Beggars' Banquet, Tamil Mass, and Babu

I really wasn’t expecting this much excitement. I didn’t include it in the last post, because of the topics of immediate importance (read: Bum Showers), but during our outing yesterday, we came across one good reason NOT to have traffic lights in Hyderabad – beggars. Here is the beggar carrying an infant around who had been incessantly tapping on our window until she determined we weren’t going to give in and immediately turned around to the car next to us and began tapping on their window. While I didn’t take a photo, we were accosted by a one-handed beggar outside of the Food World, right after we had been accosted by a marketing rep for a skin lightener product who was handing out free samples to Food World patrons who spent a certain amount of money. Like Deb NEEDS a skin lightener! I mean, we could see her when they turned the lights off during a Carlsbad Cavern tour we went on in New Mexico years ago.
We have been advised by locals and expats to buy cookies to take with us when we are out and about as the beggars won’t refuse anything you offer and are therefore obliged to go once you have given them something. These would be great rules for telemarketers as well.
Deb suggested and rightly so that all Christian churches look alike to other religions and could we distinguish between one Hindu temple and another along our drive route or could we tell a Sunni from a Shia or Sufi mosque? This morning we got our 4:45am wake-up call to get ready for our ride to church. We thought we had identified an English mass at 6am at a church (St. Mary’s) in Secunderabad, but when our driver took us to a Methodist church, saying “they have English at 6am”, we opted for the Tamil mass at St Mary’s even though information in the hotel’s brochure said English at 6. OK, the photo of St. Mary's is a stock photo from their website. Come on! It was 6am and pouring rain when we got there. The big Pieta in the courtyard was pretty impressive. The mass really wasn’t pure Tamil. It’s like Tagalog in the Philippines is spoken as “Taglish” which is a mix of English and Tagalog, this was “Tamlish”. The priest’s homily wove in and out of Tamil so you had to listen very closely to catch when he would start making a point in English with his very heavy accent and when he was speaking (and gesticulating) in Tamil. He was making a point which ironically I heard on Friday evening at an expat event. A social worker on Friday observed that any caste higher than a Dalit looks down on the castes below them with some degree of disdain. The priest suggested that one cannot say they are devout in their faith if they do not look out for those less fortunate then themselves, so live the faith through Christian love sic (agape). Interestingly the “sign of peace” (which is a handshake most everywhere), is akin to the Hindu and Buddhist greeting of a slight bow with hands pressed prayerfully together. Kind of like the integration of the Christmas tree and Easter egg.
But the REAL excitement, heralded by a letter from the Novotel management under our door early this morning was that there would be celebrities at the Convention Center and to expect throngs of fans between 10 am and 4 pm today. When we were arriving back from mass, there were people already queuing up outside the security gate. Who, you might ask, would that celebrity be? Why would they be in Hyderabad on a Sunday morning? Well, it was none other than A. R. Rahmon! Wait, YOU don’t recognize him? He’s a dual Oscar winner in 2008! Best musical score for a movie and best theme song. OK, not many people saw Slumdog Millionaire, but this is THE guy. And his fans were here, numbering in the thousands, for the unveiling of a new CD compilation from his latest film starring a local acting legend, S. Ramesh Babu. Babu has been acting for 28 years. He was doing Bollywood films before it was known as Bollywood. He is an action film guy, the Indian version of Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo movies.
Rahmon was in the hotel at a VIP suite. We were told his location by the hotel manager and concierge. We’re well-enough known by the hotel staff that we get some of the inside scoop on what’s happening. They also know we have been taken twice: once for a 450 Rs bottle of Evian water at our first dinner and 2000 Rs for the ride to church this morning. I actually thought the ride was well worth the money as our driver gave us a choice of churches, he drove us around the Hussain Sagar and through part of downtown Hyderabad (but not the old city), giving us virtually unintelligible running commentary like most guides on the NYC Gray Line tours.
But it appears that the crowds were sated by their celebrities' appearances as they go marching back to Hyderabad and all points around.

And so we will disperse as well for today.