Unintentionally basking under the magnificent Hyderabad sun, I couldn’t help thinking about the unfair notions with which I had entered the city. Thanks to a few spineless, cross eyed camels i had unwittingly befriended in the past, I had painted the city a dreary blue and expected it to be not any different from them. Shady. Superficial. Insecure.
Much to my surprise (and relief), I had been ignorant and narrow minded to brand a city this filled with zest anything beneath beautiful. The intricate and delicate designs on the buildings get better and one gets pushed into the crescendo of the Mughal architecture once they walk through the gates that guard the Makka masjid. Unlike the traditional Muslim architecture that relies more on size and less on gentle artistic strides, the revered monuments here are a blend of Indian art, cushioning the engineer’s artistic licence to shun the Middle Eastern propensity to build the biggest.
It isn’t just the old side( old shide, my cabbie insists) of the city that makes the place so hauntingly aesthetic, but the way the new and the old exist together, I wouldn’t take the liberty to say that it blends but the city is a strange jigsaw of bullock carts, malls, techies, palmists, cash and cash-less-ness.
I wouldn’t mind walking in the Chudi bazaar for hours at a stretch, the bangles create a riot of colours and the cacophony created by the crowd that dottily bargains away allows the dreamer to disappear into the crowd. I was nudged awake from a reverie when I saw my dad buy the ugliest of chains from over there ( how he managed to find such a hideous piece of jewellery I’d never know, and to pay a hundred for that, Lord! This is one thing I’d like to forget). But I’d keep the hideous chain, a lesser child of a city so beautiful.
