Nizamabad

So I have a friend from Evansville who is from India. He went to school in the US and works as an engineer in E'ville. He hadn't been back to India in almost three years and invited me to come meet him and his family in south India, so I just got back from Nizamabad and Hyderabad.

I stayed in Nizamabad for about three days..getting there was interesting. Originally I was going to meet Kapil in Hyderabad which is a big city. Well there are only a couple of trains going from Ahmedabad to Hyderabad, and Indian trains book up very very fast. The only thing saving me is that most trains have a foreign tourist quota, so there are a few seats saved, and if you show your passport at the booking office, you can get a ticket.

I quickly realized how spoiled I was in Ahmedabad. Several times a day in Nizamabad, they have power cuts, and sometimes they don't have running water. The temperature is from 100 - 110 degrees now; with a fan it is somewhat bearable. When you are trying to sleep and the power is cut and you are in a hot little room with no power to run the fan.... well, that's pretty miserable.

It was Kapil's birthday, so he had a party at his parents' house for a bunch of his relatives in Nizamabad. In India, the birthday boy or girl is expected to treat all of his or her friends. Actually usually they take their friends to dinner or something like that, so it is kind of the reverse of our birthdays. First, all the men sat on the floor and had their dinner, and then the ladies sat and ate.

Now, not too many people spoke English, and Kapil's mom only knew a few words. But she was really excited about dressing me up in a sari for the party. So I felt pretty much like a giant! ha. She tried to put her sari blouse on me, and these things are ultra fitted. Even on some slim women you might have to pry it off. On me, well I couldn't get it up over my fat arm! So she had me put on one of my blouses and rolled it up at the bottom. She and an aunt put some jewelry on me and drew a bindi on my forehead. Somehow they managed to squeeze her bangles over my big hands (breaking one glass bangle in the process). My hair was wet, so they insisted on combing out the part and that i leave it down...that didn't last long! In the end they said I looked beautiful and looked just like an indian...(several people in different situations have commented that I look just like their relative, that my skin color is just like them...I have yet to see any Indian as blindly white as me...hahaha)

Anyway, it was fun. The next day Kapil's mom showed me a scrapbook of the work her NGO did, teaching poorer women to make handicrafts to sell - jute bags and things and gave me some of the bags. She wanted so much for me to understand, and even when Kapil wasn't around she just continued talking to me in Telegu as if I understood. Mostly I just had to smile and nod, hahha. But we ended up playing this game Carobs which was a lot of fun; it's a little like pool without the cue sticks. His mom and I were partners, and with her little bit of english she kept telling me 'soft touch, soft touch' or that the shot was 'compulsory.'

Oh and Indians will not take no for an answer when they offer you food. No matter if you've already consumed an entire pot of rice and a whole chicken, I think they still would try to get you to eat more!