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.