Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

8.14 local The year in which Hyderabadis discovered minutes, crores, carats and big city chaos

Oh! The Hyderabadis also discovered that there are 60 minutes in an hour as they kept track of 8.14 a.m. local at Lingampally station or the 5.12 local at the Secunderabad station. If roads were transformed into parking lots, you haven’t seen nothing yet.

If the commuters have discovered minutes in an hour, then the well heeled ones, discovered that a crore is just one more zero. If you could lap up an independent bungalow for a few crores earlier, now a crore can just get you an apartment and that too on the outskirts of the city.

And to drive to those fabled apartments a few have already got themselves Beamers that are being sold in the city and need not be driven from Mumbai or Chennai.

With so much money swirling and swishing about, it was no surprise that a mall that peddles only jewellery has come up in Basheerbagh close to the place where Bade Ghulam Ali Khan used to sing.

With people willing to hear the sound of money who has the time to be a cognoscenti?

This was also the year terrorists blew open the doors of horror by carrying out three brazen attacks in the city. If the first attack was inside the mosque built by Mohammad Quli Qutb Shah at the time of Jumma prayers, then the second attack was at the ironically named Lumbini Park, the third strike was at Gokul Chat in Koti.

That haunt of middle-class family out for a weekend roundup with a spicy bite on Saturday evening. Where they succeeded in striking, they failed in their aim. Despite the provocative nature of the terror strike, the communal cauldron didn’t get stirred.

Between the mall for jewellery and the terrorist strike is the story of sham shimmer under which runs a vein of deep social discord. It was not just attacks on doctors that led to bouts of strikes by doctors, it showed itself when a school bus mowed down a sweeper near Gachchibowli triggering a day of brick batting against the school buses that ply that road. “But they are not showing it on TV,” said a housewife when informed about the trouble signifying the non-stop coverage of silly news be it the elopement of a star’s daughter or faux row over an advertisement.

Then it was a sports news splash that really flashed. Seven cricketers who played for the Ranji side got sick of the machinations of the old foggies running the show and jumped ship to Indian Cricket League launched by Kapil Dev.

In contrast, the grand-sounding 4th World Military Games, proved to be a dud of news with most Hyderabadis remaining unaware of the thing.

One more adda disappeared this year. Not an Irani restaurant but the rows of second-hand bookshops that ringed the Residency Building in Koti.

But this was the year the Chowmohalla Palace came into its own as a cultural centre with a series of events and more of the palatial complex getting renovated and spruced up.

There was a cultural renaissance of sorts as the Metro Plus Theatre Festival brought droves of the first-timers to the Ravindra Bharati it wasn’t just a one-off event as other theatre organisations recorded good number of theatre-goers.

At the end of it, the life of a city cannot be summed up as a series of events but has to be seen as an ebb and flow of life.

Gokul Chat is up and running despite a terror strike.

Mecca Masjid is full with the faithful spilling onto the roads during prayers.

The scaffolding collapsed killing two, but the flyover at Panjagutta is almost ready.

The autorickshawallahs have been brought to heel. Travel in comfort, pay by digital meter.

A series of theatre festivals showed the thirst for good things beyond the shopping malls.

Goodbye mai-baap sarkar. The Raj Bhavan road is full of retail outlets selling shoes to veggies to medicines. Shall we change the name of the street?

This good news was bad. Trying to rake in the big bucks by playing on the Deccani lingo didn’t work either for Hyderabad Nawabs nor for F and M. Pity.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail