A Tale of Two Cities

I normally don't open a travel blog talking about my driver, and I regret I didn't take a picture of my driver, Srinivas. I spent a great day with him travelling around Hydrabad. He was originally from a small village in India, but moved to the city to try to get ahead. We discussed a lot of things on our drive. From the politics of the Telegu, to the intricacies of the Muslem and Hindu populations in the area, but my favorite conversation was about his love for his wife. Srinivas came to Hydrabad with a few rupees to his name, and learned English on his own. He explained to me how it is hard to find a woman for an arranged marriage if you do not have anything.  He met his wife, and they fell in love. Without her parents consent, they married, and her parents accepted the marriage not long after. Having a job at the hotel means a different world, and Srinivas went out of his way to make sure I was happy.  I learned a lot from this conversation about India, and some of my pictures will reflect two Hydrabads in this post. The first are the poor that have come to Hydrabad to make a better life as well the old city that shows reflections of where this city has come from. There are subtle social customs and tensions that are separating the city itself as well as the people.

The old town section of Hydrabad is dirty. Mountains of trash pile near the streets forming small, man made hills where people sorted and sifted their way through other people's discarded trinkets. In other sections broken down mopeds lay in dusty waste parked along the sides of the road forming a junk yard of brokenness mixed with goats and people selling knockoff goods.  Running water is a luxury, and it it often tanked in on trucks and stored in a home owner's water tank. On some city streets, flies scrimmaged for a drink of open water containers.

The water had a slight greenish tint to it when held to the light, and it was an easy reminder how we take for granted the simple things.

The new section of Hyderbad is approximately 15 years old with amazing offices for both pharmaceuticals and technology companies including Pfizer, Norvartis, Broadcom, Oracle and IBM. The grass at my hotel is cut by hand with a pair of sheers and a an olympic length pool with a swim up bar. The amount of water used just to water the grass is fought for in the countryside.  The new Hydrabad is amazing and comparable to many of cities in Europe.

If I stayed in my hotel and only travelled to the office, I wouldn't realize the rest of Hydrabad. The Westin provides a seclusion for westerners preventing them from see both the poverty and the beauty of India. My driver was impressed at my willingness to explore Hydrabad for two days straight. He said, there are many westerners that only travel to the hotel and office.

Old Hydrabad is a heavily Muslim area, and they are fighting the expansion of technology into the old city. Men commonly pee on the streets and goats run wild climbing the mountains of rubble and garbage scouring for food. During Muslim religious festivals, the goats are rounded up and sold for sacrifice.  Meat is sold in open air markets, hanging in the 107 degree heat.

It's easy to say just damn when looking at these things, but to the people of Hyderabad, this is their way of life, and they don't know any difference.  Men and children work hand in hand crafting goods, selling wares and other manual tasks.

Child selling cotton candy on the streets.

Man carrying food up to the top of the fort.

Labor is cheap, and people fight for jobs. Losing your job can put you in a poverty rarely experienced in the United States. Vendors sale sticks to build shanty towns that litter the landscape often mixed with trash and rubble.

Riding in the car often gave me a detached feeling from the outside as I watched the movie play in a panoramic theatre. Srinivas was an excellent driver in a city where driving laws are rarely obeyed, but amazingly, traffic flows well. During my second day, Srinivas made to interesting remarks. The first is that he would not have taken us on a tour of the old city on Friday.  Friday is usually a rioting day for the Muslims in the old city. Many Muslims are not educated and live in the poverty of the old city, but they work hard at selling their cheap knockoffs on the streets. Many times, the break from the Mosque on Fridays to riot only to return to normal by Saturday. The second thing he mentioned is that getting into a wreck could cause a driver to be beaten by a mob if there was an injury.  The old city lived by a different set of laws.

From all this, I've seen the beauty in Hyderabad. Once, the diamond capitol of India, remants of it's wealth still remain. For almost 300 years, Persian kings ruled Hydrabad in a time of prosperity rivaling other medieval cities such as Florence. I wanted to close this post with a contrasting picture of one of the royal palaces in Hyderabad to give a sense of what this once great culture accomplished.

In the few days I've been here I have come to appreciate the clash of old and new as well as the hints at both past greatness and a promising future.