Did Saddam smoke a Hussain Sagar before the hanging?

OK, so Sagar means sea, not cigar in Sanskrit, but it just seemed so tacky and oblique to make the reference. And that is like so much here in India, that is, tacky and oblique. You easily recognize the tacky part simply by walking down the street. Certainly when you wear sandals, there is a momentary delay as the heel of your sandal sticks to the sidewalk, or dirt, or whatever you step on until its bond to the surface on which you are walking releases it with a slap as the sandal hits the sole of your foot. So you always have a four sound step: thud (heel to surface), rock (sole to ball shift except when moon walking with a great deal of difficulty here), silence (release delay), and slap. That is two more sounds than that from the one art student at my undergraduate graduation who wore a modified whoopee cushion on one foot and an ankle bracelet of bells on the other so you heard a "bllluuush, ching, bllluuush, ching" as she walked by. And the four sound walk in India has some parallels with the four sounds when chanting Ohm. There is (1) the long "O" followed by (2) a trailing "ooo", then comes (3) the closed "mmmmm" and all that surrounded by (4) the sound of silence, and I am NOT talking about Simon and Garfunkel either. href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3J5peee0SAngsalH2DV9vPNWG88-77RXst0p1OIV4Y2VLEq20Upb2Ha9qjf-T6T93OO9DkM1QGc0TOkBsjrKL5veFQmxOQvrv8ozebtW6NFJ2_dJRgJgYg5mlY16JEUL5gT4cykq2B1E/s1600/album-Simon--Garfunkel-Sounds-of-Silence.jpg">

The oblique is not as easily recognizable until you've been here a while and realize nothing, but NOTHING, is in square. I know my brother-in-law, Bill Nygren, can appreciate that condition since he has worked for years coming behind people who had very little concept of 360 degrees or the division of them when building homes in the States. Have I mentioned that everything that isn't a worker's tarpaulin shelter is made of cement? Forget what the facade veneer might be, everything else is made of slightly-reinforced-steel cement. And I've shown a few photos of buildings and elevated roadways (called flyovers here) with the wooden scaffolding bracing the cement as it cures. Once again, anyone with the slightest modicum of material elasticity awareness knows that the wooden poles flex much more than a steel pole might. However, there are far more saplings than there are steel mills, so wooden scaffolding it is. There are consequences to this quality-value trade-off that can be best explained by the Australian minister's interview after a shipping accident off the coast of Australia. If you note the first photo above, it is of the large Buddha statue on the man-made island in the middle of the Hussain Sagar (to the Muslims) or Tank Bund (to the Hindus).



I purposefully used that stock photo night scene to help compare to the photos taken in the harsh light of day. The Dalai Lama dedicated the statue in 2006 and yet the base and surroundings look much older. Also note that the Buddha is only granting a blessing in the statue signified by his right hand raised but his left had is not offering a boon as I am demonstrating below the statue. Maybe the sculptor asked the Buddha to shift his Dodi and forgot to reset him. By the way, note two things: (1) I am the only person wearing shorts, and (2) my sandals are both stuck to the cement square on which I'm standing.

Deb also stood out (well, duuuuhhhh).

I've only got two photos that do any justice to giving you a sense of the water quality of the Sagar. In the photo below you'll see a distinct green tone. I've got another example a few photos down that will give you a good view of this.

What I can't give you is a sense of the sweet smell of putrefaction that permeated everyplace you went around the lake. We could smell it in the car as we approached the lake and that was with the outside air turned off and the A/C running. That was the major factor that detoured us from considering a lunch at the restaurant on the water front. Note the Lumbini tour boat. I believe Lumbini is the Telugu word for "sucks to be us" and not the Italian name of the poor eastern coast cousins from Brindisi of the noble Lombardi family. The boat was about the same vintage as the African Queen that Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn sailed down the river in the movie of the same name. If you count, there are about five visible life preservers in total for a boat that has about 75 seats. I wondered why they were playing music during the trip to the Buddha. Look at the water, and call out CCR and we can sing a couple verses of "Green River" but be ready to grab the nearest life preserver when the music stops.
Deb waiting for her ship to come in. Bwahahahahahaha!
What made me a little nervous was the state of decay of the conduit on the side of the boat at the mooring.

This was another "check mark" moment. We have dutifully gone to the "must sees" of Hyderabad. We can safely say "been there, done that. Have a great day, we did!