Many Islamic women in Hyderabad cover their faces completely. They also dress completely in black. This is not entirrely uncommon in other places in India, but is somewhat uncommon in south India. For example, when we went to Kerala, the Islamic women there dressed in colored hijabs, even brightly colored ones with flowers and sequins. But Hyderabad is perhaps the most Islamic city in south India, and there is an increasing inflence from the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia.
We recently had a brunch where an Islamic family was seated near us, and many of our questions about these veils got answered. The wife lifted her black face covering to drink her juice, and she lifted it to eat her food. A fully black apparition of a woman lifting a veil so she could eat and drink. Note that she did not take it off, she simply lifted it a little bit.
It's honestly kind of menacing how the fundamentalist states like Saudi Arabia are changing the landscape of India.
