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.
Showing posts with label Hyderabad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hyderabad. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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.
Friday, May 7, 2010
My Notes on Hyderabad
About notes on Hyderabad, I must keep it simple, lively, and colorful with a lot of pepper and picture. I must include a lot of personal element into it to keep it from reading like a tourist book. I must write from memory and research and then add colour from actually visiting the spots that I mention. I should like to title it Hyderabad Old and New or maybe My Notes on Hyderabad. Beginning with the Old it must blend into the New, thereby giving the flavour of the city as it actually is.
The objective is two-fold: to inform and to remind. To inform the reader who is new to the city and to remind (in the sense of bringing back to mind) those who have seen it years ago. It must kindle interest in the new and make the old reminisce nostalgically. With this objective, I must restructure and re-write the notes into moving running paragraphs such that they evince interest and evoke feelings. Happy reading!
Sent from Nokia Smartphone
The objective is two-fold: to inform and to remind. To inform the reader who is new to the city and to remind (in the sense of bringing back to mind) those who have seen it years ago. It must kindle interest in the new and make the old reminisce nostalgically. With this objective, I must restructure and re-write the notes into moving running paragraphs such that they evince interest and evoke feelings. Happy reading!
Sent from Nokia Smartphone
Old Hyderabad 3
After Troop Bazaar in Abids you head towards Sultan Bazaar. On the way you will notice (if you had seen a decade ago) that there have been some changes along the way.
I will touch upon the things that have resisted the change first. The Rani park has not yielded to the growing and developing city. The lane beside it still leads to the Mozamjahi Market road. The bicycle shops on the opposite side of the road continue to do brisk business. Further on when you come to the 4-way junction you will notice that the Sultan Bazaar is as busy as it has always been - teeming with sellers and buyers and vehicles of all sizes and shapes, except buses and lorries perhaps, pass through its narrow over-crowded street. The road leading to the Imliban Bus Stand, which has been renovated and extended to cater to a large fleet of public transport, is a one-way street leading to the old city on one side and Nampalli and Abids on the other.
Now I will talk about the things that have yielded to change. The road past the Central Bank beside the Sultan Bazaar is now bereft of the second-hand bookstalls along the Women's College which have served the needs of the students from high school to college for many decades. The place always boasted of books of all kinds; if you couldn't find a book there, then you can be sure it could not be found elsewhere in the city. After eviction the shop owners scattered into nearby corners until a big building came up specially built for them. It is located on the road near where the Sultan Bazaar lane ends on the other side.
I will touch upon the things that have resisted the change first. The Rani park has not yielded to the growing and developing city. The lane beside it still leads to the Mozamjahi Market road. The bicycle shops on the opposite side of the road continue to do brisk business. Further on when you come to the 4-way junction you will notice that the Sultan Bazaar is as busy as it has always been - teeming with sellers and buyers and vehicles of all sizes and shapes, except buses and lorries perhaps, pass through its narrow over-crowded street. The road leading to the Imliban Bus Stand, which has been renovated and extended to cater to a large fleet of public transport, is a one-way street leading to the old city on one side and Nampalli and Abids on the other.
Now I will talk about the things that have yielded to change. The road past the Central Bank beside the Sultan Bazaar is now bereft of the second-hand bookstalls along the Women's College which have served the needs of the students from high school to college for many decades. The place always boasted of books of all kinds; if you couldn't find a book there, then you can be sure it could not be found elsewhere in the city. After eviction the shop owners scattered into nearby corners until a big building came up specially built for them. It is located on the road near where the Sultan Bazaar lane ends on the other side.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Old Hyderabad 2
In my youth Abids in Hyderabad was the centre of commerce. There was I believe a shop owned by one Mr Abid somewhere near the present location of GPO. However, I could neither know what it sold nor ascertain its exact location. Palace and Sagar Talkies were the most popular cinema haunts and Agarwal cool drinks slaked shopper's thirst. Khatiawar Stores sold dry fruits among other things and chief among the book stalls was Central Publishers. Missionary and convent schools were a stone's throw from Abid's and prominent among them were Little Flower High School (where I studied) and St. George's Grammar School. Our home was close by, near Troop Bazaar on the way to Sultan Bazaar. Elsewhere in the city life flowed lazily, while Abid's always bustled with shoppers of quality stuff. The Hanuman Temple beside the Police Station drew a large number of devotees in the evening. Abids continues to draw crowds of shoppers for jewellery and clothes even though it has lost some of its former glory. The loss is not because it has not changed - it has evolved into an upmarket area - but due to the changing lifestyles and corresponding change in the shopping patterns.
Sent from Nokia Smartphone
Sent from Nokia Smartphone
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Old Hyderabad 1
When I was in school there were rickshaws in Hyderabad. The motorized versions came much later and eventually drove their predecessors to extinction. There was much in Hyderabad that is only a memory now. It has always been so with a growing city and Hyderabad is no exception to it. There is one inalienable part of Hyderabad, however, which remained immune to change. It is the old city. It has retained its quaint historical character, its crowded streets and small shops overflowing with their items for sale. Economic pressures and lack of political will perhaps ensured its continuance in its outmoded lifestyle. The captains of industry and the patrons of education have not made any inroads into its rigid social and economic structure; they preferred to leave the old city alone and turned to the salubrious though harsh landscape of the Banjara and the Jubilee Hills. Elsewhere, they preferred the outskirts to its dense and populous streets. The old city's only stake to modernity is in its use of auto-rickshaws in place of their traditional tri-cycle counterparts.
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