There’s almost no one who has stayed in Hyderabad and not liked it. (Though it offers many many reasons to do so, still).
The Hyderabad I know and love is long gone but I saw traces of it and its a little wishful to think its essence will be retained. But for sure, its worth celebrating and cherishing.
Hyderabad is the original and possibly the only TRUE cosmopolitan city in India besides Mumbai, and the best place anywhere for the middle class in India.
I did my schooling in Hyderabad and it seemed completely natural to me that this is how the world was meant to be. We stayed in a lane behind a popular catholic school, and our neighbors included Reddys, Anglo-Indians, Persians, Sikhs, Lebanese-palestian refugees, Maharashtrians and the local Hyderabadi Muslims (need to distinguish them).
And I think its fair to say that its always been like this. Hyderabad always had folks from every corner of the Indian and Arabian peninsulas, and corners of the globe inhabiting it - and doing far better than any other city in accommodating and allowing them to be.
Thanks for this needs to go to the way the province was administered - the Nizams of Hyderabad had both the vision to allow this. The way the city and its neighboring provinces were developed shows a lot of planning that very few cities in India had. Of course All of this went to seed post Independence
A popular story goes that freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu while celebrating Independence and the creation of the union of Indian states was heartbroken when Hyderabad wouldn't continue to be an independent state.
So Hyderabad went to seed and how. It’s got the most difficult water situation, not only is water in limited supply, its hard and so corrosive - that everything from utensils to washing machines are likely to corrode within a few years of use. The traffic situation is terrible. With unprecedented growth and terrible planning of roads, even the areas in old city have a problem and its actually, not being able to cross the road (rather than a traffic jam). I stayed in Barkatapura and in the last decade, there’s almost a Pavlovian tendency to quickly cross the road when there’s a gap in the road - even if you don't actually have to cross the road!
One of the saddest parts of Hyderabad is how terrible the food is here (in terms of eating out). Since I was a kid and even now with it becoming an international hub, the food continues to be dire. Yes, it meets success in being edible, but is nowhere comparable to say Bangalore or even Chennai and I think even Vijayawada has far far FAR better food than Hyderabad. The best Andhra food continues to be sold in Bengaluru - there’s absolutely no place in Hyd that comes even close.
I am a vegetarian and can rely on people whose tastes I trust when they didn't like the Biryani and Haleem served here (which is sad, because apparently the Haleem from Hyderabad used to be world famous).
One telling fact was that when Rahul Gandhi visited Hyderabad nearly a decade back, his party members took him to a restaurant (frequented by the middle-class) - and I had just eaten there for the first time, and believe me it was terrible food, and I think it was only convenience location and possibly the prices which made this restaurant famous.
I think the people of Hyderabad are tolerant even towards terrible food and service. (I recently stayed in Hyderabad and can confidently say this hasn't changed at all - the other cities continue to have a good lead).
There are bright spots of course. I am proud of Karachi Bakery (though after being aware of Trans fats not so much) - which continues to produce one of the best uniquely flavoured cookies in the world. As a kid when the shop was relatively smaller they used to also sell curry puffs and I think its the best curry puff I have eaten in my life - full of actual curry leaves (and I suspect the secret ingredient is they use chicken or mutton stock).
And of course like any other place in the world the best food is available in the homes, and here Hyderabad scores amazingly well. There’s a confluence of Maratha and central cuisines as well as southern deccan palates which is happily adapted by generations of Hyderabadis which is why if you were to eat at any of the homes here, it’d be difficult to pin down and classify the food. This IMHO has not been discovered or celebrated by the hotel industry. The best food is also available when you visit Weddings and the catering has been done by local food makers, cooks and halwais (and not a hotel/ restaurant) - you will be licking your lips.
Anyways enough about food. Hyderabad has enough enough places to see and enjoy, and in terms of heritage and modern history too, its unmatched.
One of the most ironical facts is that Hyderabad housed the richest man in the world at one point in time. The irony being that he was actually a minister under the Nizam - as in, he was even richer than the Nizam. This was because of the art collection which had some infinitely priceless collections, now housed in the Salar Jung Museum. (but I think the best ones have been plundered sold to dealers globally by unscrupulous bureaucrats and the ones left behind neglected, allowed to rust or become inoperational).
Its unlikely you will notice or learn much about Hyderabad unless you get a good tour guide. The places in Hyderabad aare many and each of them with its unique history and story to be told. From Birla Temple, to the Nehru Zoo and of course the Golconda fort, the planetaurium, the tank bund (hussain sagar lake), and the salar jung museum. When I was a kid we’re lucky to have a tour guide who took the trouble to take us through some of the finer aspects.
there continue to be masterpieces in the Salarjung museum that you will never realize till someone explains this to you. There’re marble sculptures from the renaissance of such fine craftsmanship you are unlikely to find in the Louvre. One of the best pietas is in the Salarjung museum and you are likely to weep across when you see it, as our guide was explaining how sinewy and full of wounds the body of Christ was as held by Mary whose pressure in clutching the body can be seen in her fingers. There was another marble sculpture where the face of the lady could be seen through the veil.
In Golconda there are corners of the fort with special secrets. One would help the guards listen to the footsteps and who was coming in through the entrance. There’s one which has natural air-conditioning, and truly in the hottest day after sweating it out climbing up 100s of steps you got relief standing in this chamber where the cross ventilation ensured it was never warm. There’s sound effects built for a stage such that the ruler could listen to a performance perched in his chamber a few stories above.
Golconda fort also represents hyderabad’s neglect and decay. Apparently its floors and grounds were full of jewels and artifacts. My teacher mentions how as a kid when she walked around in the rains she’d seen a shiny object which seemed like a coin and she gave it to her teacher who promptly confiscated it. Much of Hyderabad has been plundered and its best pieces left away.
(We got to see these many times as kids as one of us would be dragged on the tour, whenever we had guests visiting our home. one interesting episode was how my elder brother was surprised to see a report of Hindu-Muslim violence in the old city when he had practically spent the entire afternoon taking one of the visiting family around Charminar, after visiting Salar Jung museum, and they shopped around the old city for nearly four hours and there was absolutely no indication that anything was amiss. We used to treat this reports of ‘communal tension’ with a huge dose of salt by sensationalizing overzealous reporters)
Possibly one of the best legacies of the Nizam era is something I have not seen in any other city of India - is the annual exhibition. Can you imagine anywhere else in India - there's a huge barren area cordoned off, to be used only for about six weeks in a year and barely used for the rest of the year? Hyderabad hosted the annual exhibition in January where traders from across India (and the globe) set up their stalls. Its one of the best things about Hyderabad. What i loved about this was yet another opportunity to bring people together and tell them what a wonderful celebration when this took place.
But then Hyderabad saw many many changes, the biggest being socio-demographic, if I were to exclude the massive build-up of newcomers around the Hitech city belt.
The rest of the city including the centre and the old city witnessed the disappearing or hollow pyramid, a phenomenon where only the very old (retired) and the very young (schoolkids) remain in the society while the young and middle-aged had moved to the west and the gulf. (This derives its name from the AIDS epidemic in Africa which wiped out a significant proportion of the young & middle aged folk but didn't affect the elderly as much and left behind the kids).
But then this is what Hyderabad represented to me - and this is only my opinion. The average Hyderabadi continues to be simple, even naive with the most basic lifestyle and as far away from tinsel clad glamour as possible (which is why its Middle Class at its core). The sportspersons from the city who represent this best are Azharuddin and Gopichand.
Azhar is the best because he came from a poor low-income neighborhood called vithalwadi - which in those days housed both a mosque, a slaughterhouse as well as a very popular Hanuman Mandir, and was more or less a slightly better off slum with people from different corners of India living together.
Hyderabadis normally cannot wear Glamour on their sleeve easily it is in direct contrast to what they believe in. There’s no panache but more likely a quiet confidence instead of the loud brash confidence you are likely to see in a metro kid. What the Hyderabadi mostly has is an aspiration to make a difference, and the western shores offered them an opportunity to do this. A small proportion of them chose to return or stay in Hyderabad to do this.
A perfect representation of this is the family that built the Rajiv Gandhi International airport - one of the younger members narrates how he was appalled at and complained about the Karachi airport when his flight had to do a stopover due to a technical problem, and then only to finally land at the Mumbai airport and then discover how bad and even worse this was - he had to slink away from his fellow passengers.
This shows in the Hyderabad airport which today is possibly the best airport in India (now Bengaluru has moved ahead after its expansion and improvement in some facilities, but I hope Hyd catches up soon). Its seating and people flow arrangements are among the best in the country, and even better than Bangalore airports.
Hyderabad also has an alienation towards culture as compared to other cities/ metros in India. There are almost no performances from prominent artistes and theatre groups, and whatever is taking place is still minuscule compared to what emerging Bangalore does. And this is perhaps a sign of what the Hyderabad has always been after and therefore results in a paradox. Cinema is at the core of the Hyderabadi. Along with Bangalore Hyderabad had the maximum number of Cinemas at its peak (around 200+ cinemas) - and yet there were no major studios in either city. The filming always happening in Chennai. Its only due to the initiative of some producers that the Ramoji studios blossomed in Hyderabad.
But what I loved Hyderabad most for were the people, a fast disappearing tribe.
Nearly 2 decades after I had left Hyderabad I returned on a break (my first of many) and was attending a short educational course. What was amazing was this group of students all Hyderabadis would start talking and naturally the language used was Hyderabad hindi (which had been washed out from my mouth by an overzealous shuddh Hindi teacher). I would watch in amazement each day when they spoke because it was impossible if you were only listening in …. you actually wouldn't be able to guess and identify which community they were from.
The group consisted of catholic reddys, marwaris, sunnis, memons, Ahmadiyas, central MPites, bengalis and of course folks from coastal and central Andhra.
And that was what Hyderabad represented to me, and I loved every moment of being with that group. When they spoke in Hyderabadi they all melded into one group. There was no ‘aap’ or superlative plural ‘hum’. Everyone was of the same age and class, and also relatively plain with no airs thrown about. Nothing was banal or mundane, nor anything divisive enough to tear this group. During the course both Ramadan, Xmas and Hindu festivals were celebrated without anyone noticing the difference. One of the most interesting pairs was a muslim kid (from the ahmadiya sect) and a marwari boy who were the thickest friends and practically been sitting in the same bench from primary school till college.
Hyderabad allowed this to happen and it wasn't the superlative education facilities or cultural background - it simply was the people from the city who allowed this to blossom. differences simply melted away and soon everyone looked and behaved the same and shared a common philosophy.
Today’s Hyderabad is fast changing and I cant really recognize or see many remnants of what the Hyderabad was from my childhood. But there’s hope that some essence of this is retained by this great city.
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