Who Can Really Say?

Missed it by that much! News item from today's Times of India:

Protests erupted in several parts of the Old City on Monday over the death sentence awarded to former Iraq president Saddam Hussein.

A large number of Muslims led by Communist leader and Rajya Sabha MP P Madhu gathered at the General Post Office, Abids, and organised a dharna. Comdemning Saddam's death sentence, the agitators carrying placards burnt effigies of US president George W Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair.

I was in the Old City on Sunday, the day before. Muslim communists protesting in favor of Muslim fascists -- who'da thunk it?

In other news, the hotel has several meeting and conference rooms as hotels often do. Today (inside joke to follow) the sign for one of the rooms said: "Benchmark Six Sigma Black Belt Certification". Interesting stuff, but don't get too excited. In the same room a week or so ago they were holding "Accelerated Millionaire Training".

Anyway, back in the real world, I can't find my camera, which means I left it at work. Or wherever I left my head, which my mother continually asserted I'd lose if it wasn't attached to my neck. Well, last time I checked my head was still attached, but I've scoured my pockets and briefcase for the camera without success. Work is the only place it could be. I'll look for it tomorrow, which never knows.

I had a few pics on the camera I was going to post -- not particularly good ones but hopefully illustrative to a degree of something I mentioned a while back -- that Hyderabad (indeed all of India as I'm led to believe) is among other things, a mix of the very poor and the (relatively anyway) rich. There's a main road we could drive to the office from the hotel, but for the last 2 weeks as we near the entrance to Hi-Tec city the driver's turned off onto a back road to avoid traffic. This route exemplifies that mix.

It consists of a series of 90 degree left, then right hand turns, repeating the pattern, each straight segment being not much more than a quarter mile if that. As you drive along, you pass first a small community of tents and lean-toes, and fronting the road are mountains of large plastic bags filled with who knows what. According to the driver the bags are filled with recyclable garbage that's been collected by the residents for re-sale. We drive by around 9:00 AM and there are many folks wearing grubby clothes wandering about barefoot. Wild dogs (presumably) live among them. A week or more ago we saw some children, one of them very small and without clothes. Yesterday I saw a woman carrying a child, maybe 3 years old, by his hand, the kid dangling in the air next to her. Several times I've seen men by the side of the road, squatting to urinate. Each day it's a different scene, but it's all consistent. They are very very poor.

Less than one hundred yards further along the road there's a modern concrete stuccoed wall, with a metal gate and a guard. Behind the wall is a new apartment building, constructed less than 5 years ago, carrying a name like Emerald Gardens or something like that. Through the gate you can see new cars in the parking spots. Continue down the road, turn left, and you come to another shanty town. Turn right, and there's another walled and guarded apartment complex. And the road I'm describing is the same one those buffalo I pictured earlier amble along before they climb the hill to find their grazing spot. Neighborhood is not the word that comes to mind.

But this is emblematic of the new and old Hyderabad. It doesn't have to be new apartment buildings next to shanty towns. It might be a mansion built next to a dilapidated shopping district. For all practical purposes the only physical separation of the well to do from the little to do is very little indeed. I'm not at all sure that this is something new in India -- more likely this is a new way for the same old story to unfold.

And still, as I understand it, 10 years ago it would have been somewhat different, because there would have been fewer examples of the well to do, fewer new apartments or mansions, and just as many of the poor. In that sense the changes make Hyderabad an exciting city, but the challenge for it, and all of India ultimately, will be to figure out how to spread the wealth. As it is, while I understand the walls, I'm still surprised at how closely the two live in proximity to one another -- old giving way slowly and not entirely to the new.