veiled rebecca...

More than enjoying visits to Charminar, Golconda, Salarjung, and other places of tourist interest in Hyderabad, I have always enjoyed interacting with the auto and taxi wallas. If we genuinely listen to them, they have so much to tell and share. What adds flavor to their topics is the sweet and different urdu/hindi accent they use while talking.

“saagar ka gehrai loga jaan saaktay aaj, par insaan kay dimaag ka gerhrai jaan-na mushkil ji.”

“YSR accha aadmi tha, log ka baat/takleef dhiyaan diya. Chandrababu tau sirf Hyderabad ka CM tha, unay aur bahar kuch nahi maloom.”

On asking for direction to a certain place, the auto wala said, “left turn karogay tau saamnay teen borda dikhayngay...”

On my last visit, I took two cabs. Both the drivers had some information to share some tit bits about the history of the city. Authenticity was not my concern:

-No one has access to the Falakhnuma palace, only twice in its history in modern times it has been opened for visitors. That too to generate some revenue for the then cash-strapped state government.

-The sculptor of the ‘Veiled Rebecca’ took 40 years to create it and every morning before starting work he used to pray for an impeccable outcome. One day he saw a small black dot in the statue and died of heart failure! His son continued the work. To my colleagues he described how the statue looks like – a women wrapped in a muslin cloth, just out of a pool… the statue is worth seeing and it costs around 60 crores in the international market. The Nizam who bought it was a collector of statues.

-The government decided to handover maintenance of a set of erstwhile Nizam’s property to some agency and asked the oldest caretaker of those days to conduct interviews of prospective parties. They made tall claims of having restored certain historical buildings, including a clock tower in some market which was constructed during the Nizam’s rule. This caretaker simply said, for ages these people have not been able to repair the four clocks of the clock tower, I really doubt if they can be given responsibility of such a huge task of maintenance…

-A Nizam contacted Rolls Royce for purchasing one of the cars. They mocked saying Indian roads were bad and so the car could not be sold to him. This Nizam somehow acquired 3 or 6 of those cars and invited senior staff from Rolls Royce and some other companies for dinner. They were supposed to stow away their plates after the dinner in those cars which were kept outside or near the dining area. They apologized. The cars were then on used by municipality for dumping and collecting garbage…

My visit to this city has been brief but I want to explore the by lanes of Charminar area and also see the Veiled Rebecca once more.