Day Four

For breakfast, we had parathas, which is bread filled with chilies and onions. With it were idlis, which of course were fantastic. At about 1030 we went down and had Prasad take us to Hyderabad University, which is where my mom is teaching this winter. When we entered the gates and drove through the university I began to realize how different this university is from Madras Christian College. They are both top universities in India, but the University of Hyderabad is VERY spread out. From where my mom is to the center of campus, it is a mile to mile and a half. This is why lots and lots of students have bikes. My mom was bringing in a speaker that I did not really want to listen to, so Will and I decided we would just walk around the University while the speaker was there. The walk ended up being VERY long because of how spread out everything was. Eventually we saw our driver, Prasad, getting some shade under a tree. I said hey to him and asked him which direction we should go (it was a four-way intersection) and he told us to go to our right, because that was towards the center of campus. We walked down the road and didn’t see much, so we decided to take a dirt trail that led into the fields and woods of the university. About 100 feet into the trail, we heard something ruffling in the trees and shrubbery to our right. I thought that it might be a snake or something but Will and I looked closer and were shocked to see that it was a wild peacock! I think that the peacock saw us because it darted into even more shrubbery until it was out of sight. Will and I were just getting over seeing the peacock when we saw it fly into the air and even further away from us. The peacock flying was absolutely amazing. It was one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen. On the back of the peacock was this long, green thing that looked like a curtain. I tried to take a picture but I decided to just enjoy the moment instead. After seeing the peacock, we finished our worthwhile walk by walking all the way back to the building where my mom was. After the speaker was done (she was an Indian film director), we went out to lunch at the students’ dorm. I got my lunch and sat down with Will (my mom was sitting at another table with faculty) and about ten minutes later a guy named Sammy came and sat with us. I was later told that he is known as the “eager beaver.” He sat down and asked us all these questions and we asked him questions and we had a long conversation. He seemed like he knew a lot about India, and he also didn’t seem to remember that I am half Indian and don’t need to be told all of these things. Anyways, he was a really nice guy who seemed to be popular around the dorm. One of my mom’s students, Lucia, came and sat down next to us as well. She seemed super nice and VERY smart. She talked to us for a while about India until it was time for my mom’s class. Will and I sat in on her class, which was about myths having to do with the Taj Mahal. It was really cool to see my mom teach, because I had never done that before. After my mom’s class, we (Will, my mom, and I) went to an outdoor market called Shilparamum. Shilparamum has a bunch of stalls that people come in and use to sell things like shawls, crafts, and other trinkets. It was quite the experience because almost every stall every stall we walked past, a person ran out and tried to sell us whatever they were selling. There was this once guy (I call him striped shirt guy because he was wearing a striped shirt) who came out and asked us if we wanted to by some fabric and he wouldn’t stop bargaining so we said we’d come back and maybe buy it. He said that he’d wait for us and I hoped that we would never see him again. Well, eventually we went in a circle, and we DID see him again. He caught sight of us and tried to come up to us but we pretended we didn’t see him and ignored him (because we really didn’t want to buy his fabric). He started following us around but eventually we were able to escape him once again. We bought a couple tops and then went back to the apartment. We relaxed a little and then went out to a restaurant called Fusion 9 with my cousin. The décor of Fusion 9 was nice, but about ten minutes into our dinner, this loud, booming music started to play. It would’ve been at least bearable if it was good music, but it was atrocious. It was stuff like LMFAO, Beyoncé, and Snoop Dogg remixes that just didn’t sound good. If you ignored the music, the food was good. I had beef for the first time since coming to India, which was fantastic. After dinner, we went back home to get some sleep before my birthday tomorrow.
Stalls at Shilparamum:

Door to my mom's classroom:

Part of the rural area at the University of Hyderabad: