Namaste!

First of all, I am in Hyderabad now, staying with my dad’s family before my cousin’s wedding in the end of November. I will be here for another week and a half, and then I will be traveling with my sister through the south or west of India (we are thinking to visit Goa this time around). Vicente is still traveling in Colombia, and we are heading home right before Christmas.

Being home in Chicago was nice, though short, and we were running around trying to take care of a bunch of things before heading off to India (my parents, sister (already in India), and sister’s friend came here, too). One day I went downtown to the Indian Consulate to get my visa and then just walked around the city, heading down to the Art Institute of Chicago and then back up the lake to a coffee shop before picking up the passports. Another day my dad and I cooked an Ecuadorian birthday dinner for my mom, complete with plantain soup and ceviche (it’s similar to sushi, but the fish is cooked by marination in a whole lot of lemon/lime juice, tomato, raw red onion, and a bit of ketchup). Muy rico! Later in the week I unpacked, washed, and repacked my stuff. I hate packing.

The plane to India stopped in Frankfurt ( 6 am), but there was not enough time to leave the airport, so I just paced up and down the terminal, trying to get a tiny bit of exercise before sitting for another 8 hours. I arrived at 1:30 in the morning, and was greeted by my auntie, her daughter, and her daughter’s husband. In India, greeting people at the airport is a much more important custom, so it would have been out of the question for me to take a taxi to their house or any other such arrangement. When my parents and cousin came 2 days later (it was my parents’ first time in over 25 years), we had over 15 people at the airport to greet them. At 1:30 in the morning!! Craziness.

Hyderabad is a bustling, rapidly developing, over-stimulating city, and something as simple as crossing the street can be a real adventure (generally you wait a while, can cross halfway, dodge a few cars, cross a bit more, and then run quickly when there’s a slight gap in traffic). The city has a really interesting history, which I am still trying to piece together. It in Andhra Pradesh, in the south, but has an amost 50-50 ratio of Hindus-Muslims. The old part of the city, which houses the famous Charminar (char=4 minar= minarets, see pic below) landmark, is largely Muslim and a lot more historical. Around the site is a colorful and crazy bangle bazaar, which we visited again to pick up some bangles for the wedding. My mom was immediately accosted by a million people asking for money (not a good time to be a tall woman), and had a hard time trying to fend them off.



The newer part, where my family lives, is chock full of tall glass buildings, malls, businesses, auto rickshaws (small yellow “cabs”), concrete, construction, the occasional water buffalo, flower stands, and way too many people trying to get around. Before my parents came, Akira and Anjuli and I did a few things on our own, making it to a Yoga and Ayurvedic Health Conference near the lake, buying tubing for more hula hoops, and walking around a bit in the border between new and old city. There we went past a fruit market where we discovered custard apples, a green artichoke-like fruit that is so sweet and delicious. The health conference was interesting, especially a display for the digital traditional knowledge library being made about traditional ayurvedic knowledge (funded by the Indian government and science foundations) in order to hopefully stem biopiracy in the face of recent attempts to patent such integral products as tumeric and basmati rice. Also, the library would be available to practitioners and patients via the internet. It is not complete, but there is supposedly a working model that I have yet to check out. There are also many interesting steps being taken by the Indian government to regulate what would be called “alternative medicine” in the US. Practitioner registration, regulated coursework, and more standardization of herbal medicine are being legislated by the government. It will be interesting to see how this works.

Yesterday, my parents, sister (Anj), her friend (Ak), and my cousins and I went to a party at the bride’s house. Her family is so sweet and laid back, which is nice to see. It is easy to be stressed with all of the wedding preparations (they have been preparing for over 2 months straight) but everyone was relatively calm last night. We are trying to maintain a balance between all of the family events and having a tiny bit of free time for ourselves (and not exploding from all the food). This is more difficult than it seems, both in terms of the food and the free time. Hopefully, there will be pics soon…