Hyderabad

Our Hyderabad trip was jinxed. We first booked it in September 2006 and then had to postpone it three times before we could make it. Ultimately, it materialized just after my VRS.

This is your Retirement Present. Avi told me.

So we took an early morning flight to Hyderabad on 14^th Feb. 2007 and went to the SalarjungMuseum the same day in the morning and to Char Minar in the evening.

Golkonda Fort

Salarjung Museum is positively a store-house of Art. Of particular interest to me were the halls of porcelain and sculpture. Somehow, oil-paintings do not impress me much. Neither does the metalwork like the Bidri work or the Banaras Brass or Tanjore bronzes. Even Dancing Natraj I am not particularly fond of. (Sorry about it folks, but there it is.)

There is no accounting for peoples tastes. The hotel we stayed at was very good centrally located, clean, comfortable with polite, attentive staff. However every time it gave me jitters because the wall behind the counter was painted an awful dull yellow color with splotches of slimy green paint on it and it always looked to me like the skin of a particularly noxious lizard. Still, the owner must like that combination.

Barracks

Salarjung Museum has two pieces of Art which are absolutely marvelous. One is a wood-carving, depicting a proud warrior on one side and a bashful maiden on the opposite side. (Front and back)

View of Kutubshahi tombs

This phrase bashful maiden reminds me. As we were moving along the ground floor of the Museum, we came across a sign:

Office of the Coy Commander

My impish mind immediately pictured how the coy commander will act while giving commands to his subordinates or the tourists.

Soldiers, will you please, please give some attention to me here. for the usual Attention.

Hello, wont you stop please and tell me fair Traveler, whither you goest?

This is for the brisk Halt, who goes there?

Dear Sir/Madam, do you have friendly, honorable intentions towards us or mean to harm us This for Friend or Foe?

All these commands would be accompanied by shrinking Violet types of actions the downcast eyes, the sidelong glances, the finger-in-the-mouth innocence, the blushing stammer, the twirling and crumpling the edges of his uniform between his thumb and forefinger, the scratching the ground by his toe etc.

My reverie was cut short by Avi explaining to me that Coy is just a short form of Company and has nothing to do with bashfulness.

Come to think of it, the Coy commanders men, the security chaps, were anything but coy or bashful. They even took away Avis diabetes tablets.

See the stone formation?

In my opinion, our Hyderabad trip expenses were fully justified when we saw the beautiful marble statue Veiled Rebecca.

We have seen a good deal of sculpture all over the world, run the whole gamut from Laocoon to Pieta, to David to Apollo and Daphne -- practically everything that Vatican, Pitti Palace, Uffizi Gallery and Louvre have to offer by way of sculpture.

However, we had never seen anything like the statue Veiled Rebecca.

You people think that marble is a hard, solid, opaque stone? You are wrong.

The marble veil of Rebecca has a sheer, silky fluidity and a transparency that shows her ethereal beauty through it. The diaphanous fabric of her marble veil enhances the mystery of her half-seen features. You feel that if you just gently blow on the veil, it will flutter softly. You almost hear the swish of the tessellated edges.

How did the sculptor achieve this effect in cold hard marble?

This statue The veiled Rebecca should be considered our National Treasure rather than the Nizams jewels.

View of Hyderabad from the fort

The Nizams jewels are extremely valuable and impressive. However, we know next to nothing about gemstones. To our untutored eyes, the jewelry looked almost as good as some of the jewelry worn by the women of Hindi TV serials, especially the sas-bahu type of serials. Do those women ever cook, wash clothes, clean utensils, dust the furniture and run to catch the bus? If so, how do they do it wearing full makeup, silk sarees, high heels and tons of jewelry?

That is a subject of further research.

The royal stairs

From Salarjung, we went to Bawarchi to eat the famous Hyderabadi Biryani. The auto rickshaw chap cheated us, but then who else can he cheat except the tourists? The local people simply would not let themselves to be cheated. (They are so unreasonable!) The Rayalseema, which was a small joint near our hotel, served a much better biryani than Bawarchi.

The seraglio

The Char Minar area of Hyderabad is just like the Chandni Chowk area of Delhi or the Bhendi Bazaar area of Mumbai not my cup of tea. I must be only woman who did not buy any glass bangles, sequined purses etc. there.

We were roaming around there and suddenly my purse brought down some 3-4 mugs or cups and saucers from a hand-card laden with cheap crockery. Of course we made good the damages, (overpaid actually) but that made Avi say in despair, Now that you have broken all our crockery, you have started on other peoples crockery? Opportunist that he is, he also said that that was my Valentine Day present.

Cheapo, penny-pinching, stingy, miser Uncle Scrooge!!!!

The next day we visited the Golkonda Fort, sat through the Light and Sound Show, visited Lumbini Park, took a boat ride to the Buddha statue in the middle of the lake and came back.

Having been there and done that that all tourists do; now we were ready for the Ramoji Film City.

P.S. : I told you that our Hyderabad trip was jinxed, right? So, it just happens that the blog is about Hyderabad, but the photos are of the Golkonda Fort. What else can you expect from a jinxed trip?