Far and away......

Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad, by Karen Isaksen Leonard

Review from Saty's desktop:
Karen Isaksen Leonard's 'Locating Home' is a brilliant, comparative study of the Hyderabadi diaspora across the world-- Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Quite evidently, Karen has spent a lot of time over painstaking research, fieldwork and conducting interviews. 'Locating Home' looks at Hyderabadi culture and institutions, transplanted in alien shores. She demonstrates how memories of old Hyderabad, in terms of cultural values and institutions still find a place in the lives of these expats, or get transmuted and even discarded, depending on several factors, which include generation, gender, social strata, and other associations with what used to be the state of Hyderabad. Interestingly, Karen's previous publications include a book on the Kayasth community. 'Locating Home' is a must read for Hyderabadis--be they a part of the diaspora or 'locals'.

Review @ Amazon:
“This is research on a grand scale. Karen Leonard questions prevailing notions of diaspora, transnationalism, and globalization not by adding yet another layer to the cake of theory on these topics, but by providing a rich, incredibly diverse engagement with Hyderabadis around the world. As a multisite ethnographer, Leonard practices what most anthropologists are content merely to preach.”—Andrew Shryock, University of Michigan

oh Hyderabad!

Hyderabad Blast, May 18, 2007

Added to the miseries of day to day living, we have amidst us a network of lunatics, committed to making life in this city even more difficult. The bomb blast at Mecca Masjid is a case in point. Friday marked another sad day in the annals of our beloved city. But, we need to pick ourselves up and get on with our lives and show the loony bunch and the rest of the world that bombs kill people--they cannot touch the spirit and soul of a city.
Moving on to other things, traffic continues to be as chaotic as ever in this crazy city of ours, with most roads leading nowhere, at the end of the day. If you want to be enlightened on the rules of the road--here's some advice you could do with.

See also:

Hyderabad in Mourning?

Friday Bomb Blast in Hyderabad – Amusing Incidents and Disturbing Aspects. by Ashish Naredi

Misdirected Hyderabad Bomb Blast Investigations, By Adv. Irfan Engineer, 31 May, 2007, Countercurrents.org

The changing metropolis

That Hyderabad is not what it used to be, is something not worth repeating any more. Besides, isn't that true of every other city? But the pace at which change has overtaken the twin cities, is something no one, least of all our MCH and other civic bodies, had anticipated. A large, consumerist middle-class, and huge swathes of migrants seem to have sprouted from nowhere--thanks mainly to the IT sector. In turn, a related chain of service businesses burgeoned and boomed, making the city look like a happening city--you simply need to visit one of the many high-end malls or local pubs to see what I mean. But, scratch the surface and what do you find? A city that is fast losing the green cover it had, obsolete sewerage systems, municipal authorities who couldn't care less about roads, streets, parks or parking spaces, and who would merrily look the other way if you happen to be a builder or a contractor, regardless of what you are doing. Be it traffic management, civic problems, mass transport--things that are of basic importance in everyday life, Hyderabad is far from a happening place. Somebody needs to remind our city's denizens and authorities that ' a few MNCs do not a metropolis make', no matter what the real estate prices may say.

One recalls the tree planting campaign taken up by the MCH (in Mr. Narendra Luther's time) during the Emergency years in the mid-seventies, when it was widely being perceived that the city's rising temperatures could be ascribed to the widespread of denudation of trees. Those saplings had grown into sturdy trees only to be chopped down mercilessly by the same civic body, over the last few years. Who says we evolve with time?

Hyderabad iz hot!

The heat is getting to the Hyderabadiz and they're running for cover. As temperatures rise, most roads that have been dug up stay that way--with workers becoming scarce during the day. The traffic snarls are at their worst and when all of the city decides to congregate on the necklace road or NTR Gardens in the evenings, you've had it. This also happens to be the wedding season and not infrequently the 'muhurtam' is somewhere close to the hottest point of the day--you can well imagine what a time the guests have!
With the SSC results out, parents are busy hunting for a seat in the 'right' place for the plus two kids, if you will.
For Hyderabadiz, May has always been the cruellest month and not April, (with due apologies to T.S.Eliot).

See also:

Rules for survivin hyd summer's
posted by Deepthi Tanikella at 11:24 AM on May 09, 2007
The heat is on...

See also:

Heat and Traffic

Hyderabadi roads

Hyderabad Live - Welcome to Another Streaming Hyderabadi Media

..Hyderabad Goes Online: Courtesy Sify
..Sify launches broadband portal for Hyderabad
..Sify launches website for Hyd
..More news and views @ Google

Sify.com has launched one more city broadband portal - http://www.hyderabadlive.in/. Hyderabad is the third city portal of Sify, which already has Mumbailive.in and bangalorelive.in. The content is mainly related to Telugu movies, music, the city’s hottest clubs, gossip, and so on in video. The company plans to launch more city portals. Next could be Delhi. [source]

Also bookmark our own Media Hyderabad Blog:

Heat and chaos = Hyderabad....lest we forget!

The heat's beginning to get us now, and who knows what lies ahead? Added to all this the 'inmates' of this city have to deal with (as one knows the rest of the country does) an apathetic bureaucracy reflected in a zillion little everyday things. One of the results of chaos or the complete absence of planning, if you will, is the denial of free, open spaces to children to cut loose. Where do kids in our metropolis play? In streets and lanes--when and where they can, that is--on the odd rooftop of an apartment cluster or in front of a tv set. In a sense, this is denying them childhood. As kids growing up in the sixties, we simply had to cycle beyond Mehdipatnam or Masab Tank (in days when there were a few buses and not many cars on the roads) to find large expanses of wilderness. There was simply no dearth of playgrounds--very often we had to choose between this place or that, where we could cut loose till the cows came home.

Cut to circa 2007 and what do we see--shrinking parks, shrivelled up lakes conveniently passed on to 'builders', and a bureacracy that has in sixty years of Independence only learnt to wink and nod.......

Oh beloved land--waah re watan-e-azeez!

SATY