Tuesday February 7 - Hyderabad

LA strikes me as being a city where no matter where you’re going it takes 45 minutes to get there.  In Hyderabad it’s more like 1 hour.  I don’t know how any business gets done in this city because you can’t go anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.  Someone told me that the silicon valley part of Hyderabad is located in an entirely new suburb far away from this congested mess.  That’s the only reasonable explanation for how such an important center could thrive here – separate itself from the madness.

Today was all about waiting in traffic and being led around by more “lead cars”.  I learned that one benefit of wearing a sari, or burkha for that matter, is that you have plenty of fabric to hold over your nose and mouth to screen out exhaust as you sit in idling traffic.  To think that for a good number of the vehicles on the road there is a corresponding lead vehicle.  What a crazy and non-functional system.

In the morning we visited the Golkonda Fort, a very important site built by Quli Qutb Shah in the 1500s.  At the time Hyderabad was a famous and prosperous center for all sorts of trade including pearls and precious stones such as diamonds.  It is said that the Koh-i-noor diamond, now in the crown of the Queen of England, was looted from this fort by a conquering army in 1656.  Cliff and I climbed many stairs to the top of the fort and investigated the ruin of a mosque and two interesting Hindu temples made by carving cave-like spaces into massive boulders. 

Next to the Qutb Shahi tombs where numerous Mughal rulers are buried.  The Qutb Shahis were of Turkoman origin and you can certainly see this influence in the architecture.  These tombs in particular reminded me very much of monuments seen in Central Asia.

Lakuma then took us for a special treat; lunch at a popular local place called “Chutney”.  We ate a feast of 10 or so different dishes, all of which were new to me and I think to others too.  We ate off banana leaves with our fingers of course.  There were many types of bread:  dhosa stuffed with mushroom and another with potatoes, Indian pizza, naan…  Delicious veg dishes with cauliflower and chickpeas.  Everything was wonderful.  We learned that Indians eat their food very rapidly and I found myself eating so fast that I hardly had time to savor the taste of what I was eating.  I prefer the slower method but I understand the tradition of not wanting your food to get cold.

This lunch didn’t take place until 4pm so when time came for dinner we decided to skip it tonight.  Cliff and Lakuma went off to work on the iPad.  Cathy, Ferris and I went to the lovely terrace overlooking the city and enjoyed a special performance of Qawwali music.  It was my first exposure to this gorgeous and rhythmic sound.  Qawwali is a particular style of Sufi music from the Indian subcontinent.  The lyrics of the songs they sing give thanks to god.  Five men dressed in white knelt on a rug singing, playing instruments and clapping hands.  The songs seemed to go faster and faster until finally building to a thrilling crescendo.  Chills go up my spine when I think about how beautiful this music was.  I am going to order music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan right away!

Copied from Nat Geo Music:

Qawwali music is a Sufi tradition that is completely unique to the Indian subcontinent. But with its heartbeatlike pulse, vocal fireworks and message of universal love and peace, this style has found devoted fans all across the globe—and not just among those who profess Sufi or even more broadly Muslim beliefs.

While qawwali is thought to have its roots with the legendary composer and poet Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), it seems clear that the music also has links to the Hindu tradition of bhajan devotional singing. Even so, qawwali is the vehicle through which the Sufi tradition of mehfil-e-sama, or "assembly for listening," is expressed, where believers create a link to religious ecstasy and to God for the performer and listener alike.

The men—and it is always men—who perform qawwali can do so in a group of any size, though there is always a lead singer, one or two secondary vocalists who also play the harmonium instrument, at least one percussionist and a chorus of singers who also clap rhythmically. The tradition is passed down within families, and qawwali lyrics are often sung in Farsi (Persian), Braj Bhasha (a medieval dialect of Hindi), Punjabi or Urdu. Many of the songs are attributed to Khusrau or to other Sufi composer-poets like Baba Bulleh Shah, and the poems the qawwals sing very often resonate on two levels: many of the poems describe longing and love that superficially resemble love between two humans but that Sufis understand to be the yearning a seeker has for the divine.

The artist who did more than any other to bring qawwali to a global audience was the great Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who died in 1997; other performers' recordings to seek out include those of the Sabri Brothers and the duo Mehr and Sher Ali.
—Anastasia Tsioulcas