What is this city to someone who has come from another place and has settled here merely due to the necessities of a career? I have often found myself pondering on this and wondering how much has this city accepted me, a stranger, and how much I have accepted this strange city that I suddenly found encroaching upon my lazy Calcuttan consciousness after 22 years of my life.
I came to Hyderabad in June 2005, when I got my first job. Hyderabad. The name has a historical ring to it. In the famous 'Sound and Light' show held everyday in the heart of the windswept Golconda, I learnt, for the first time, about the history of this city. To give a short gist of the story behind the name, here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Hyderabad:
"A popular theory suggests that after founding the city, Muhammad Quli fell in love with and married a local Banjara girl known as Bhagamathi. He named this city after her as Bhagyanagaram. Upon her conversion to Islam, Bhagamathi changed her name to Hyder Mahal — and the new city's name was correspondingly changed to match it, resulting in the eponymous name "Hyderabad" (literally, "the city of Hyder")."
(For the full entry, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabad,_India)
A city was born from this torrential romance, and now, long long after the lovers are blended into the moth-eaten tapestry of history, it relaxes with its twin in the great peninsula of Deccan. Like a lady married for years now, the novelty and gaudiness of her brocade is now dulled, and age has chiseled out the fine lines around her eyes and her smile. Borne so many children, her girth has expanded to give her a portly appearance of a buxom matron, though still veiled in her feminine coquettry. Her laughter has no more the carefree ring of youth, but is sombre and laden with the weight of years of greiving and loss and suffering. No more a young girl, not yet the peace of plenitude and old age. It's a long life that the city has seen and is yet to see.
But yet, when the nights sparkle with festivities, she brings out her faded bridal finery and adorns herself, staining her eyes with kohl and surma, and her lips with the ancient blood red that her lovers so admired. Her arms are covered in bangles from her Choodi Bazar, golden, silver, copper, lilac, green, shining, shimmering, clinking...
Old men chewing paan hug each other, and young men make steal sly glances under canopies of little twinkling lights, hoping to extract a smile from the becoming new girl in the neighborhood. Her friends gather around her, twittering and chiding, while she, nervous in her new salwar kameez and iridiscent jewelry, hugs her bosom and stares at the starry sky with a knowing smile, knowing that she's the cynosure of the society and the only star in her lover's eyes...
And the city, the buxom matron, watches them all from her balcony, where she relaxes on a wooden armchair, her twin and companion by her side. She chews the paan and replays stories of her own youth, to her listeners, regaling them with anecdotes of how these old, respectable men of today used to gawk at her fifty years past, and pretend to stumble and fall at her feet while she walked on these same narrow streets. These same old men, now stern and austere in their spotless whites, now scolding the smart young lad for being so brazen, and sending him scurrying to the shop for more sweetmeats. Oh men, men! Always incorrigible, always unlearning their lessons. She sighs in contentment.
It's a restless evening and it ends like all other evenings. The matron must return to her repose, for another day awaits, another appointed hour of waking up and worldly woes. The city lives, laughs, then sleeps and wakes up to live some more.
But the city never forgets. For these very shiny lights and iridescent bangles will be sewn into her never-ending tapestry, and visited again on another joyous evening on the balcony, amidst festivities and frolic, when she will yet regale her audience with more stories and more...
The city never forgets.
