A ring of sodium lamps light up the lake's boundary in the night, hence the name Necklace Road. A popular haunt for children and adults, and for the tourists and the town's folk, the Necklace Road winds round the Hussain Sagar lake, also known as the tank bund.
The Hussain Sagar lake, built by the Qutb Shahi kings to meet the demand for water in Hyderabad, is now a picnic spot thanks to the government's initiative in building parks and lawns along the Necklace Road.
As you drive along the Necklace Road you will notice immediately that you have entered a special place in the city, a place where you leave your cares behind, a place where a vast sheet of water invites you to enjoy its unique environs of birds, rocks and greenery, of boats, water sports and eatery, of parks, lawns and scenery. It promises beautiful moments to capture and carry down the memory lane.
As part of the Buddha Poornima project, a huge monolithic statue of the Buddha is erected on an artificial island (the rock of Gibraltar) in the lake created specially for the purpose. The statue faces the tank bund road and is accessible by motorized boats from the Lumbini Park opposite the State Secretariat. Besides the ferry rides, the park hosts a musical fountain where children lose themselves in their merriment, cavorting and gambolling in its water, while their guardians watch over them from the lawns before it.
As you drive further down the tree-lined road past the secretariat you will reach the NTR Memorial and Gardens - the maverick actor-turned-politician NTR in whose name this was built and in whose regime as CM that the Buddha Poornima project was successfully undertaken. It boasts of a roller-coaster that propels you through a winding tunnel from a height and you squeal all the way down until you end up with a splash in a pool of water. There is also a small train with all the bells and whistles of a real one - ticket counter, stations, hooting et al. It takes you round the periphery of the vast garden of giant trees and several exotic flowering plants and cacti.
Let us stop for a while and digress a bit. I assure you it is the most interesting kind of digression. It is here, between the Lumbini Park and the NTR Park that every year on the last day of the Ganesh festival, the immersion of the Lord takes place. It is the Ganesh immersion when thousands converge in lorries, autorickshaws, cars, bikes and bicycles and on foot to take leave of their personal idol and witness the sinking of other idols which range from the size of a human palm to as big as a two-storey building. The police patrol the area with a thousand lights in their eyes - the wave of humanity in that hour of night is a commanding spectacle of noise from the cranes and other machinery, the shouts from the men and the screeching playback music from wornout records, a medley of vehicles of all sizes and shapes that only India can produce. To anyone but the native, it must look and feel like a pandemonium.
Continue your drive down the Necklace Road and you will reach a four-lane junction. To the left is the Prasad's, the city's first multiplex, and beside it the McDonald's. Straight ahead is the flyover which leads to Khairatabad junction with the statue of the renowned architect Mokshagundam Vishveshwariah, who tamed the Musi river, the tributary of the mighty Krishna, thus augmenting the efforts of his predecessors from 400 years ago to provide drinking water to the city. You turn right and continue along the Necklace Road, which hugs the lake's embankment all along its route, providing a breathtaking view of the lake to the right and the metro rail line to the left, over which the road flies to reach Khairatabad.
It is on this stretch of the road that things happen on a daily basis. A vast tract of land on both sides of the road is left vacant - the left one is reserved for vehicle parking and camel rides for the children; the reserved area to the right side of the road, abutting the lake, is where the city's alfresco events take place. While some events are seasonal - kite flying, regatta and military display of bravado - other events like exhibitions and musical nights take place regularly.
Kites fly in the month of January during the Sankranthi festival, when India celebrates Uttarayan, the winter solstice, and the harvest season. A great many youngsters and adults descend on the area to fly the colorful kites and enjoy the kite battles in the sky.
Sailing on the lake as a competitive sport has been going on for thirty years now organized by sailing clubs in the city. Monsoon regattas bring much cheer and delight to the onlookers.
Writings on the Hussain Sagar lake abound on the web pages sponsored by travel and tourism dotcoms; however they tend to miss an important event: the performance of what to civilians seem dangerous acrobatics over the lake by the Indian Defense units.
On a softer note, several musical nights regale the city folk with performances from the best in the country such as Ustaad Zakir Hussain, the tabla maestro whose thick rings of hair fly as he pounds on the drums and whose humorous asides between performances elicit resounding laughter from the audience.
The place also hosts exhibitions that draw huge crowds even on a working day. Books, pickles and namkeens (fried and salted) made by the DWAKRA women - a government supported venture for selling home-made stuff, plant nurseries, handicrafts and similar items kept on sale and display all year round.
By now you must feel hungry from all that sight-seeing and driving through a thicket of people and vehicles of an evening; head over to Eat Street. Get your favorite dish across a food counter, walk over to a table closest to the water's edge and settle down for a pleasant evening. If there is full moon, you would scarecely miss its iridiscent sheen over the placid lake. Facing the lake, turn over to your right and look up; if you are lucky you will see the bright and colourful lights on the marble temple of Birla Mandir, standing tall on a hillock. It is here on the floor above the eatery that children proudly and happily celebrate their birthday.
Intrepid children pester their parents to take them to Jalavihar - a place for water sports. It is located further down the Necklace Road after the Eat Street. Make sure you carry a towel and extra pair of trousers for them.
On the opposite side of the road is the railway line: the Metro Rail station has an imposing, though pleasing, structure and transports people to almost all corners of Hyderabad.
This is where I suppose the Necklace part of the road ends, beginning as we did from the Lumbini end near the Secretariat.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Coffee Day Out
Someone once asked me: what do you prefer, coffee or tea? I said I drink coffee with my wife and tea with my mother. No wonder you get along well with both, quipped my acquaintance. Coffee is a stronger beverage compared to tea, I remarked, and that much harder to handle!
Hyderabad is known for its Irani chay - the Iranian flavor of tea; however, in recent years it has witnessed a mushrooming of coffee houses, each selling a blend that goes well with the ambience created for it. So I step out to check out who sold what flavor and where - and my wife says I couldn't have chosen a better subject to do with her.
Set inside glass enclosure, a coffee house invites passers-by with its aroma, the music, the interior decoration, the uniformed attendants at the counter and the space for a tête-à-tête or a solitary muse. It is the outdoors equivqlent for a college canteen and therefore the quintessential hangout for the youth.
The first coffee house I happen upon is the one that is closest to where I live: Coffee Day at the Nagarjuna Circle on Road No.2 Banjara Hills. On a rain-soaked evening, what is more inviting than a coffee house? At any rate, Coffee Day is amongst the most popular in the city. Being the first of its kind to appear, it opened a chain of coffee houses all over the city. So I decide to do this story on Coffee Day and leave the others for another day.
Before we go into this world of coffee, I would like to give you a brief overview on this wonderful enterprise called Cafe Coffee Day that pioneered the cafe concept in India 15 years ago with their enticing tagline 'a lot can happen over coffee'.
They have a web presence which is not limited to the two web addresses below:
http://www.cafecoffeeday.com/
http://www.coffeeday.com/
They are also on Facebook (facebook.com/CafeCoffeeDay), Twitter (twitter.com/CafeCoffeeDay) and of course on YouTube.
A tweet I found funny says: "Good morning fellas.. You should spend this day doing absolutely nothing or else it's wasted ;) #ccd"; over a cuppa, I would have added.
So much for their presence on the World Wide Web. Now to the roots, from which the crops have grown and gave out seeds that spread the fragrance not only in India and Pakistan but also in Austria. It is the fastest growing retail chain in India and is now poised to spread rapidly in the world, being an exporter to countries like USA, Europe and Japan, according to the company news. Started in 1996 as a concept cafe on Brigade Road in Bangalore, the company rode on an unusual wave of success for what was typically a house-hold beverage. It operates under the following divisions, details of which are available on their website:
* Coffee Day Fresh 'n Ground
* Coffee Day Xpress
* Coffee Day Take Away
* Coffee Day Exports
* Coffee Day Perfect
According to the company reports, Cafe Coffee Day with a turnover of Rs.750 crores has coffee crops grown on more than 10,000 acres of land - the largest coffee growers in Asia, after the Tata's. It is a natural offshoot of the Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Limited (ABCTCL).
Now, step inside and taste the ambrosia of the youth and the coffee-lovers of this world. As I open the swinging glass door and step inside, I feel the pungent aroma of coffee. I selected a corner table which afforded me a commanding view of the interior. Cane sofa sets and marble-topped three-seater tables make up the furniture with a huge TV screen set to a wall which everyone could watch, but nobody did. The house was nearly full and a steady chatter created a confused murmur over the din of the TV. Overhead lamps provided pools of lighting. Glass enclosures displayed packages of coffee beans and powders in both pure and blended flavors.
The house offered many flavors - cappuccino, macho, choc-o-latte to name a few - and in both hot and cold variants. Coffee is served either in long tumblers or gleaming white porcelain cups, depending on the choice of flavor. Decorative design patterns covered the creamy surface. The house provided the perfect ambience for a friendly conversation or a formal discussion group.
Cafe Coffee Day operated several retail outlets in the city: Begumpet, Gachibowli, Madhapur, Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills, to name just a few.
Much has been written on the health effects of coffee; the upshot is that risks are minimal if at all, and, contrary to the opinions of health fascists, in some cases it may even aid in promoting health by reducing the risks. At any rate moderation is absolutely essential - there is only so much the body can take - and the limit must be discovered by oneself by observing undesirable changes in the patterns of sleep, work and play. Caffeine in coffee can cause "increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and occasional irregular heartbeat" - a study by the Harvard Medical School observes; however the same study reports "...risk for type 2 diabetes is lower among regular coffee drinkers ... may reduce the risk of developing gallstones, ... colon cancer, ... liver damage..., and ... Parkinson's disease..." The key, remember, is to discover a moderate quantity through self-observation.
De-caffeinated coffee is an option for the health-conscious. Decaff is gaining currency as a respectable drink and decaff drinkers are no longer the "losers", but have become a respectable lot, on the contrary.
Do you drink coffee to ward off sleep, to work more, to stay focused? Then you drink it for all the wrong reasons, I am afraid. It is a beverage that must be consumed for its own sake, for the pleasure of it; imbibe it with élan and inhale its aroma.
Hyderabad is known for its Irani chay - the Iranian flavor of tea; however, in recent years it has witnessed a mushrooming of coffee houses, each selling a blend that goes well with the ambience created for it. So I step out to check out who sold what flavor and where - and my wife says I couldn't have chosen a better subject to do with her.
Set inside glass enclosure, a coffee house invites passers-by with its aroma, the music, the interior decoration, the uniformed attendants at the counter and the space for a tête-à-tête or a solitary muse. It is the outdoors equivqlent for a college canteen and therefore the quintessential hangout for the youth.
The first coffee house I happen upon is the one that is closest to where I live: Coffee Day at the Nagarjuna Circle on Road No.2 Banjara Hills. On a rain-soaked evening, what is more inviting than a coffee house? At any rate, Coffee Day is amongst the most popular in the city. Being the first of its kind to appear, it opened a chain of coffee houses all over the city. So I decide to do this story on Coffee Day and leave the others for another day.
Before we go into this world of coffee, I would like to give you a brief overview on this wonderful enterprise called Cafe Coffee Day that pioneered the cafe concept in India 15 years ago with their enticing tagline 'a lot can happen over coffee'.
They have a web presence which is not limited to the two web addresses below:
http://www.cafecoffeeday.com/
http://www.coffeeday.com/
They are also on Facebook (facebook.com/CafeCoffeeDay), Twitter (twitter.com/CafeCoffeeDay) and of course on YouTube.
A tweet I found funny says: "Good morning fellas.. You should spend this day doing absolutely nothing or else it's wasted ;) #ccd"; over a cuppa, I would have added.
So much for their presence on the World Wide Web. Now to the roots, from which the crops have grown and gave out seeds that spread the fragrance not only in India and Pakistan but also in Austria. It is the fastest growing retail chain in India and is now poised to spread rapidly in the world, being an exporter to countries like USA, Europe and Japan, according to the company news. Started in 1996 as a concept cafe on Brigade Road in Bangalore, the company rode on an unusual wave of success for what was typically a house-hold beverage. It operates under the following divisions, details of which are available on their website:
* Coffee Day Fresh 'n Ground
* Coffee Day Xpress
* Coffee Day Take Away
* Coffee Day Exports
* Coffee Day Perfect
According to the company reports, Cafe Coffee Day with a turnover of Rs.750 crores has coffee crops grown on more than 10,000 acres of land - the largest coffee growers in Asia, after the Tata's. It is a natural offshoot of the Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Limited (ABCTCL).
Now, step inside and taste the ambrosia of the youth and the coffee-lovers of this world. As I open the swinging glass door and step inside, I feel the pungent aroma of coffee. I selected a corner table which afforded me a commanding view of the interior. Cane sofa sets and marble-topped three-seater tables make up the furniture with a huge TV screen set to a wall which everyone could watch, but nobody did. The house was nearly full and a steady chatter created a confused murmur over the din of the TV. Overhead lamps provided pools of lighting. Glass enclosures displayed packages of coffee beans and powders in both pure and blended flavors.
The house offered many flavors - cappuccino, macho, choc-o-latte to name a few - and in both hot and cold variants. Coffee is served either in long tumblers or gleaming white porcelain cups, depending on the choice of flavor. Decorative design patterns covered the creamy surface. The house provided the perfect ambience for a friendly conversation or a formal discussion group.
Cafe Coffee Day operated several retail outlets in the city: Begumpet, Gachibowli, Madhapur, Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills, to name just a few.
Much has been written on the health effects of coffee; the upshot is that risks are minimal if at all, and, contrary to the opinions of health fascists, in some cases it may even aid in promoting health by reducing the risks. At any rate moderation is absolutely essential - there is only so much the body can take - and the limit must be discovered by oneself by observing undesirable changes in the patterns of sleep, work and play. Caffeine in coffee can cause "increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and occasional irregular heartbeat" - a study by the Harvard Medical School observes; however the same study reports "...risk for type 2 diabetes is lower among regular coffee drinkers ... may reduce the risk of developing gallstones, ... colon cancer, ... liver damage..., and ... Parkinson's disease..." The key, remember, is to discover a moderate quantity through self-observation.
De-caffeinated coffee is an option for the health-conscious. Decaff is gaining currency as a respectable drink and decaff drinkers are no longer the "losers", but have become a respectable lot, on the contrary.
Do you drink coffee to ward off sleep, to work more, to stay focused? Then you drink it for all the wrong reasons, I am afraid. It is a beverage that must be consumed for its own sake, for the pleasure of it; imbibe it with élan and inhale its aroma.
Sent from my Nokia phone
Friday, June 11, 2010
The T'angle of Hyderabad
In Hyderabad Telugu is spoken differently - the tone, accent and manner of speech is markedly different from that of the rest of the State. The city is in the midst of a region called Telangana - a politically explosive term in recent months. The dialect spoken in this region is called Telangana Telugu.
The regions are not official segmentations of the State, but a common conversational device to indicate a geographical area within the State. The Telugu variant spoken in this region sounds funny to people from other regions and vice versa. Even people originally hailing from other regions quickly adapted themselves to the language, though the customs and the cultural milieu remain foreign and impossible to assimilate. Many families, like mine, remain unaffected either by the language or the local customs; the language is used primarily to talk to the maid servants, the labourers and others who are born and bred here.
The language divide has been one of the fault lines along which the Indian body politic experiences tremors and sometimes even fissures. The linguistic division of the nation into self-governing entities is now sadly leading into separations based on dialects also. Hyderabad being at the heart of the Telangana region, and simultaneously the State capital, is in the grip of a violent agitation for a separate state. The seeds were sown in 1969 and after 40 years again riots broke out in several parts of the city, especially in the campus of the Osmania University. Time erases memory? Human memory is short? Alas, no. Nothing is forgotten, ever. Memory is only buried and at the first opportunity it rears its ugly head up and charges, taking energy from the young and the gullible in the present. And the politics of opportunity has always found the Indian mind a fertile field to take root and flourish.
Hyderabad occupies a unique position in this battle for separation between the separate-Telangana trumpeters and the rest of the Andhra state. It is the Urdu heartland in the south of India and has a sizeable population of Muslims. People from the rest of Andhra easily outnumber the so-called natives and have established flourishing industries and trade routes that cut across linguistic boundaries. The Telangana dialect exists only in speech; it is not the reason for the bad blood among the people. Hyderabad is caught in the crossfire and the conflicting interests of centre-state politics.
Telangana thrives on a folk culture that is at once colorful and lively. The Bonalu celebrations and the Bathukamma festival create a flurry of vivacity among the people and provide glimpses of women draped in colourful sarees standing in long queues in front of a temple, carrying steel plates of rice, incense and vermilion and pots on their heads with eye-catching designs. The Bathukamma is a prayer to the earth mother to ensure sound health for the husband – it means the festival of life, according to some or the festival of flowers according to others. Women decorate steel or reed trays with wild flowers in splendid colors and structured in the shape of a cone with a broad base. Bonalu are the pots that women balance on their heads and dance to wild trumpeting sounds while a potharaju – a half-naked man with a huge mustache and a saffron dhoti – whirls about in frenzy as he rouses himself with whip lashes. The Bonalu is an offering to the deity, the grama devata, for her continued patronage over their lives. The festivals occur in the months of August, September and October – follow the lunar calendar. Like most Indian festivals, especially of the local sub-cultures, the opinions regarding the origin and the purpose of the festivals vary, even as the manner of celebration itself varies from age to age. It is an incomplete presentation of Telangana without the mention of a Jatara – a ritual coming together of different tribes who pay obeisance to the local deity of Sammakka near Warangal about a 100 kilometers from Hyderabad.
The regions are not official segmentations of the State, but a common conversational device to indicate a geographical area within the State. The Telugu variant spoken in this region sounds funny to people from other regions and vice versa. Even people originally hailing from other regions quickly adapted themselves to the language, though the customs and the cultural milieu remain foreign and impossible to assimilate. Many families, like mine, remain unaffected either by the language or the local customs; the language is used primarily to talk to the maid servants, the labourers and others who are born and bred here.
The language divide has been one of the fault lines along which the Indian body politic experiences tremors and sometimes even fissures. The linguistic division of the nation into self-governing entities is now sadly leading into separations based on dialects also. Hyderabad being at the heart of the Telangana region, and simultaneously the State capital, is in the grip of a violent agitation for a separate state. The seeds were sown in 1969 and after 40 years again riots broke out in several parts of the city, especially in the campus of the Osmania University. Time erases memory? Human memory is short? Alas, no. Nothing is forgotten, ever. Memory is only buried and at the first opportunity it rears its ugly head up and charges, taking energy from the young and the gullible in the present. And the politics of opportunity has always found the Indian mind a fertile field to take root and flourish.
Hyderabad occupies a unique position in this battle for separation between the separate-Telangana trumpeters and the rest of the Andhra state. It is the Urdu heartland in the south of India and has a sizeable population of Muslims. People from the rest of Andhra easily outnumber the so-called natives and have established flourishing industries and trade routes that cut across linguistic boundaries. The Telangana dialect exists only in speech; it is not the reason for the bad blood among the people. Hyderabad is caught in the crossfire and the conflicting interests of centre-state politics.
Telangana thrives on a folk culture that is at once colorful and lively. The Bonalu celebrations and the Bathukamma festival create a flurry of vivacity among the people and provide glimpses of women draped in colourful sarees standing in long queues in front of a temple, carrying steel plates of rice, incense and vermilion and pots on their heads with eye-catching designs. The Bathukamma is a prayer to the earth mother to ensure sound health for the husband – it means the festival of life, according to some or the festival of flowers according to others. Women decorate steel or reed trays with wild flowers in splendid colors and structured in the shape of a cone with a broad base. Bonalu are the pots that women balance on their heads and dance to wild trumpeting sounds while a potharaju – a half-naked man with a huge mustache and a saffron dhoti – whirls about in frenzy as he rouses himself with whip lashes. The Bonalu is an offering to the deity, the grama devata, for her continued patronage over their lives. The festivals occur in the months of August, September and October – follow the lunar calendar. Like most Indian festivals, especially of the local sub-cultures, the opinions regarding the origin and the purpose of the festivals vary, even as the manner of celebration itself varies from age to age. It is an incomplete presentation of Telangana without the mention of a Jatara – a ritual coming together of different tribes who pay obeisance to the local deity of Sammakka near Warangal about a 100 kilometers from Hyderabad.
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