Who Can Really Say?

My time here is short. Two days from now I'll be standing on a line in the Hyderabad Airport waiting for a ticket, watching someone rifle through my luggage, or sitting in what passes for a seat until my flight is called. The new airport is scheduled to open in a year or so and it won't happen soon enough.

I scrolled through my pictures to see what's left to post. I don't want to repeat myself but if popular demand compels, I have plenty of shots of those funny little yellow taxis with unfinished buildings in the background draped in bright blue tarps.

I've pretty much carried my camera wherever I go on the theory that a) you can't take a picture if you don't have a camera with you and b) hefting darn near 5 pounds of camera all day long will tone my biceps. Which led me to these two shots in the hotel lobby while waiting for travel companions to join me for dinner. The first is -- well, the lobby.

There are wide, round, shallow brass(?) bowls on the lobby floor near the front desk, filled with water, flower petals floating on the surface, each with three candles glowing. I don't know if they're simply decorative or if they signify something particular. But they are pretty.

Which led to wandering outdoors, and this picture of the fountain in the middle of the lake.

More wandering outdoors later.

Last year I posted a number of shots of tent cities where the deeply poor live. We're driving the same route to the office each day as we did back then and I have to say that there are fewer of them along the way today than there were last year. Which is not to suggest that there are fewer deeply poor people in Hyderabad -- only that they've moved, or been moved, to somewhere else. Here are two shots of what we do see each day.

On the other hand, we also drive through one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Hyderabad, called Jubilee Hills. This house is as ostentatious in its own way as anything. It's poured concrete which, I'd think, is hardly an aesthetic value (unless that's how the owner made the money to build it I suppose) but the key bit is this: it's built so high on a hill that you can only access the house via the rather obvious elevator shaft.

And then, one night after dinner I wandered out onto the hotel grounds to find something new to shoot. Here's what I found.