This is Hyderabad. Towering minarets and the IT invasion.
And there you have India's cell phone providers. The Airtel ringtone resounds with about as much familiarity as the car horns, both Airtel and idea! have Bollywood star advertising programs, Hutch is now vodaphone; and Tata just made the first car in India available for the cost of a motorcycle.
Yes, yes; Airtel and Urdu.
Here be a view of Hyderabad's historical gem, the Charminar (that's four towers), as seen from an anonymous Islamic monument across the street that didn't charge 100 rupees to enter. Or anything, for that matter.
The inside of the Charminar, as snagged from outside the wall. Entry: that's Indians, 5; foreigners, 100.
So it turns out Hyderabad was the Muslim city I needed to go to to temporarily satiate my desire to travel to Pakistan, though my approach of wearing a pink burkha has started to lose its jest. The burkhas here are one step down from those with thatched eye covering, made of a material much like this:
Yes, when that time comes I'll tote the headscarf and drop the scoop neck boasting the sunburn.
Which is what I was wearing when this friendly little fellow helped me select a nice pair of thatched leather slides after some sister-fucker twisted my nipple just outside the Muslim quarter. This time (twice in two weeks, c'mon now); I turned around and called him, in Hindi, the aforementioned profane term.
To wrap up: while Hyderabad's prosperous southern IT neighbour Bangalore has recently reverted to the pre-colonial name Bengaluru, it still colloquially prefers the "lore" ending. And though Hyderabad's metropolitan malls in the "Banjara Hills" would probably prefer "lore", or really, "more" as a suffix;
...it's sticking to an ending indicative of its Islamic heritage. See also: Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Faisalabad, and, yes: Islamabad.
My crowning achievement was starting a fad of adults for swings.
Hot shit, yar.
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