be cleansed from the new communal society that requires order and discipline. Oh well, while trying to draw a fine line between creationism and Darwinism, it just makes sense that some within a species should simply never reproduce. Nough said!
Buchi is actually sitting in my hall right now watching Telugu TV on what has become a mystery of why part of our electrical service works and the other does not when all the circuits are saying they are on, but really only part of them is working. Buchi called the electrician to come back, but he was told is emphatic Telugu to take a hike. He is somewhat forlorn, but was happy when the maid he wants to place in our home came with one of the brooms I wrote about a few days ago that the women use to sweep the streets. I had purchased a Swiffer dust mop at Big Bazaar because I happen to like them better than tying one of my workout t-shirts to the end of a stick. So she swept the entire apartment with a broom that has probably moved sacred cow manure wrapped in litter to the side of the road just before she came to our place. Then she dusted. One rag is used for the entire apartment; moving the dust from one surface to another appears to be the objective. I realize that Buchi is also a housecleaning pimp among his other duties as facilities manager for our landlord. He finds them, trains them, and pays their salaries which you give to him as you don’t want to be cheated by the maid. You actually want to be cheated by Buchi.
Among the many hats that Buchi wears, he is very proud to tell you he is a Christian and that his entire family converted from Hinduism to Christianity. His brother is a minister of the Universalist denomination. They run an orphanage. Buchi had us talk to his brother this morning who gave us a blessing and asked us to visit their orphanage whose children will tear your heart out with compassion as Buchi’s brother begs you for a donation. Won’t you help little Salim? His mother and father had to leave him, the oldest of 27 children, at our doorstep. Maybe someday little Salim will find the courage to forgive his parents for having to abandon him so the other 28 members of his family could live. Can’t you find it in your heart of help little Salim and the millions of other Salims and Salimas for only 50 Rs a day, you will bring Salim the needed relief. Oh, sorry, I must have been channeling the bearded mini-infomercial guy standing in the squalor of the shanty town with his version of little Salim. We’ve now got two orphanages that people want us to go to see. It could get very expensive donating to all these institutions (even though I know they do need it) or maybe I’ll get Buchi to hire Salim to be our houseboy. Salim, peel me a grape!
But Buchi’s starting to sweat. I asked if he had informed our landlord of the problem. He was emphatic; she doesn’t need to be bothered by these trivial matters. She got more important things on her mind. Yeah, right. And if you believe that, would you like to buy a fly over in Secunderabad? And the sequel “One flew over Hyderabad”. No problem with the cuckoos.
The army facility near us is an active base. Today, for the first time, along with the peacock, call to prayers, barking dogs and the early morning rickshaw horns, the recruits were out on the parade field going through morning drills. Deb came in begging to find a way to make coffee. Which reminds me, I nearly forgot to mention why Buchi was such an important part of this post. The electrician that is probably a buddy of Buchi’s, or maybe even a BFF, was installing the inverter yesterday afternoon and evening. You’ll remember that on IST, the sun sets about 6:30, for those of us in the US that is a tweener sunset in mid fall and spring. Anyhow, the electrician was working away with the main breaker pulled, so he was, in the vernacular, working in the dark. Now that’s OK for a blind man reading a Braille text, but when we’re talking 220 volts, this is not the time to be reaching out in the darkness because you’re likely to get yourself killed rather than finding a friend. But after he completed his task, the water supply came along with Dr. Reddy and her two children to help us navigate the satellite TV and dishwasher. Cool beans, things are shaping up. Inverter is in, guests and workers are gone, time to run a load of dishes so we’re ready in the AM for breakfast and sending Deb off to work.
Things are cruising along. I am starting the dishwasher, Deb is reviewing her e-mail. Wham! Lights go out, fans go off. All we have is the wind moving through the apartment. First words from Deb: “What did you do?” Second words from Deb: “I thought the inverter is installed”. Third words from Deb: “This is gonna be a nasty night, call Buchi.” So I called. Buchi seems to have forgotten any English that he learned. “OK, OK, I’ll fix it in the morning.” Click. Well it would have been a click if it was an analog switch system. The click was just a metaphor, duh. Deb is sitting in the dark munching a few crackers and some cheese that we have in the now-silent fridge. I had just brought back some stuff from the store, so I had perishables in there. I’m in trouble. The best laid plans and all that just went to hell. Now the outage was not complete. There were some plugs that were still working and two of the bathrooms had lights. For whatever crazy reason, I went over and tried the A/C in the master bedroom. The light went on and the A/C fired up. Now I had no control. It was either on or off, so I left it on and walked out to tell Deb thinking it would mitigate some of the frustration she (and I) was experiencing. It did to some extent, but I was on the hook for finalizing all the details and this particular environment was damning, to say the least. But, hey, it’s Hyderabad, it’s Wednesday, tomorrow will come regardless.

Glenda and Her Munchkins

In Deb and my first joint volunteer activity with Novartis, a group of 20 Novartis employees from Hyderabad calling themselves Jawaharlal took about 100 students from a government school (ages 8 to 10) to the Nehru Zoo. The students are from low income families and the government sponsors their education which includes clothing, food, and supplies. You find the roses among the thorns in this environment. Now, most of Deb’s travels have been between the hotel and HiTec City. With the exception of the occasional tent communities, the area is pretty much a suburban sprawl on steroids. But today, we traveled through some of the hard-working underbelly of Hyderabad. This is not the quaint-but-jammed Old City with its ancient markets that hustle and bustle with about a million people shoulder to shoulder moving in this seemly well choreographed ballet of rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles, tricycles and burqas. This is the heavy truck repair yards with huge diesel motors suspended by hoists in the space between the buildings and the roads. There is mud all around, men are pounding on the engine that looks like a steel heart that’s been ripped from some giant robot’s body; the aortic arteries and veins still dangling from the organ. Next to it is a shop with men carving on a piece of wood lying on the cement floor of the building, the entire space open to the road. This is NOT what you'd describe as Norm Abram’s New Yankee Workshop.
We follow a road in a northy-westy-southy-easty direction that has a recently-built “fly over”, a limited access elevated road, that serpentines through these working neighborhoods. The Chai and banana cart peddlers move slowly along the roadside. If there is an Indian poet like Carl Sandburg, then he’s written about these people. Old tyres (it’s their spelling, not mine) lay in huge mounds in front of various repair businesses. The piles mimic the rock formations that tower behind them so the tyres are covered in litter as well. My gym rat buddy Mark Van Orten and his dad from Morristown, NJ would be the shining light to the bulk of the repair stations who service all kinds of vehicles in the open. If you recall in one of my first posts when we arrived in Hyderabad late at night, I noticed the familiar scenes that loomed out of the darkness at me. In the light of day, I believe I could be back In Barquisimeto or Sao Paulo, or Manila, or Bangkok. The banging of large hammers on thick metal altogether make up something akin to the rhythms of the Kodo drummers in Japan. And while the store fronts may look as disheveled and decrepit as the rows of stores along Michigan Avenue or 8 Mile Road in Detroit, there is actually legitimate commerce that goes on here. There are no significant barriers to any entrepreneur fulfilling their dreams. And that is what gives Hyderabad its vitality.
Finally arriving at the Zoo, which touts itself as the largest in India (though the zoo in Kolkata makes the same claim), we pile out of our 10 seater winger (a Mercedes transport that made the Mietwagen M-B 190 in Germany look luxurious)
and meet the other team members who were just arriving as well. Our first task was to make up snacks for each of the groups our team members would be chaperoning. Our team leader had the bags and boxes of goods hauled out and within a minute or two, an assembly process got the bags organized and we set off to find our charges. It reminded me of the many Saturday mornings Deb and I were responsible for the snacks for a soccer or T-ball or gymnastics event. Each adult got a 1-liter bottle of water and that was a thankful provision.

Each team was responsible for 10 children. Some teams got a teacher as well. Deb and I were teamed up with Reena and her niece who was a great addition as she was 13 and the kids really did follow her. We were teamed with Reena because she spoke Telugu. Some of the Novartis people are from other states and Telugu is a regional language. Any of my colleagues who traveled with me to Venezuela can attest to the differences in the Spanish language spoken in rural Venezuela versus any other city that purports to be civilized might speak. Thus we were all arranged so that some of us had a clue as to what was being said. We set off on our safari with our kids. Now the school gives the kids uniforms. Most of the girls wore blue jumpers with a white blouse. The boys wore white shirts with either blue shorts or pants. Most ever kid wore some kind of flip flop.
The evening before, Deb and I wrote out questions to ask the kids about the animals to make the event a series of teachable moments. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. Besides, Deb and I had a series of our own teachable moments during the excursion. The kids did have animals they really wanted to see: first of these was the tiger, then the elephants. There was one white Bengal Tiger. He did actually look somewhat majestic, sitting rather regally at the edge of his island. There are plenty of signs telling visitors not to taunt or throw rocks at the animals. I’m cool with that. As we left the white tiger’s area, we heard him roar several times as the sound carried quite a distance. It was enough to get a yellow tiger in a distant island to get up and cruise around marking his territory. He was either doing that or, as he was my equivalent age, he just got up from a nap and had to do what most old guys have to do with which I can identify, but I’m pretty sure he was doing his cat thing.
After about 45 minutes on the trek, we stopped at what appeared to be a picnic area. We handed out the snacks and juice bottles. The kids sat on the grass and chatted among themselves. I wasn’t quite sure if they were planning the modern equivalent of the Sepoy Mutiny, but as they were laughing and asking Deb if they could kiss her on the cheek, my worries were unfounded. Deb was as much of an attraction while she was there as most of the animals. I first noticed this when a group of Muslim women stampeded across a median between two exhibits and were staring at Deb. Then there were groups of young women who were all too casually strolling next to us and one would run ahead to take a picture of her friends who were moving close enough so that Deb would be in the picture with them. She was stopped by groups and asked to have their picture taken with her. I believe they thought it must have been Madonna with some of her adopted kids on an outing; no, not that kind of outing. But one group of young men asked if they could take their picture with both Deb and I.
Now by the time we saw the elephants, three tethered in their pavilions and one out in the paddock, the kids were starting to get tired. But they still wanted to see the birds and then go on the train ride that circled the zoo. Whenever the train passed, the passengers would be waving and greeting everyone along the way, so our little gang thought that would be fun. As the kids fatigued, our efforts to contain them became an exercise in herding cats.

One of the animals the kids did perk up for was the giraffe, and I do mean that in the singular. He was enjoying his afternoon grazing among the trees in his paddock. He did show some of that gracefulness you see in the nature documentaries on giraffes, but then you realize they are social animals so his singularity is disheartening. But then again, most of the exhibits have only one specimen. This was particularly said for the one chimpanzee who sat looking rather forlorn on his island. There were a couple of sacred baboons, one male with one female. The male did come over to see us out of curiosity. Deb thought he saw me as a threat. Get outta here, ya big baboon! George, George, George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree! Well we finally got the roundup to the train station that was every bit of the image of some remote Indian village station in miniature. There were vendors nearby, it was dusty, the train was ancient and decrepit, and the tracks, I had noted, went over some bridges that appeared to lack adequate support. But throwing caution to the wind, we piled our troop on board. The last car was filled with either an extended Muslim family or a Muslim school outing. It was very hard to tell. But they certainly were having a great time singing and waving to the bystanders. Deb had seven of the children in one compartment and the remainder was two compartments behind. The train wound its way around the zoo and finally came back to the station. Our team leader was nearby as we piled out. Deb suggested that we get our group ice cream from on the vendors, but the team leader wanted to start assembling the groups back as it was nearly time to go, even though we were on IST. Each of the Novartis teams finally reassembled with a full complement of kids. We said our farewells to our group. The teachers made a final head count, and ran a gauntlet of vendors hawking everything from bubbles to bangles and beads. Hey Rogers and Hammerstein must have been here. Oh, Deb just reminded me it was baubles, not bubbles and it was the Levant, not Hyderabad. Now on the latter point, I contend that you could use local content to paint a cogent portrait. But I digress.
Our team leader assembled the Novartis Jawaharlal together for a debriefing, TGRs and TGWs. Good process improvement initiative. More TGRs than TGWs, and improvements will continue. He invited us all back for next month’s event. Deb had a good suggestion and sent it along this morning: nametags for the Jawaharlal members. It was hard enough with the kids’ names trying to learn all the Novartis people was a degree of difficulty on top of that without a scorecard.
Anyhow, we have been invited to visit Vinod Reddy and his family in Secunderabad this afternoon before we go to mass. We should have some interesting stuff from that. Talk to you soon.