The handicrafts village

The one regret I had from my trip to Hyderabad this weekend was not going to the handicrafts village early enough. For a variety of reasons we didn't home till noon-ish and that ended up affecting how long we got to spend there.

The place is called Shilparamam and it's right next to the HiTec City complex in Madhapur. (Insert observation about technology co-existing with culture and history, India is a curious mix of extremes etc) From what I saw, I thought the place was just about a bunch of stalls selling clothes, crafts, toys etc and at the end of the day I thought we did a decent job of covering the whole place. Only when I went home and talked to my dad did I realize that we barely saw half of what we could.

But what we saw quite wonderful. The stuff these stalls were selling was fun to browse, and they were even selling them at a discounted rate. Other than the stalls, we even got to watch a faux village. This village was modeled to demonstrate what a tribal village looked like. They had figures enacting daily activities like fetching water, worshiping a cow, making shoes etc. These figures thankfully were just short of falling into the uncanny valley.

At one stage we walked by this really tall figure of a man sitting on a giant chair. Only as we crossed the figure did we realize that this was a real person. My dad later told me the story behind this person. Apparently this guy is really poor and the govt. offered to pay him to stand in this area and let people take pictures with him. It's a very sad story and the guy looked morose standing over there. I didn't realize it when I saw him. And what's sadder is that I don't think he's allowed to take tips.

A bunch of mehendi applying girls were sitting in an area and my mom sat down to get some mehendi done. The mehendi artist was a muslim girl from Hyderabad. Now there is a stereotype of how Hyderabadi Muslim girls speak Telugu, and this girl totally fit that description. It was hilarious to watch someone speak Telugu in way that I'd only seen in movies!

At the end of the day, I was the proud owner of one of those printed cotton shirts with "Om" and other hindu mantras written all over them. Very tacky and very cool at the same time.

Some cool Pune pics

Institutional racism in India

Most of you know this but it keeps striking me as odd how there is a different pricing system for foreigners at most (if not all) national monuments. Entry for Indians - Rs. 5, for foreigners - Rs. 100. What's worse is, this comes down to racism. Because no one is checking for passports or anything. By rule, an American of Indian origin should be charged Rs. 100, but instead it's the White-, Black- and perhaps Asian-looking folks that are charged the Rs. 100.

And it's not even commented upon. I've seen atleast one incident where a foreigners walked upto a monuments and seeing the price tag, walked away. Now granted, a real tourist would pay because that's why he's there. But local non-Indians and semi-local ones, like for eg, the ones who work at my company, wouldn't bother entering these places because of this discrimination.

And that's the thing. It's not because the price tag is higher. But because they're using a double standard. Normally I'm take a lot of perverse pleasure in double standards, but this is just ridiculous.

View from a temple

Everyday as I go to work, I see this giant sign that says "Om Namah
Shivayah" (written in devanagri of course). I had wondered why it was
there but finally, about 10 days ago I checked it out. Turns out it's
the Tarakeshwara Temple. It sits on a small hill right next to the
busy Yerawada Bridge. I parked my scooter at the base and climbed up
the rather steep steps to the top, all the time wondering how people
managed to do any maintainance on that hill, seeing as it's so
inaccessible. I found out once I got to the top that there's a road
that leads right to the top of the hill :) Oh well, good exercise.
The view from the temple is just amazing. You get a great view of the
river and a bunch of buildings on either side. I decided this would be
a great place to shoot from early in the morning. I wanted to scout
the way to the hill first since I didn't want to be searching for it
and miss the sunrise. And that's how I got to meet another wonderful
Punekar.
Basically I got lost in some alleys and I stopped to get directions.
This guy was sitting on his scooter, talking to someone in a store.
When I asked him for directions he was dismayed that I was so very
lost. Then, instead of just giving me directions, he started up his
scooter and asked me to follow him. He only left after pointing out
how I could get the main road. Maybe he was going to leave anyway, but
he didn't have to do that.
(And yet I hear from these people who claim Punekars are rude and
annoying. Wrong!)

I never got around to visiting the temple during the daytime yet.
Partly laziness, but also the morning mist/fog these winter days is
too think to get good photographs of the sunrise. It provides for a
different type of look but I wanted a clear sunrise. Maybe I'll try it
anyway. But summer is when it should be fun to shoot.

My first hike in Pune: The snake

Ever since I saw those beautiful hills on my flight into Pune I've been wanting to hike on those hills. Sunday I finally managed it. I was woken up early by a bad stomachache and wondered if I'd still make it. But the good thing was that it helped me get an early start. Managed to leave by 7am.

The places is about 10 kms east of where I live; I found it by just looking at the contour map of my area on Google maps and seeing where a hilly region appears. I'm pretty proud of myself for my ingenuity in finding this place, and later, my ability to find the place from memory. Just took off on Sasha and drove and sure enough, the hills popped up right in front of me. The drive was beautiful, the city just waking up, the roads slightly misty, the roadside dhabas just opening up for business.

I managed to get close to the hill on Sasha and started climbing. I had my sweatshirt on since it was chilly. It was a nice climb and I enjoyed the view (photos coming up). I reached the first peak and was walking along the path when I saw a giant snake cross my path, about 5 meters ahead. I froze! This was the first time a snake was so close to me in terms of accesibility. I saw a few in parks in the US and in IIT in India but there wasn't a real chance of the snake coming close to me. This time I was utterly vulnerable. After about 3 mins of just standing there, I decided that if the snake was going to come back, I'll just fall back on my reliable back up - scream like a girl and run. But for now, I just kept going.

I'm glad I did since it was a beautiful hike. The hill was very interesting, had some interesting rock formations and some green formations on rocks that looked like copper oxide. (If anyone buys that hill after reading my blog, I want a share of the profits.) I got to watch a ballet between two birds which seemed to be dancing with each other.

Getting off the hill was a little trickier though. I fell about three times, which is three times more than what happened in my years of hiking. The pebbles were loose and the ground was very slippery. Finally I just decided to show the hill a lot of respect and took my time getting down by scrambling down on all fours. That took care of the falling.