July 17

We flew from Mumbai to Hyderabad on an Airbus plane.  It was an hour flight but a full morning process.  Hyderabad is flat, green and lush with lots of Reddish boulders, big boulders like you'd find in parts of Colorado.   Our director here is Meya out of the USIEF Chennai office and her assistant is Archita, a very fun young woman who was college educated in the United States.  

We had a terrific lunch at our hotel.  Then we went to Shilparamam which is an art, craft and cultural village.  It was okay.  There were some good photo ops and some fun things to look at.  It wasn't much different than what we see from street vendors and there was still quite a bit of pressure from the hawkers to buy.  I bought some bangles and a skirt for my daughter and spent about five dollars total.  info@shilparamam.org.org.  It was very rainy and in the upper seventies.  People in my group are freezing and I am happy about the weather and keeping it to myself.  Every roommate I've had likes the AC on very cold.  I have to sleep in my sweater.  

The evening was fantastic.  Four of us went to the home of an Indian Muslim joint family, the Parveens.  Other groups visited three other families.  We wore loose fitting clothes with full sleeves and a head scarf.  It is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month and we shared a meal with the family after the prayer call at dusk.  The prayers are sung from mosques over public address systems.  The adults in the family fast from dawn to dusk, so the meal is important and breaks the fast.  The meal is called Iftar and there is a lot of food and it is traditional.  We had this gelatinous lamb which had been cooked all day bones and all with wheat paste and spices, puri or fried bread, byrani, sometimes spelled birani, which is a chicken and rice casserole. There were more food items than I could count and we hadn't fasted all day so it was a bit of a psychological challenge to step up to the plate of abundant hospitality.

Our family was very proud to live in India, a secular state where all religions live together peacefully.  We hear this at every stop related to faith. The woman had been a Fulbright Scholar and head mistress of a local school.  We were not sure what her husband had done.  The son is a doctor and Merck Pharmaceutical company representative working in Saudi Arabia, but he and his family were home on vacation.  His wife is an emergency room doctor who lives separately from her husband and works in another city.  They hope to come back to live in India with his parents.  They had two cute and inquisitive little boys.  The family has one daughter living in the New Jersey, one in the UK, and one at home.  They are a highly educated and professional group. We made pleasant conversation and had a lovely time.  Some groups tackled controversial issues, but our group was at ease with learning about everyday living.  Both of the men in the family had. Even to Mecca many times, and the elder couple and the son had all been on the Hajj, holy pilgrimage, to Mecca twice.  India, like Turkey and maybe all Muslim countries uses a lottery system for the Hajj.  You have to have enough money to pay for the Hajj and also be selected in the lottery.  India has 500,000 places each year and Turkey had 100,000 places. 

We were whisked away before the final prayer call.  As we had yet another exciting taxi ride we noticed the town had come to life; music, bright neon lights, everybody out and  about.  Apparently that is how it is during Ramadan. People have fasted all day and prayed and they celebrate.  Dawn is about 4:20 a.m. And they want to eat again before that.  Maybe some stay up all night.