Saturday

Saturday was fairly boring. We had nothing that we needed to do, but Vindya gets antsy if we stay in the room too long, so I got a car and we wandered around and did errands. Shakir had told us about a store called "Q-Mart," which he said stocked a wide variety of foreign foods and other goods. This took some finding (the driver ended up calling Ganesh about it) but we did track it down. It was interesting. They had a whole section of Corelle ware, and I have only seen people eat from metal bowls and plates. (My experience, of course, is definitive.) They did have a lot of American food, much of which is useless to me without cooking facilities. We got some yogurt and bite sized Snickers, and Ritz crackers to go with the cheese we had picked up already.

I was looking for some other stuff, and at some point, I was told to try Abbots. I told this to the driver, who set off. He stopped in the middle of a busy street, and after some back and forth, it turned out that Abbots is not a store, but a neighborhood of medium to expensive stores. It was packed, so I just got out of the car (leaving Vindya with the driver) and walked. Afterwards, I found the car again, and the driver had somehow managed to find a place to wedge the car against the curb. Leaving involved backing blind into traffic, which didn't thrill me. I was thinking about offering to take Vindya and stand on the sidewalk until he got out, but then one of the passers by jumped into the fray. He walked into traffic and waved people around (no one stopped; they just swerved into the next lane, honking to let everyone know). He signaled our driver to back up by drumming his fingers on the rear window, and to stop by slapping it with his palm. This, with a few additional gestures to indicate straight or turning, got us back into the road. I was just thinking that this was unusually death defying behavior from a total stranger, when he stuck his hand in the window and demanded to be paid. I asked the driver how much, and he recommended 10 rupees. I figure he was risking life and limb, so I happily gave him the equivalent of a quarter.

Otherwise, we went back to Beyond Coffee, where Vindya loves the ice cream and I love to eavesdrop on people speaking American English. It was actually a pretty low key day. I was reminded of David Sedaris in "Me Talk Pretty One Day," where when he gets worn down by Parisians refusing to communicate because of his bad French, he goes shopping for outrageously expensive clutter. The salesclerks in really high end places always understand him perfectly and make him feel like he is as fluent in French as he is in English. While I wasn't contemplating a fountain pen made from semi-precious stone, with a gold nib, I definitely got better treatment in stores than elsewhere.

The only other major thing we did was track down the Lutheran church. I had an address (sort of, Indian addresses tend to be vague general ideas, rather than specific locations) from the ELCA website, but I had driven around the vicinity with an auto rickshaw driver, and between his lack of English and my cluelessness about where we were going, I didn't find it. The actual driver stopped and asked a few people, and they were able to send him down an alley between a gas station and what looked like an abandoned factory where we found the church.

There was a wedding going on. I know this, because there was a 20' tall photograph of the bride and groom with the caption "Angel and Phillip's Wedding Is Here!" and a large arrow pointing to a courtyard with "Evangelical Lutheran Church of Andhra Pradesh" written over it. The courtyard was covered with marquees, and on one side there was an outdoor kitchen where ladies were cooking platters of food. People were lining up for plates, or sitting down eating, or standing in line. This led to a stage at one end of the yard, where the bride and groom were standing. Everyone got to the front of the line and had a picture taken with the two of them. This was going on the entire time I was there, and didn't seem to be ending. There were several hundred people crowded into a fairly small courtyard, all talking at once.

Vindya, of course, wanted to make a beeline for the kitchen, but I wouldn't let her. I started asking around for the pastor, which got me sent hither and yon, until I was directed to a building at the back of the yard which turned out to be the parsonage. We knocked, and the pastor and his wife let us in. His English was limited, but he gave me a business card with the correct phone number, and told me that the English service was at 8am, not 8pm as on the website. (And yes, I e-mailed the ELCA webmaster with corrected information.) His younger son, Martin, was home. He is in the 12th class, studying commerce. He was wearing a t-shirt that said "Franklin Roosevelt," which amused me a bit. His English was by far the best, and he asked a lot of questions. The pastor insisted that we should live with them in a spare room. This is the largest Lutheran congregation in Hyderabad, about 5000 people. There are 20 pastors, of whom he was the chief. I didn't know what else to say, but luckily his wife appeared with food. Vindya was thrilled. It was a very salty dish of greens and mutton, served cold with rice. They also gave us a bottle of water, which was needed because of the salt. It was good, and Vindya had a nice chat with the wife in the kitchen about how good it was, and probably ate more. We finally took our leave, armed with the business card and my having been there so that I felt confident we would be able to find it in the morning. As we were leaving, Angel and Phillip were still being photographed, and the line didn't seem any shorter. I have a feeling that they didn't get much to eat at their own wedding.