New Year’s Eve we went to Chinnanna/Pinni’s home nearby in Hyderabad, where we played party games, like musical hat with the loser doing something embarrassing in front of the group. We made up a countdown around midnight and stayed up a few more hours having a good time.
Goodbye 2006, welcome 2007 as they say here. It was interesting to be here during New Year’s because the newspapers use this time to summarize the past year and look forward to the future. In boom-time India, this was especially fascinating. As we mentioned in a previous blog, the media here is impressive, but though they can be quite critical of the country and its institutions, around New Year’s they were openly nationalistic and proud. And man, are they confident. One paper, Times of India, has a whole campaign called “India Poised – Our Time is Now”.
The editorialists of this and other papers basically laud the explosive growth of the country (annual GDP growth hitting 9%) and urge more, though most do mention the serious problems in rural India (<2% growth in agriculture with crop failures and thousands of farmer suicides) and in the infrastructure (clogged roads, spotty quality of higher education, dwindling water reserves, insufficient power generation). They highlight, though, the remarkable achievement of Indian business, which is an eye-opener for us. Not only is India an IT export services power, but its native companies are venturing abroad with surprising success and taking over giants in the West. One columnist boldly predicts that it’s just a matter of time before GM, Intel, and Microsoft are subsidiaries of Indian companies!Though that prediction might be a bit exuberant, with such a potentially bright future investment here is raging and real estate is going nuts. Property in Hyderabad in appreciating as fast as 10% per week! It might be a bubble, but so many Indians have become millionaires (in U.S. dollars, not just rupees) in the last three years just by owning a couple plots of land, it’s mind-boggling. In the meantime the divide between rich and poor is growing alarmingly as most people aren’t even getting crumbs from this pie – that’s plainly obvious just walking around city streets and neighborhoods.Moreover, Indians nearly universally bemoan the escalating corruption and greed that is eating away at basic values and social contracts – for example a chief minister (i.e. governor of the state) was recently charged with simply selling government land for personal profit, land that had been allocated to house the poor. As effective as capitalism is for wealth creation, it’s sad to see how unfair and corrupting it can be.
Back to us - we stayed in Hyderabad for another 11 days before going to the villages again. We won’t bore you with the usual play-by-play, just samplers this time. Our days involved waking up in our family’s apartment whenever, having cereal for breakfast - it’s hard to have real Indian food for 3 meals a day, as the intensity of it begs for a break, kind of like this amazing country itself does at times. We often visited Banana/Chinatthayya’s house for lunch, and Thathayya/Nannama (see previous emails for explanations of names) were staying there too so we saw them quite a bit. Always had good veggie food, talked some Indian politics, current affairs, etc. We went to Salar Jung, the city’s major museum, where you get a taste of local culture and history in umpteen sections ranging from miniature paintings to colorful textiles spanning centuries. We saw the State Art Gallery, a beautiful new building that has been mysteriously incomplete for quite some time but there were a couple nice exhibits open anyway. We entertained ourselves at places like Touch, a swanky nightclub, and Prasads movie theater where we watched the Hindi movie Dhoom 2. Both were quite fun, but man do Indians like their volume turned waaaay up! At the movie we had to use tissue paper to plug our ears and even then the noise level was just tolerable.
Most nights Mom cooked her usual wonderful curries and pullao (flavored/spiced rice) which we’d eat at home before going out for ice cream – Hyderabad warms my heart by embracing ice cream perhaps more than any city I’ve ever seen, with Baskin Robbins (Kia, the mint chip tastes exactly like it does in U.S.) or a local joint on almost every block. One night Vikram (Madh’s cousin) and I went to a cool café, where had some tea and smoked apple tobacco from a water pipe (reminding me of Cairo last year) while spotting a budding Telegu movie star - Hyderabad produces more movies than does Bombay! We bowled and played miniature golf on other nights, and somehow even these experiences included a distinctly Indian twist – no time to explain here.
Throw in a little shopping and visiting family friends and relatives, and you have 11 days in Hyderabad. Definitely a relaxing, lazy, and fun time. India continued to amaze. Once again, it was off to the villages for Sankranthi!
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