We arrived in Hyderabad late at night in the pollution-fuelled mist customary in cities in the winter in India. A faded memory of a bustling market, a giant arched gateway and tombs prompted me to ask the reticent driver–who spoke no English–in my halting Urdu to drive us to the hotel through the old city. He warned it would be a longer drive as it was Eid-Milan-un-Nabi, marking the birthday of the Holy Prophet of Islam.
We were unprepared for an utterly surreal entrance to the city. It was so densely illuminated from above–in canopies of fairy lights, neon colours flaring on mosques, tombs and pillars–that the sky seemed bathed in an impressionist painter's dream strokes of iridescent pinks, purples, gold. The Mecca Masjid was lit in green and purple, its tall pillars and arches reflected in pools of water.
Wordless, wide-eyed on the road leading to the tall arched gateway to the city, we felt our taxi was in the midst of a tornado of people, surrounded by a thick chain of uniformed armed security. Our car inched past the roar of thousands: streets upon streets of processions, banners, floats depicting holy places of Islam, exuberant boys dancing, roaring past in groups waving flags.
We turned down our glass to feel the atmosphere when my husband–who is a true true cool Trini (the last earthquake in Trinidad barely got a reaction out of him)–yelped and ducked, making the driver swerve. Someone had flung something at him. Hard. He thought it was a missile. It was a packet of water.
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