Eyeless near the L.V.Prasad hospital
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:54pm
Here is a poem I wrote a year ago on the poor villagers sleeping on the footpath opposite the L.V.Prasad hospital waiting for the eye surgery :
On the footpath outside the L.V.Prasad
Eye Hospital ,Hyderabad
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They came in hordes from verdant fields
And fresh cowdung-smelling mud-huts
Through miles of mud-tracks lined with ketaki bushes
And long arduous bullock-cart journeys
Their upturned moustaches smelt of fresh buttermilk
The contours of their vacuous eyes had traces of
Viscous rheum and hot salty lugubrious tears .
The big bad city harboured luminous hopes .
The doctor garu's skilled scalpel carved
Strange phosphorescent worlds for the eyeless
Unknown to the opaqueness of their tired old eyes.
These ancient men with weather-worn faces braved
The biting cold of December outside the hospital .
The idlis they served on the footpath
Were soft and belly-friendly
The vendor women served up
Hot steaming puris ,urban puris
Strangely delicious ,topped with
Sticky hot onion-potato curry
Dusky women in cheap pochampalli sarees
Waited impatiently for their men
Surely green eye-patches, when finally removed,
Will open up exciting new worlds.
****************
Current Mood: Happy
Current Music: classical
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Asias biggest sewer
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:45pm
Some time ago we stopped at the Asia's biggest and filthiest sewer in Chikadpally trying to get the shoes repaired by a roadside cobbler. The smell was overpowering and trying to move away we walked backwards for some time .There was no consolation .A few yards away we found our own driver blissfully easing himself on the parapet wall .There was no option other than to stand near the Marathi cobbler boy who was doing our repair.
Current Mood: Bored
Current Music: pop
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Pani, Pani !
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:39pm
I have often wondered why such a vast body of water as the Hussain Sagar is not put to use to quench the thirsts of the Hyderabad citizens.Water shortages are endemic here.The city's population has grown to around 6 million and the drinking water available is just not adequate .It seems that a lot of private tanker owners make a quick buck by supplying bore water at exorbitant rates and depleting the subterranean water resources.
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: classical
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The Hyderabad heritage
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:36pm
One thing that puzzles me is how the Moslems of Hyderabad have retained Urdu as their mothertongue despite being surrounded by Telugu-speaking areas .In this respect it would appear that people of this area have been maintaining their connections with the Moslems of North India .This linguistic and cultural insulation may have been achieved due to the dominance of Moslems as rulers .
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: classical
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The Hyderabad houses
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:31pm
Unlike in Gujarat cities the houses here have a fine finish ,especially the exteriors. In Gujarat there is emphasis on functionality rather than on beauty of form .The houses tend to look drab especially on the outside .Even within the houses the furnishing is very sparse with hardly much storing space except possibly on the lofts. The standard two-bedroom affair is so drab and uninspiring .Of course the Gujaratis spend less on achieving a good finish
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: classical
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Mornings
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:27pm
The day starts for us at 5a.m. with birds of several hues chirping on the trees in the neighbourhood.A gentle breeze blows in our direction over the Banjara rockscape. As the day wore on the sky became sharper and more luminiscent against tiny specks of eagles in flight. The neem tree has already shed its floral fragrance and assumed the heaviness of tiny succulent sweet-bitter fruits. The deep green of the tamarind in the neighbourhood comforted the computer-weary eyes
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: classical
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The Hyderabad houses
jagannath rao adukur | 27 June 2004, 11:15pm
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: classical
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The art of making toilets, also known as loos
jagannath rao adukur | 11 June 2004, 7:08am
In some of the government undertakings I have noticed separate toilets for gents , ladies , and officers. Apparently officers are sexless.In India the nomenclature for a loo is 'toilet' which is a more direct way of referring to the pissplace.The American 'washroom' is much more prudish .In India we dont shy away from calling a toilet a toilet. A toilet is a very public place in many government offices where choicest gossip is exchanged between two pissing gentlemen .In one of the nationalized banks the entire male staff have gone on a wildcat strike to protest against newly built toilets with pisspots built so high that it was quite a feat to reach ones pissstream to the pot without dirtying oneself.Apparently the toilets have not been designed taking into account the average height of an Indian male!
Current Mood: Embarrassed
Current Music: popular
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Beauty Queens in High Finance
jagannath rao adukur | 11 June 2004, 6:21am
When a high-street banker speaks of a beauty queen he does not mean the 34-24-36 variety who dazzles international crowds by her oomph and gets her sponsors millons of dollars worth of business.In the world of high finance a beauty queen would simply mean : A good buy in bonds or other investments which combines within itself an excellent investment rating and an attractive coupon. In other words an ideal pick available in the market for the investor.In real life such investments do not exist just as beauty queens are rare in the workaday world
Current Mood: Happy
Current Music: classical
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Beauty Queens
jagannath rao adukur | 11 June 2004, 6:18am
A Chinese gentleman once asked me why so many Beauty Queens come from India these days. We had a series of them - a Miss.World , a Miss.Universe and so many other sundry titles.I told him that the westerners would have become fed up of white-skinned Miss.Worlds and would have decided to go in for a brown-skinned one for a change. In that case why not a yellow-skinned one , a Chinese Miss.World ? I really dont know .Why not is my instant response. In the same vein one could ask why not a black-skinned beauty ? .The fact is that most of these organizers have their own notions about what constitutes female beauty .Their contests therefore tend to be coloured by Western cultural biases. The real reason why the West seems to be turning to India for beauty queens is not because their notions of female beauty have undergone a dramatic change ,but merely because commercially it makes a lot of sense to have an indian Miss.World endorse a product to the vast marketplace of India the potential of which has only recently been realized by the global corporates.
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: Chinese
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Haircuts in High Finance
jagannath rao adukur | 11 June 2004, 6:11am
In the rarefied heights of high finance one hears of haircuts.Post-asian crisis , most of the big-ticket lenders had to accept massive haircuts. In the heydays of the Asian boom who would have expected Daewoo to propose massive haircuts to international lenders? In India we call these outside-the-court settlements.The last five years or so the Indian bankers would have sacrificed huge amounts by way of these settlements .The old-timers in the banks try to block these settlements because they are ,in principle,against any dilution of the credit culture.But who cares .These things are happening without their involvement.It is to be seen what kind of an impact these settlements have ,in the long term , on the liquidity of the banks.
Current Mood: Bad Hair Day
Current Music: classical
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Haircuts
jagannath rao adukur | 11 June 2004, 6:04am
Talking of haircuts the cheapest cuts in Hong Kong are upwards of 50 Honkies ,the swankier ones charging as much as 300 Honkies . In India the less upmarket saloons charge as little as Rs.30 .The shop in the corner of our street in Hyderabad charges just that much .The only thing is that the place is not airconditioned and does not have reasonable amount of furniture .The good thing is that it does not take much time to wait for your turn . What comes free in most of the hair cutting places is the endless chatter of the barber.The barber insists on knowing everything about you .He also gives you the latest news of the happenings in the city laced with racy comments.In Hong Kong I noticed that the Chinese barber was equally loquacious .Luckily when he sees an Indian customer he clams up because he cant speak English. There is something about these barbers ,all over the world, which binds them as a community .That is their chatter.
Current Mood: Bad Hair Day
Current Music: Carnatic
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Navel-gazing near the Nagarjuna hills
jagannath rao adukur | 10 June 2004, 10:53pm
A very prominent billboard stands near the nagarjuna hills displaying the rather attractive navel of a pretty model . The hoarding has been put up by the Deccan Chronicle to proclaim the broad reach of the newspaper or something like that .The girl makes no bones about where it all reaches ! As if to proclaim the transience of physical beauty the tall poles supporting the hoarding have sprung up from the Panjagutta cremation grounds .
Current Mood: Happy Indeed!
Current Music: popular
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