Sunday, January 25th, Hyderabad

By now, some of you in the reading audience might have seen the sleeper hit from last year, "Slumdog Millionaire." This movie is not your typical "Hindi" film, with vacuous characters who have nothing to do but dance, sing, and die unexpectedly to remove an inconvenient love triangle. "Slumdog" is highly original; however, the reason I refer to it is because of some rather nasty elements it purports to represent regarding the impoverished in Mumbai (Bombay). Specifically, the movie shows how some orphaned children are "adopted" by less-than-altruistic types seeking profit. Such children are encouraged to steal, beg, sing, play music, and run errands. Babies are carried by other children and are encouraged to cry via thistle pressed into the skin underneath the blanket. The movie demonstrates how children with excellent singing voices are intentionally blinded, assumedly to increase the "pity" potential as well making it difficult for the waifs to escape.

Well, I haven't seen any blinded singing children, but I have seen an alarming number of beggars who are amputees. These poor souls, along with their less deformed kin, await passersby at many of the more busy intersections, tapping shoulders, side-mirrors, and windows repeatedly if one is not cajoled into letting loose a few coins immediately. After discussing this finding with many Hyderabadis, some have admitted that intentional amputation is probably exactly what is happening. Begging children, complete with crying babies, are also in abundance. Tourists beware--these children will save their most pitiful wails for you.

A friend of my wife from childhood dropped in, along with her nephew, as she had recently flown in from Dubai. She accompanied us and my wife's parents to a nearby marvel of architecture: Golconda fort. Built in the 12th century A.D., this citadel housed kings of various ethnicities and creeds until the Mughal emperor Aurangazeb ended its reign of prosperity in the late 17th century. Golconda Fort once controlled great diamond mines, for many years the only such mine on the planet. Upon reaching one of the main courtyards, we were treated to a spectacle of light and sound, nearly an hour in length, which gave a beginner's history of the fort to those present. The majesty of the place at its height was dimly imagined with the aid of the presentation.

Finally, one bit I neglected to mention in the narrative, if you'll pardon the fragmented chronicity, is kites. Actually, hundreds of kites, kite-flyers, kite-wars, and kite-deaths are what I'd like to describe for you. Along the way to the fort, the driver diverted us to a road which ran alongside one of Hyderabad's larger lakes, and above a great public park. Above us, the air swarmed with kites from literally hundreds of people. This is no ordinary hobby which the Indian people have curiously turned into an obession--this is kite-flying with lethal connatations, at least for the kites. These kites are specially-made with combat--yes, combat--in mind, bearing razor-sharp forward edges. The aim of the game is being first to sever your opponent's kite-strings, loosing his weapon permanently into the wild blue yonder. The evidence for many severed strings litters the landscape, as one may find a felled kite in perhaps two out of every ten trees in the city.