Banjara Hills

There's something intriguing about this part of town, the hills have been carved into roads and streets with beautiful bungalows and showrooms, but you take one left turn and you are in narrow lanes with near vertical drops lined by houses. Young boys in kurtas running down the lane with hands on each other's shoulders, women in burqas(always in groups and never alone) returning home with their children, men sitting outside their houses, bonding over something on the phone or sharing a conversation about the day gone by, and another left turn and you are going through probably the biggest graveyard you've ever seen, innumerable graves on both sides of the road with not even inches between them, and you think about how you're looking at more graves than people, and a thela with someone hawking something to eat and little lights on the cart just outside this graveyard. You think about the juxtaposition of life and death, how there's something beautiful about the acceptance and assimilation of the graveyard into the landscape. You think about the people, the children you saw, and wonder about their ancestors that are perhaps buried there, watching over them, and the living watching over the dead, co-existing with them in their dance of life. The next left turn takes to into an impossibly busy market. It's lit up and alive. You wonder what lives of children are like in this community. You notice that this whole area automatically registers as a community. You know nothing about them but you know that these are people who live intertwined lives - they create safety nets but also nooses, they live, love, laugh, fight, cry and die together. You dream of a community of your own some day - some place you'd finally belong.