Soliloquy

(This is the first of a series of essays, images and word sketches titled Deccan Diaries. As its name suggests, this series shall be based on my impressions of the Deccan, which comprises of, but is not limited to Hyderabad and the rest of Telangana)

Oh, the joys of merely sitting basking in the warmth of the filtered rays of the sun while Abid brought you a cup of piping hot Irani chai, and to linger unnecessarily over the paintings that brought the Hyderabad of yore alive. To be in Paradise was to be in paradise, and if anyone disagreed, you were sure to have picked up a fight. A copy of the Siasat went unread, while the Chronicle‘s adherents vehemently opposed the treatment the chief minister had received at the hands of the country’s premier.

The Garden had done away with its high-backed chairs, and asked its patrons to have their chai in a hurry and carry on with their day; had the Clock Tower failed to strike, time would have lost all significance, and the coterie passed on to the Rio, where the luqmis were legendary, and truant students of St Patrick’s and Mahbub College eyed each other with sneers that bypassed all class boundaries.

Bombay Cafe, on the south-western end of Kingsway, stood in quiet symphony with the autorickshaws that plied their trade on James Street; no one objected to the dissolution of its chai, and the watery consistency it now shared so widely with the Red Rose, a few kilometres west in Irrum Manzil. Taftian, located so close to the Bombay Cafe as to be called its distant relative, had stopped selling bun maska; but for the patronage of the drivers and conductors in transit at the Ranigunj bus depot, the former would have closed its doors long ago.

Cafe Khayyam, the hotspot of our grandfathers’ youth, had drawn its shutters already, and the Cosmopolitan had changed its persona. Cafe Bahar remained alive largely due to the largesse of the patients and their attenders at the Apollo close by, but the dissemination of their flavourful biryani, along with their unwillingness to branch out – not to mention the unsavoury battles between the brothers who inherited their father’s property – allowed them to stand the test of time. For tests such as the ones sent out by time, the Grand stood proudly at the top of Bank Street.

Seldom did a visitor to the myriad agencies of thrift at Troop Bazaar, or a guest from the mofussils, return home on an empty stomach with the Grand in clear sight. To share space with a statue of the first prime minister of independent India and jostle for attention alongside the General Post Office is what the Grand aspired towards, and many a philatelist suggested pairing its bun malai with a side of gossip, with the Irani manager haranguing them to leave.

Sadly, even the Grand did away with its high-backed chairs, indicating to its patrons to write postal orders or complete bank forms as quickly as possible, so as to accommodate the newest autorickshaw driver on the block. On the plus side, the owner, with the bashfulness of a 10-year-old, would avert his eyes while asking his staff to arrange for a makeshift zenana if you had company. Detouring back to the Alpha, the insects on the underbellies of the tables famously forced even Kunal Vijayakar to have his biryani on Station Road.

To come back to Paradise, by way of Blue Sea, was the pilgrimage that every Hyderabadi worth his salt would have had to make. And to have Abid by your side, pouring another cup of Irani chai with his critique of the finest century he had seen at the Gymkhana, or Saleem’s recollection of Santosh Yadav stepping down the track at Parade Ground and hitting a six that sailed over the Patny flyover, or Ramesh’s remembrance of the acrobatic moves of Ibrahim Khaleel behind the stumps, or Iqbal’s tales of the surefootedness of Mohammed Habib and Rahim Sahab’s legendary Hyderabad City Police Football Team, was to have truly come back home.

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