A great weekend in Hyderabad

Friday

Last weekend was my favorite weekend in India thus far. Tim, Bob, Morgan and I flew to Hyderabad Friday morning and I knew I was going to enjoy the weekend the minute I stepped outside the Hyderabad airport. I mostly felt this way because it was much cooler there, maybe 84 or so, but also because we would be with Morgan’s friend and mom for the weekend. Morgan knows the friend we visited, Palak, from her sorority back at MSU and invited us a few months ago to the city she’s lived in most of her life.

Palak and Palak’s mom came to pick us up from the airport and we drove directly to where we would be staying which was on the same flat as Palak’s home. I really enjoyed the view and sitting on the covered balcony. Palak then had to go to a friend’s birthday so her mom then took us around the city for a bit. We first went to a lake in the city and tried different Indian sweets. I had a jumbo flavored Indian ice cream thing on a stick that had pistachios on it and it was really good. Morgan and Palak’s mom had something like a compressed snow cone on a stick with flavored syrup on it and is native to Bombay where Palak’s mom grew up.

View from the guest house

Jumbo ice cream

Stand where I got my ice cream

Side note: we didn’t really know what to call Palak’s mom because they rarely use their last name so we couldn’t call here Mrs. Sabanini and we thought maybe to call her ma’am but we weren’t sure. If we knew her better we could have called her auntie but all in all we weren’t sure. So that’s why I’m referring to her as Palak’s mom.

Anyway, we later took a boat on the lake which took us to a giant Buddha statue where we stayed at for about ten minutes to take pictures, which of course involved having Indians ask to have their picture taken with us, and we went back on the boat. Soon enough we went back home, stopped at a grocery store on the way, and then had some delicious biryani with a curd thing and another sauce thing I didn’t catch the name of. Hyderabad is known for their biryani so this was a really nice treat.

We later ended the night by sitting on the balcony and asked Palak’s mom about Indian culture a bit. One lengthy conversation we had was about marriages in India. First we talked about how they’re costly for the bride’s family because they need a few sarees and lots of jewelry. Then we talked about dowries and arranged marriages and the boys were confused by the phrase “love marriage” oppose to an arranged marriage. They were especially confused that sometimes a bride’s family will have to keep paying the groom and their family beyond the initial dowry payment if they groom’s family wants more money and stuff. For example, they can say that they want a new car because that’s what the family needs and may demand the wife’s family to pay for it. If they don’t the family may kill the wife. Tim was mostly confused that the husband wouldn’t stand up to his family if they were making unreasonable demands on the wife’s family mostly because he would probably also want the thing they’re requesting. All in all it’s an easy way to get money and despite it being illegal, so agreements are never in writing, they still exist and always will.

Luckily for Palak’s mom, the families of Palak’s mom and dad didn’t believe in dowries because of the awful things they’ve seen happen to wives. For example, I’ve seen it on an Oprah episode before and Palak’s mom confirmed that wives are often burnt in the kitchen with a “kitchen fire” as the cause of death because it is untraceable as to who or how it was done.

I guess it was kind of difficult for Palak’s mom and dad to get married though because her dad was born into a lower caste than her mom. Normally, you can only marry into your own caste but some exceptions are sometimes made. With this, we also talked about how surnames work in India and found out that often your caste is listed as your last name along with your family name…I think, I could have gotten that wrong. But I just found it interesting how your last name directly labeled you as your level in society and also Palak’s mom was saying how she could easily know the region of India a person was from based on their last names. I asked her about the last names of a few of my friends from Canton and she was able to tell me from which state of India they were from for all of them.

Saturday

The next day we had breakfast made but the guest house we stayed at and then waited for Palak’s mom to get out of school from teaching. School goes Monday through Saturday but Saturdays are half days. We then went to Palak’s family’s restaurant which I expected to be an average place but it certainly was not. It was beautiful on the inside with lots of green areas and I guess politicians would show up their frequently. It was also wonderful because Palak and Palak’s mom ordered a ton of delicious food such as a delicious fruit punch smoothie, four or so appetizers, and four dishes for the meal. Each item was shared by all because that’s how ordering meals usually works here. Everything was absolutely delicious and by far my favorite meal here so far.

 

 

After lunch we drove out to the small-ish resort that Palak's dad is building that will be open later this year. It was pretty cool and was also nice for Palak and her mom because it was the first time they saw it since last year.

Later, we went to a place to buy more authentic Indian stuff and I got a lot of stuff, maybe too much…we’ll see when I have to pack up in a few weeks. But of course we had to barter but it was quite handy to have Palak’s mom there because for many of our items she would barter for us in the local language.

The saree I got made with the border I bought

Handmade art work and the swastik that means peace

Scarves made in a way special to the state Hyderabad's in

Dresses

Pillow cases

tapestries

After our shopping we had some fresh juice, saw a kind of cheesey performance thing and then left to go back to our place. On the way though we had to stop at KFC for some dinner and I had some better than expected popcorn chicken. It’s interesting though because at some restaurants, mostly fast food, they hire deaf people and they will place the menu on the counter for you to point to and then show how many you want with the number of fingers you hold up. I think this is significant in India because rights for disabled people have been a slow process.

We then freshened up and went to a club at a hotel where an Indian MTV DJ was playing that Pallak insisted on going to. The boys didn’t think to bring pants though and we were first denied because the guys were wearing shorts. So we quickly drove to a nearby store to buy pants as fast as possible and we were laughing the whole time because of the situation.

Eventually we got in and when we were waiting for the elevator we saw the DJ also waiting, got our pictures with them and Tim told him how they bought pants just to see him. The DJ was confused at first thinking they had no pants to begin with but then found out they were just wearing shorts. Soon after we were at the club and heard the DJ announce the story how American guys bought pants to be there and we got the attention of a few people at the club. Overall the club was cool, very crowded but had kind of incompetent bar tenders. All in all though we had a good night.

Sunday

Palak’s mom made us some tomato rice before we went to Golconda Castle which was really cool. It was a giant castle and took a while to climb up but was a beautiful view of the city all along the way. It had a lot of Muslim architecture because Hyderabad use to be controlled by Muslims for a long time which I really enjoyed and it was also weird to think about what it must’ve been like when the castle was actually occupied by the king.

Morgan’s phone didn’t have any memory when we got there because she takes a million pictures and I wasn’t in the mood to take pictures that day so I let her use my phone to take as many pictures as her heart desired. That’s why I’m in many of the pictures shown if you’re wondering. It was especially weird though once we got to the top a lot of people were asking us to take their pictures with us as if we were the tourist attraction there. Once we took the MSU flag out to take pictures with, probably 25 people immediately came to us and started taking pictures of us. We decided MSU should probably pay us for how much publicity we gave them. But we were running behind schedule and had to deny a bunch of people from taking a picture with us because we had to get going.

Next we went to Charminar where there were some shops and then the actual Charminar structure. We first had to stop at a saree shop where Palak’s mom gets a lot of sarees custom made and I was fascinated by how they were made. In the downstairs part they had block stamps of various designs and they even let Morgan and I make one stamp on a saree. Upstairs they did screen printing where they spread paint across a screen to make the design. This was a two man job and it was amazing how they had a set up that lined up perfectly throughout the 6 meter saree

I decided to get a saree made for myself and chose a basic pattern for most of the saree and an intricate peacock design for the 2 meter pallu part. Later I went to a different shop to choose the border I wanted to add to it which I still have to get done by a tailor in Chennai.

 

 

 

My saree

After the saree thing, we went to Charminar for a bit and then Morgan and Tim got some tea as gifts. Going to Charminar and Golconda Palace kind of sucked for foreigners because we had to pay 100 Rupees but Indians only had to pay 5.

Later we went to a restaurant for some dosas, stopped at a bakery to try local sweets, and then went to a mall. Then it was time to go to the airport and get home to Chennai.

All in all I had a really nice weekend and wish I could have stayed longer in Hyderabad. I really enjoyed the Muslim feel to it, probably because it reminded me of Turkey, but also because it was cleaner, had some nice art throughout the city, and overall had a better feel than Chennai. I’m now really looking forward to going to Bangalore next weekend and the weekend after I’ll leave for New Delhi to be there for a week and see North India.