Hyderabadis be the Hobbits of the Earth

One ______ to rule them all

One ______ to find them

One ______ to bring them all

And in the _______ bind them

Replace the ______ with any of the following:

1. Degh (cooking utensil used to satisfy the hunger of 18 regular people or 8 regular Hyderabadis)
2. Biryani
3. Chabutra (a localized ‘spot’ that acts as the local watering hole for social gatherings or typical sausage fests)
4. Hotel (read cafeteria/place that serves Biryani or Chai)
5. Ground (read play ground / replaceable with an empty swath of land that has few undulations and supports a good few hours of cricket)

Now, replace the _______ with

1. Dawat (official global celebrations like weddings / iftar parties)
2. Ghar ki dawat (more or less private parties like housewarming, eid dinners, aqeeqa, chhilla, graduation parties, etc.)
3. LP
4. Time pass
5. Competition

You will have a pretty good idea how similar we are to the folks of the Middle Earth. Don’t think kingdoms, maidens, battles, marshes, trolls, spiders, orcs or the likes. Think the Shire or Hibbiton. I’ve said this previously and I will say it again, we love our food and we love our comforts. This effectually makes us hobbits (not discounting the fact that we are very hairy people). Granted that we don’t walk around barefoot but give us a nice little garden (Public Garden / Lumbini Park / Seven tombs / etc.) and you will see us gladly walk barefoot. Plus many of us do like our smoke, especially after a nice meal. Our days are usually calculated around meals and yes, akin to hobbits, we do have several breakfasts / lunches / dinners if we can help it. We may be constrained financially at times but we always have place in our hearts, stomachs and budgets for food. This is not just feeding ourselves but anybody who cares to join us, we are popular for our mehman nawazi after all.

Hyderabadiyo ke dil aur pet mei bohot jagah hai

Hyderabadis are large of both heart and apetites

Games of Cricket..

Hobbits may have invented the game of Golf, but we have over time invented, developed and refined the game of cricket. Much like the gaming consoles of today like Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, tablets, smartphones, etc. (which by the way have destroyed our kids’ childhoods) we designed the game of cricket to be playable anytime and anywhere (we cannot take the full credit for this however and must share it with all Indians). This game is playable anywhere from the great expanse of playing fields (or as we call it Play Ground) to the very limited confines of the classrooms. We have the likes of book cricket, galli cricket and actual cricket. There may be many more variations that I wouldn’t know about it since I stopped playing ever since I got an internet connection at home (I am looking at you Orkut, Rediff and Apniisp). The rules vary too depending on where the game is being played (whose house is being used as the playground), who owns the equipment, which ball is being used (rubber/tennis/glazed), time of day (no cheering at night, not that that rule has ever worked), etc. I think I shall dedicate a whole other page to our cricket, it just smacks with entrepreneurship and brilliance! That reminds me, I do have to write about the other games we had growing up.

Back to the topic at hand.

Food..

I feel like I didn’t talk about food enough, That’s so funny! We never have our fill of discussing foods. Biryani is all you may have heard of if you did not have the good fortune to meet a Hyderabadi. We got tonnes of stuff! Haleem, Baghara khana, Dalcha, Mirchi ka saalan, Baghare baigan, Khichdi, Gosht ka salan, Chicken 65, Phalli gosht ka salan, etc. It will take me no less than a few pages to list all that I have eaten, let alone all that we specialize in. Look them all up and try them at home yourself, if done right you will instantly experience genuine love, I guarantee (research on your allergies though as there’s tonnes of stuff that goes into making any of these). Kudos to our women and men (yes Hyderabadi men can cook too, actually most of the cooks at our weddings are men). The day typically begins with a light breakfast of tea and biscuits or toast or bread. I like to call this the interim breakfast, everybody knows in Hyderabad that this is just to keep you quiet until the main breakfast (or the primary nashta as my dad likes to call it) has been prepared. We would be breathing down the cook’s neck otherwise, usually ammi jaans. We just need to be fed soon as we have awakened and that doesn’t necessarily mean awakened in the morning. Be it an afternoon nap, an evening nap or a mid-night nap, we must have something to eat. People need to get their throats wet when they wake up from sleep, we just need our stomach filled. Period. You may enjoy the midnight snack, we enjoy the midnight meal, which is why you may notice that food is generally not packed into refrigerators as much as it is left covered on the table or the kitchen. If you have read the books you will know enough to know that we are hobbits when it comes to food.

Aaraam talbi..

That phrase has no better translation in the English language than ‘desire for comforts’. We will go to great lengths to ensure that we are comfortable, its not just comfort that we crave but luxury. We will do all we can to build a life of luxury, it doesn’t have to be extravagant, just good enough for us to be able to say that we have the best possible comforts for our limits. There are plenty of couches and beds. Pillows of every shape, size and quality will find their way into our homes and we will usually have a permutation of these to ensure that we have the right level of comfort. Anything short of that is unacceptable. We cannot just sit with our backs straight, we must be leaning into something. Forget sitting, even while standing we will lean against the nearest wall, door, door frame or person.

We are playfully lazy, sometimes more than acceptable. Procrastination runs in our veins. Simple tasks will be put off for a later time for no apparent reason. We will not prepare our clothes for work the next day unless it is the next day. Loads of moodiness coupled with a laid back attitude makes us seem lethargic. Our punctuality, or rather impunctuality (if I can create and use the word) is legendary. Anybody who has dealt with a Hyderabadi will know that time is of no consequence to us. If we say that we will meet you at such and such o’clock you have till such and such o’clock plus an hour or two to get there. We just cannot be there on time. If we say things like “I’ll be there in 10 minutes” it means that we will be there in an hour or thirty minutes at least. The proverb ‘Time and tide wait for no man’ simply doesn’t apply to us.

We function like a screensaver at times, leave us be for a while and you will find us sound asleep, our bodies go into Hibernate mode soon as our brain detects that we are not moving about. We don’t mind napping  any time of the day, in fact it is a proven fact that unless we have that post-lunch nap we will be under-productive and even cranky. We will even take short naps during the night.

Need I describe how hobbits crave comforts?

The Dawat..

Much like the hobbits we are party folk. Dawats are our way of engaging in a healthy competition with each other. Everyone trying to outdo a previous dawat. The standards are always set higher but we have no problem surpassing them. Dawats are crucial in the way people discuss you after. When you hear party you people may think strobe lights, loud music, booze and girls but it is not that way with us. Food plays a very important role here too. There are similarities however, for instance there will be lights for decoration. A house where a wedding is taking place will often be decked in decorative lighting. At times this lighting has it’s own form of stroke/epileptic attack inducing pattern so be careful, do not stare. The music is of a more tasteful nature depending upon the occasion of the party and will at many instances will be loud enough for you to locate the address/venue, we don’t want you getting lost now do we, the lanes and by lanes can be quite confusing. Booze is replaced with endless streams of chai, the chai has variations in the method of preparation too and each cup is customized to the drinker’s desire depending on their seniority (Elaichi ki chai, adrak ki chai, doodh ki chai, shakkar wali chai, etc,). The party is alive as long as the chai is forthcoming and when the chai stops coming its a signal that the party has ended. It takes a few more hours till the guests leave though. Girls there are too, but again tastefully dressed and not looking for one night stands. These are women we are related to, aunts, grand mothers, cousins, siblings, sibling’s/cousin’s friends, neighbor’s daughters, etc. We in no way disrespect/grope them nor do they go home unguarded or drunk.

Our dawats, as I categorized in the beginning, are of two kinds. The global affairs that usually require a function hall or a banquet hall. I say global because there are usually freeloaders present. We know who you are but it is very rude for us to stop you from eating (generous remember?) we do not call you on that, we will usually take you aside and threaten you politely. These major dawats are usually wedding celebrations, our weddings do not happen with a single event, there are many preliminaries to them and these days each of these takes a whole dawat (which is sad in the way that they are expensive affairs and encourage extravagance). Then there is the ghar ki dawat. These are more exclusive events, reserved only for the near and the dear. Near and dear has a rather fluid definition for us. First there is the relatives. Uncles, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers. Then there’s friends, friends of the father, friends of the mother, friends of the sister and friends of the brother. Then come the neighbors. The neighborhood cats and so on.

Ghar ki dawat is usually reserved for occassions like birthdays, aqeeqa (a ceremony that’s held when a newborn is 40 days old), graduation celebration. I must take a minute and talk about graduation celebrations. Nobody rewards educational achievements like us. Pass through your board exams in the 7th or the 10th standard you have a dawat (Pappu pass hogaya!), graduate from high school you have a dawat (EAMCET mei acha rank aaya could mean anything between 500 and 50,000), graduate from college you have a dawat. There are usually smaller parties before and after the actual party too. Early birds get a first taste of the menu, an informal dinner of sorts treated more like a snack, nobody ever says no to good food here but you know that by now already. The after party is either dedicated to the volunteers at the party, usually the hosts, or to the friends who could not gorge on the food during the party. The after party is the more relaxed affairs, people dress down to bed time clothes, bring out the leftovers and go at it full swing. There is lots of laughter, comments on the party, comments on the guests, etc. This is also followed by a round or two of chai. You get the idea. 

Family values and ancestry..

We have great family values, our extravagance in a dawat is a testament to that. We simply cannot bear anything maligning the family name. Wars will be waged for generations to come if someone so much as hints at disrespecting ones family. We also have the unique talent for remembering our ancestry, ask any Hyderabadi about their great great great grand father and they will find the time to give you a whole list of their ancestors coupled with an interesting story of how they arrived to india or Hyderabad a long time ago and established themselves. Everyone’s ancestor is usually a famous figure in the history of Hyderabad. You will never check on their background stories and they will never verify it for themselves but they will flaunt it is nonetheless. Not only our own, we will tell you about ancestries of at least five other acquaintances. The Tooks and the Baggins of the Shire are sure to learn a lesson or two from us in these regards. We have large family trees after all. 

Tall tales..

If every Hyderabadi was in the habit of writing (many are) you could fill all the libraries of the world with our tales. I don’t need to remind you that Bilbo Baggins’ story of his little adventure span across one book and three movies. Ask any random wayfarer or chicha (elderly person) regards any mundane item in his house (like a paperweight or an antique) and sit back for a few hours while he relates a long (and usually fictitious account) of how he came by it. This story will discuss the item, the item’s seller/gifter, their ancestry, the item’s history, a brief history of the item’s owners, the period of time in history when the said item was acquired, a brief but interesting account on how things were done at the time, his own childhood and how things have changed since then, how he used to walk for miles just to get to school/work, the trees along the way, their genus, their fruits, the harvesting of said fruits, the stealing of these very fruits, the games of the time, the poetry, the music..you get the gist, I remember spending many an hour myself with my elders listening to their tales. I have thus in me a storyteller who could ramble on and on at 2 in the night!

Retrospection and possible conclusion.

If you have had the courage to read so far, Hyderabadis would be sure to have done this for they are courageous folk like our hobbits, you have understood and possibly accepted by now that J.R.R. Tolkien must have had a run-in with a Hyderabadi when he wrote his books. Hobbits are much alike us in many ways and if ever there was a One Ring of power we would be sure to carry it to the nearest jeweler and have it converted to currency (their forges being no less powerful than Mount Doom). In retrospect, looking at the length of this page, I think we are more like Ents! I must now fight the strong urge to start a fresh ramble on our similarities with Ents and end this here. So let me take your leave now that I may replenish my energy with some food and sleep. My gratitude to you for staying with me thus far and even more gratitude if you share this. May the Force be with you.

THE END

(or is it?)