cities within a city

Cities like Hyderabad and Delhi are made up of many cities. Delhi of the government circles, politicians, and socialites of one kind Moti bagh, Jor bagh , and all those roads which had English names(I don't know if they still have) . Then the Delhi of the rich other than the 1st category . Then, the Delhi of INA market, Sarojini nagar --the middle class..the Delhi of Patel nagar and Karol Bagh....children of the Partition...and then the Delhi of the slums. There are the little villages trapped int he midst of large colonies...like an insect in amber.....Jia Sarai , Munirka, Madangir, and one quaint village opposite NCERT campus whose name I cannot recall. Tehn there is the Delhi around Jama Masjid, the people living in the walls of the Redfort ( I mean literally inside the wide walls that surround the Red Fort)
The old Hyderabad the beautiful, but battered old city .. Charminar but more so the roads to Charminar, the majestic Asmangarh palace, now no longer visible from the road...the numerous deodis most of which have vanished...I dont know if they have been masked by blocks of flats or broken down. The glimpses into the courtyards of some of these minor deodis is fascinating as one walks past.
Teh Hyderabad of Banjara Hills...rich.. some old families with their beautiful language and some newly rich and obviously so.
The strongly Telugu Hyderabad, the more cosmopoliton Hyderabad. Here too teh old villages have been swallowed by the city......green fields , now a block of flats.
Then the lakes of Hyderabad...suddenly one sees a lake in the least expected place, but now hardly any left..all turned to blocks of flats...now Hyderabad is a block of blocks of flats.
Tehre is the army areas...peaceful cantonments(an oxymoron?) at two ends of the city..looking just like cantonments elsewhere inthe country. The old British built bungalows, and the new typical MES houses, the wide areas of scrubland.
As we reach the outskirts, the rocks! Noone can be failed to be impressed by the rocks of this area. Huge monoliths carved into impossible shapes ..the rocks of telengana are the most impressive.
Chennai as I know it is of two kinds......I think Madras and Chennai would probably sum it up. It's still Madras to me. For me, the old Madras was full of fun...walking to Santhome beach, eating masala dosai at India Coffee house. Madras is of coffee and long chats...Nowadays, I often come across multiple Chennai...
Bangalore, again, has this kind of multiple personality . Of course I lived there so many years ago, and I am told it is a different city now. As I remember it, there was the anglo Bangalore, and teh kannada Bangalore. The cantonment as in the Army was one thing. But the cantt, as in the people who live there, were the remanants of the Raj. The houses in Ulsoor had the same appearance as the old English ladies' houses in the Hill stations in the 1960s. Basavangudi was another kind of place....old world Kannadiga, while the "modern " areas (in those days) like Jayanagar were quite cosmopoliton. What was wonderful about Bangalore in the 1970s was the peace and quiet and the unhurried nature of everything ( of course that made it impossible to go anywhere punctually by the BTS buses). The masala dosais at NMH.
The Institute of World culture and the park next to it, so unhurried. The IISc campus was another world. The trees ( creaking scarily at night when you are just under them near the IPC) were (are??) lovely. In fact one Prof's daughter told me that her parents decided to stay on in the IISc just because the beautiful gulmohars were in bloom when they first came to the campus.