Saturday, October 9
Hyderabad
|
Other India Travel Stories |
I want to cry right now. I just called Frauke who is President of the Save the Rock Society here in Hyderabad and there’s no way I’m going to be able to go on the Rock Walk tomorrow. If I went, I’d miss my overnight train to Bangalore. And I need an overnight train to Bangalore because I’m stuck in a quasi expensive hotel and I’m far too lazy to haul my backpack filled with cables and external modems and the such to a dive. And fight the touts on the way.
Can you believe there’s such a society here? Save the Rocks? Hyderabad is surrounded by amazing rock formations that perch themselves at astonishing angles. They’re sunbathing towels for cobras. Big New Money People have been happily blasting away these ancient rocks (some of the oldest in the world) to build their peach colored palaces. Like the ones in Tiburon minus the four car garages. But the gates are bigger here. And the gilt shinier.
Many of the rocks have ridiculous advertisements painted onto them. For such pressing items as bathroom doors.
About 8 km outside of Hyderabad, smack bang in the middle of the rocks and scrub bush and woman balancing huge loads of sticks on their heads above their glowing saris, is High Tec City. High Tec City is a big, ugly building. Just one building. There is a guard booth at the gate of HTC at the entrance on the pot-hole ridden, single-track road. Inside the building the likes of Microsoft have set up a home away from home. There are signs all over Hyderabad for High Tec City.
The train journey down to Hyderabad from Delhi was about three hours too long. In total, it was about 28 hours. I hate to go on about this, but the loos on the trains are not my scene. Cannot handle. I know it’s supposed to be mind over matter, I know that people generally don’t like to talk about this. But. I just dread those loos more than anything. Kezia suggested I carry a little pot or something and pee into that but that would require too much coordination on the train. The complications start before you even go to the loo. First off, there are two different kinds of loos. They are across from each other. One says Indian Style and the other says Western Style. They are both italicized. Everyone goes into the Indian Style. Which means it’s everyone times dirtier. But, I got a little self-conscious. As in, ohhh, Western Girl Can’t Pee in Indian Style Loo. I started imagining that blaring out from across the conductor-speaker. So, when I woke up the next morning, I quickly ran to the loo before anyone else was up and then called it a day. One visit in 28 hours. Add in the fact that I was wearing my made-to-wear (is this Haute Couture?) Punjabi outfit, and the complications are tripled (10 foot scarf, huge baggy pants that would fit around six Dilberts, and a long top that hits below the knees—all made out of summer, super-slippery crepe.). And, then, I couldn’t stop staring down at the train tracks whizzing below the hole.
Each AC (air conditioned) top class compartment in a sleeper is actually a compartment for six people. I wasn’t very excited to be sleeping with my five other men. The lady in the compartment next to me saw that I was alone and invited me to "Come! Come! Come sit with us." And so I had dinner with her and her mum and dad. They had made heaps of food, and I had brought heaps of fruit. Including the prized pudding apple—a bitty looking fruit that tastes just like pudding.
Once I settled into the idea that after waking up the next morning on the train I still had another 14 hours to go, I began to relax. And lay back and read and sleep and wait for my next meal. There’s something rather luxurious about traveling by train on these old clonkers. They don’t move very quickly. The dragonflies were keeping up with us. They used to go faster on the Delhi to Hyderabad route but then there were a number of train crashes and so they slowed down. After lunch, the entire car retired from their legs-crossed position and lay down for a digesting nap. I spent hours standing in the open car door again. I actually got tan marks from standing there so long. The train ran right through central India. The rivers were bursting from recent rains, heavy and muddy. We passed through cotton plantations, teak forests, corn fields and bush. Heaps of open land. For a country that is so populated, there’s an awful lot of land. And buffalo. Huge water buffalo with blue horns. Left over from a festival last year.
I spent today with my family I met on the train. They invited me to their house on the outskirts of Hyderabad for lunch. It was so peaceful and beautiful. And their garden. Again! I can’t get over these gardens here. The vegetation in the south is very similar to that of Hawaii. Guavas and bananas and pineapples and orchids. After lunch we went for a walk in the open fields behind their house. The water buffaloes were rubbing their rears in the muddy water pools. And the birdies! Great cocoon looking nests hanging at the ends of the palm tree leaves, they’re two stories inside. The Mrs. Birdie lights the inside of her nest with glow worms.
After our walk we then lay down for a nap for a few hours. But of course, we talked, non-stop. On everything from whether Hilary stands a chance in NY to what tacky taste Clinton has in women to infanticide (I couldn’t help but notice when I was up in Mussorie that there was an abundance of eldest children who were sons amongst the Indian tourists) to what did Jay Leno look like as a baby to how Americans are conned into thinking that India is the place to come for spiritual enlightenment. We talked about the beggars at the street corners. How the women come up to you and just lightly dust your arm; all of them in the same way, ensuring that they have physical contact with you. And how usually, the begging is a racket run by a Mafia of sorts. And how tourists frequently give the money to the women thinking it’s actually going to them. When it’s not. It’s going to their Begger Pimp.
Yesterday, I spent the day with the family of some Bay Area friends of mine. Again, the hospitality here is just plain embarrassing. Vijaya’s brother, Mr. Rao, is the programme officer for the Department of Computer Education at SCERT (State Council of Education Research and Training )here in this state of Andhra Pradesh. Vijaya had called up her brother unbeknownst to me while we were sitting talking in the hotel and next thing I knew, I was whisked over to his office and presented to him smack bang in the middle of a departmental meeting. Along with his sister and two nieces. We sat down around the meeting table as if we were SUPPOSED to be there. And the meeting carried on. Mr. Rao took me around to meet all the programme officers of the various sections of education: things like Population Education, Non-formal Education, UNICEF, etc.
Computers are introduced to the kids at around age twelve in the state (US public) schools. And rather than just using the computers for computer education, equally important is for the computers to be integrated within all subjects. Now the state is developing their own software specific to this region to use in the classes because the software from the UK and States just wasn’t appropriate for the children: women in dresses isn’t cutting it with the kids here, women in saris fits in a bit better. Special curricula are developed for kids who rarely come to school. Kids who have no choice but to stay at home and work (prevention of child labor is very important to SCERT). SO, classes are held at reasonable times, times when it’s easier for them to get away from home. The courses are cram courses. Kids and parents both are educated on BIG issues like equality and sex. AIDS is specifically looked at. When I asked if AIDS was at all associated with homosexuality in the schools I was told that homosexuality "doesn’t really exist here."
Last week I went to the Doon School to look around their computer department. England’s answer to the Doon School is Eton. It’s the crème de la crème of private/prestigious of education in India. And it shows in their computer department. For sure.
I couldn’t believe it as I sat in on the 8th grade class of boys. They were learning PowerPoint via broadcast technology. They’ve already mastered Word and Excel. Lucky them.
The school’s Internet Society has 180 students out of a total of 450 boys. And 180 is the cut-off point—members join at the beginning of term on a first come/first serve basis. And each term a few kids are disappointed when they find out there’s no space left. Each member of the society is allowed three hours of surf time a week. Which is the maximum possible with the 24 computers that are currently online. There will be a number more, though, soon. Once the school moves away from using the telephone line to get access and onto ISDN. Do any of the kids have their own websites? Of course. Are porn and hacking Issues at this school? They’re something to be aware of; not something to lose sleep over. Channeling that inquisitive energy into something useful—eg. designing their own sites—is more important.
Reproduction of material from posthoc is prohibited without written permission.
Copyright 2001 Posthoc, Inc.