Hyderabad Supplanted

A visitor happened to be in my living room on my recent visit to the city of my birth. In the conversation that ensued he mentioned that at a new real estate development in his city, after the land was leveled and apartments were built, non-native trees were planted for the purpose of landscaping and beautification. The birds of the neighborhood stopped perching on the trees that did not belong. I cannot confirm whether this is true, but this much I can see. Once my backyard used to be noisy with sparrows. Now you would be hard pressed to find even a single one anywhere in the city. No one can explain with certainty, what happened to them.

This is a perfect allegory for what is happening in urban India, where cities have been spreading at an alarming rate, under the pretext of an economic boom. 

In the pursuit of massive development and impressive growth, India seems to have forgotten or has laid to waste all that makes it precious. It feels like urban India is being supplanted much like the rejected trees.

Every time I return, I am appalled at the rate at which cities are expanding and the clamoring that is only intensifying. The destiny of Hyderabad began to transform when American tech companies decided to set up shop to serve their growing need for cheap labor. From Microsoft and Accenture to Amazon and Google, today have massive office complexes stretching across the new parts of the city, which were once green and rocky. Areas that were once considered distant and rural are now prime land and have been so for a while. A network of highways and tollbooths, help transport people to these mega buildings at all hours of the day and night causing traffic jams at unearthly hours. More and more ancient rocks and native trees are torn down to make room for residential towers and mansions, to house the people serving America. The city I once knew is no longer the city of today. I often feel lost and disoriented at times, as a result.

Those who are benefiting from this massive expansion and growth see no problem in how its being done. Its business as usual for many and from the chauffeur to the CEO, all want in on the money to be made from land deals.

There is also money to be made in the service sector up and down the chain. IKEA opened its only outlet in Hyderabad to serve this burgeoning market. Hoards lined up to get in the door the day it opened bringing traffic to a grinding halt. High-end furnishing, bathroom, gadgetry and appliance stores have all opened showrooms to cater to the desires of the upwardly mobile. While driving down a congested and clogged inner road, I saw a Ferrari trying to stay unscratched. Schools with fancy western names advertise on huge hoardings, offering air-conditioned class rooms and courses in French, while keeping a dose of Indian just to feel rooted. Today there is nothing money cannot buy in India, and therefore a hybrid nation is being supplanted driven by unabashed consumerism.

Probably many of my friends reading this would say, there he goes criticizing our happiness, while he lives in New York enjoying the very amenities we crave. What a hypocrite. I have now lived as many years in Brooklyn, as I did in India as a young man. I often wonder, if I had never left would I be seeing all of this from a different lens? Would I be a part of this system that devours without pause?

Since India liberalized its economy and opened the floodgates to foreign investment, allowing the tech revolution sweeping the globe to take root, many have transformed their lives. And this is a commendable feat. Many have risen out of poverty just for being able to speak English and acquire some basic software skills. Many of my peers have seen tremendous success in their professional lives. Some like me have gotten an education abroad and have become CEOs of companies. Others stayed pouncing on the opportunities growth and liberalization offered and built empires and have enjoyed a lifestyle which when I was growing up was a distant dream and still is, even in the west.

There is no question the growth India has seen over a mere two decades has been meteoric. But it has come at a great cost, a tremendous environmental reckoning.

On this visit I happened to have dinner with a Member of the State Legislative Assembly. A powerful man, he had been a successful politician for almost two decades and in many ways had overseen the expansion of the city. He told me that in a few years Hyderabad would become a world-class city. I could not fathom what he meant by that.

After a great deal of pain to the public and endless delays, Hyderabad  launched its overhead rail system connecting large sections of the city with affordable public transport. But the traffic congestion below only seems to had gotten worse. Many more shiny five star hotels had opened since my last visit. The airport was under expansion and countless office buildings and apartment blocks were on the rise along the outskirts of the city. But better air quality and the stability of potable water supply was still far from being certain for many.

India is a vast and diverse country. At more than a billion strong and growing, it stresses on all its resources by its sheer size. It is commendable though that despite these challenges it keeps growing and setting lofty goals for its people. While it has allowed people to amass wealth to buy a Ferrari it often fails to provide the basic necessities of life for many. The Prime Minister launched a cleanliness and personal hygiene campaign called “Swach Bharat” (clean India), which seems to be on everyone’s lips and mind from its effective messaging. How successful it is in realty in changing habits and social behavior, is yet to be seen in any concrete terms. Many NGOs fill in where the government fails, doing commendable work. Many of them feel under attack these days for accepting foreign funding.

When one arrives in any part of urban India, things seem chaotic. The urban landscape is ugly, the streets are congested, the air is dusty and dense, the sheer numbers of its people are in your face the moment you enter its streets. If you are not from here it could be overwhelming and exciting at the same time. But behind all that chaos, things do work. People are helpful, and the hospitality you get is unsurpassed. The cultural creativity and ingenuity of its people is extraordinary.

The politician said to me in blatant terms “In India, you have respect, only if you have money”. Often how people treat you is measured by how much money you carry in your wallet and how you look. Indians are insidiously obsessed with fair skin. Overwhelmingly Indian cinema, television and advertising cast people with fair skin, while most Indians are of darker complexion. Casual comment about one's complexion without much thought is common social behavior. Other refined forms of racism still run deep.

I was in Hyderabad this time to screen my film “Salam”. After screening it at almost twenty cities around the world I was eager to share it with the people of my city. The Hyderabad Film Club graciously invited me to host the screening. And then a bomb went off in Kashmir killing almost fifty soldiers. A terrorist from across the border claimed responsibility. The nation went into a jingoistic frenzy calling for blood. Bollywood immediately responded by banning Pakistani artists from being part of their fraternity. And since my film is about a Pakistani scientist, and the word “Pakistan” had suddenly become more potent than it normally is, fearing a possible mob attack, the screening was cancelled.

I was dejected and disappointed. The decision was made without a review of my film. For a nation and a city that wants to be world-class, from my perspective, it was a sad day. A nation can only be world-class, when it can have total unhindered freedom of speech, with out fear. Many disturbing events over the past few years have shown, that India is far from reaching that status. Films and artists are routinely harassed and censored. Journalists have been killed. And this notion that “you are with us or against us” is peddled as a statement for patriotism and religious nationalism.

My film exposes how Pakistan had come to become infected by militancy, bigotry and religious intolerance. From my perspective it was the perfect film to show at a time when people's loyalties to their motherland were being called into question based on their religion. But unfortunately my city failed me by showing that it was not bigger and better than its proclaimed “enemy state”.

The great American writer and thinker James Baldwin famously said “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” I love the city of my birth and the land that still inhabits my dreams, and therefore I choose to criticize it with pride. From a vantage point of being both an outsider and an insider I can see it for what it is and what it is becoming. 

While I pine for the city of my youth, which is long gone, I am acutely aware it is an unreasonable expectation to aspire. I know there is still beauty left in the city. There are lakes and rocks that can still be saved and salvaged. There is exquisite beauty in its ancient monuments that need to be preserved for future generations. The sunsets over Tank Bund are still breathtaking. 

Even though climate change will wreak havoc, with hotter summers, droughts and aquifer depletion, the need for clean air and water outside of a plastic bottle is a basic human right. And if that cannot be awarded to every citizen with certainty, rich or poor, then India would have failed miserably and Hyderabad can never be a world-class city, no matter the wealth it is able to generate.

  
It is what it is.