Hyderabad

What an astonishing spectacle. And a marathon too. 3-day weddings are becoming popular in the Western Hemisphere, but the Friday and Sunday is invariably a festival of under-seasoned canapés and lukewarm conversation. In India, it was no such thing. The room came with an instruction manual for how to dress, behave and where to arrive, for each stage of the 3-day wedding. It was critical to understand exactly where and when we should throw petals at the groom; get it wrong and the results could be tragic. The wedding ceremony itself was so complex that they opened up a buffet mid-way through and most of the congregation didn’t watch the critical final act - the battle of the rings (or something like that). This was a test-match wedding. It wasn't about minute by minute action, it was about the event in the round. And it was magical.

I had to take this photo covertly. For reasons not explained, cameras themselves were banned from this restored former colonial palace. iPhones were encouraged, although it was mandatory to pay the ‘social media photo fee’. You read that right. Doesn’t it make you feel that everything is fucked? The principal courtyard of this fine establishment included two sets of corridors to nowhere. They were corridors for the sake of corridors. I suppose there is something to appreciate about the pointless extravagance of the thing. I puzzled how Foxtons might attempt to market such a feature and I’d encourage you to do the same, unless you have literally anything else to do.

The resort where the wedding took place was a site of pure industriousness. At any given time there were 3 concurrent weddings taking place, each utilising the wide array of sub-venues. It was thrilling, as a guest, to see work begin on a new zone. Was it for me? This one happened not to be, but as it was being constructed outside of my bedroom window I was transfixed by this gentleman. All around me this colossal ribboned gazebo was being constructed, but to look at each individual assembler was to wonder quite how that was possible. They each seemed completely relaxed and, in a sense, disinterested. I’ll probably never know the answer, but I suspect it goes some way to explaining India’s colossal economic growth in the last two decades.

You can’t relax in crowds, which puts off some people. The other way of looking at it is you are hyper-focused and that means you see everything. All of the colours. All of the extraordinary details. India is a great place to concentrate on what is around you. If you don’t, you might miss the mango lassi being thrown in anger at the less impressive pickpocket.

In India, I was the centre of a spectacle I couldn’t understand. From all directions I attracted interest, and not the kind that makes you feel warm and fuzzy in the ego. In the space of ten minutes, three children were deposited onto my person against my will. Then the photos began. You try and say no, you try and brush it off and it’s then that a darker side is revealed. The spooky persistence of a second shadow, following you around old monuments. You become Madonna. So to Madonna I say this: “sorry about all that.”

Hyderabad is a hard place to recommend as a tourist spot. For starters, it contains one of the largest natural lakes in the world that just so happens to also be the drop off point for the faecal output of four million Hyderabadis. Head to Trip Advisor to experience the moment plenty of tourists found this out for the first time, long after they could recuperate the cost of the visit. It is also quite literally enormous and therefore hard to navigate without a willingness to spend hours in the kind of air pollution Greta has (to be fair to her) repeatedly warned us about. But if you do make it, I hope you will enjoy the quite resplendent shabbiness of the many extraordinary buildings and monuments. I think the building above used to be a hospital and is long since abandoned. The Brighton Pavilion charges you £36 per person to see a roughly similar building.