Shavua tov

Shabbat Shalom

Big country

For anyone paying way too close attention, today's explosion in India is about a 14 hour drive north of my current location. Relative to Washington, I think that would be the equivalent of a bombing in the arctic circle. Everything here is fine.

Roadkill

Walking across a street in downtown Hyderabad is the closest I will ever come to running with the bulls in Pamplona, except the bulls are quieter.

The driving methodology here is summed up as
1) Pound horn.
2) Pound accelerator.
3) Pound brake.
4) Repeat.

The street crossing strategy is
1) Cross.*
  * wherever, whenever and at whichever speed you like paying no attention to the traffic moving around you like a river around a rock.

Also cars, auto rickshaws, and mopeds stream around buses and trucks like they were stationary objects.
The only consolation is that the roads are so congested that none of these mildly guided missiles can pick up much speed.

Awkward secession

Apparently the government that I came here to work for seceded yesterday. Should make for a productive trip...

Good Morning Hyderabad

Home Sweet Home

Appreciate the courtesy, but...

Right now my driver is responding to every question with "sir", without specifying whether that means yes or no.

Not in Kansas anymore

On the way from the airport to the hotel, I've passed multiple roadside shrines with statues of gods festooned with Christmas lights. It's 6 AM and there are people praying there.

Horrifyingly familiar

The muzak in the Hyderabad airport baggage claim area was Lady Gaga "Born This Way" and Bette Midler "Wind Beneath My Wings". Apparently our number one export is Adult Contemporary.

The air conditioning in the multi faith room in Heathrow airport is not functioning

En route to Hyderabad with a layover in Heathrow, I arrived with enough time to daven Shacharit. Whereas typically in the US I have no compunction about laying tefilin in an airport (or airplane for that matter), I'm attempting to respond to my wife's initiative to practice discretion on this trip. Good advice, but by no means my default setting. Fortunately, Heathrow is a beautiful, modern airport with excellent signage, so I quickly found my way to the "multi-faith room". (I made the bold assumption that it was also open to those observing only one faith.)

The room was a modest, cozy 8x10 space with no iconography whatsoever, a large rack of prayer mats, and a small side room for negelvasser/wudu (take your pick). It was already in use by a family whose young son was clearly worn out either from a long flight or a vigorous prayer session and had passed out in his prayer mat, reminiscent of so many in-shul shluffs that my kids have taken over the years. The father finished his zuhr before I finished my shacharit, so I didn't get to make conversation, but I'm reasonably certain it was the closest proximity either of us had prayed with either of the other's co-religionists.

(It occurred to me that I never see Muslims praying with siddurim.  I've been davening for years, and I still couldn't make it through psukei d'zimrah without the full text before me. Are the salat simple and repetitive, or just well drilled? A concession to a 40-60% literacy rate?)

That said, the subject of the post is accurate. Hopefully the beit medrash in Hyderabad has a fan.