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Anvar Alikhan

It contains all the sundry bric-a-brac that crowded a nawab's life -- from the armies of tin soldiers he played with as a child to his rather more adult playthings: a priceless collection of jade; antique bronzes; marble statuary; an eclectic assemblage of paintings; jewellery; ivory; and rare illuminated manuscripts.

There are 36 halls filled with these treasures, some exquisite, others perhaps merely idiosyncratic. But of all of them my own personal favourite is Benzini's classic marble statue of The Veiled Rebecca -- her features softly, tremblingly real under the translucent folds of her white marble veil. (My father remembers this statue from his childhood visits to Nawab Salar Jung's deodi, or palace: apparently it used to stand outside, by the fountains that played in the front courtyard. And sometimes, he recalls, in the moonlight, or in a drizzle of rain, the pale marble figure would inexplicably seem to come to life, like some wistful family ghost come to visit its old home…)

I went to see Salar Jung's deodi some years ago. There was not much left of it, even then. Part of it had been sold off to house a super-bazaar, a sub-registrar's office and a freight transport company; the rest of it lay there, sadly derelict.

I looked around for a caretaker, but there didn't seem to be anybody around. Pushing open a rickety gate, I hesitantly went in. As I entered there was a large formal courtyard, now silent and desolate, inhabited only by a small flutter of startled pigeons. From upstairs, dark, empty sockets of windows looked down on pools of green stagnant water, and fountains that obviously hadn't played for a generation or more. (Was this where the Veiled Rebecca had once stood?)

Beyond this courtyard lay a hall of mirrors -- the huge mirrors themselves now tarnished in their gilt frames, batting ghostly reflections endlessly from one wall to the other. An old man with a painful, racking cough lay sleeping on the floor in the far corner. That was all.

My imagination began to do strange things: I heard an orchestra playing 1920s dance music; I saw men in glittering brocade sherwanis; I saw dozens of Blue Persian cats (the kind the Nawab was apparently so fond of) and, for some reason, Bugatti cars parked outside in the driveway.

By this time the old man with the cough had gotten up and shuffled across the hall to me. Who was I? What did I want? Where had I come from? He was frail and his eyes fearful. I tried to explain, but he cut me off with anxiously gesticulating hands, "Yahaan kuchh nahin hai," ("There is nothing here. There is nothing here.") His words carried a sad irony that he probably didn't intend. I left the deodi, and went home.

Down the road from where Salar Jung's deodi used to stand lies the Char Minar and the vivid, bustling bazaars where the spirit of old Hyderabad still lives on. It's here, for instance, that you'll find the nahari stalls that serve the steaming sheep's-trotter broth and kulchas that form the traditional Hyderabad breakfast. (The best time to come is just before sunrise on a winter morning, when there's still a slight shiver in the air and the echoes of the azaan -- the call to prayer -- hang lightly over the city.)

It's here, too, that you'll find the traditional chai-khanas, or teahouses, known for their hearty repartee and their burqe-vali-chai (literally, 'the tea that wears a veil' -- a reference to the thick layers of cream on top). Then there are all the narrow little streets with their specialist trades: the street of the silver-beaters, the street of the flower-sellers, the street of the apothecaries… and, of course, Lad Bazaar, the street of the bangle-sellers.

Named, perhaps appropriately, after a pampered and beautiful Qutub Shahi princess, Lad Bazaar is lined on one side with shops selling brightly coloured glass bangles -- and on the other side, with those selling traditional Hyderabadi cosmetics, bridal accessories and attar, or perfumes.

I remember going into one of these attar shops once. Its crowded shelves boasted 68 different varieties of attar, ranging from agargarkhi kohna, distilled from a rare, fragrant Assamese wood (and retailing at nearly Rs 2,000 a tola) down to the somewhat more egalitarian manoranjan (at just about Rs 10 a tola).

The owner of the shop was a picturesque-looking old gentleman with eyes delicately lined with surma (antimony), and a tiny wad of attar-soaked cotton tucked in his right ear. "There are basically two kinds of attar" he explained to me, chewing a paan with relish. "First, there are the warm winter attars, made from musk, ambergris and other spices. And then there are the cooling summer attars, distilled from flowers like the chameli, motia and gulab."

He insisted that I sample various of his wares on the inside of my wrist, intoning the names as he offered them to me. Each was more romantic-sounding than the last: Rooh-e-hina (The Spirit of Henna), Attar-e-gil (The Fragrance of Wet Earth) Zulf-e-Uroos (The Tresses of the Bride). And Gulab Istanbole (The Roses of Istanbul).

Meanwhile, in another hidden corner of the shop I discovered a side business: charms that the old gentleman sold to cure rheumatism. ("You tie the charm around your foot at night, read a certain prayer from the Quran and then blow over the afflicted part. Do this for forty nights, and, God willing, your rheumatism will go away.")

There was a time than you would offer a person a dab of attar as casually as you would today offer him a cigarette. A time when you might have your coins washed with scented soap before you deigned to touch them. A time when you might hire a cook who specialized in the art of preparing one single exotic dessert, like saq-e-uroos (The Ankles of the Bride), or gil-e-firdaus (The Earth to Paradise). It was a time, too, when you might dismiss a servant, but continue to pay him for the rest of his life, because, after all, how could you deprive him of his livelihood?

Sikandar Ali Wajd, the celebrated Hyderabad poet summed up this ethos in one pithy verse:

"Dar banaye na gaye tere khazane ke liye Haath hain waqf zar-o-maal lutane ke liye Dard hai dil mein tere sare zamane ke liye Ki saqawat na kabhi tu ne dikhane ke liye"

("There were no doors that were erected to guard your treasures, Your hands were made to happily squander great bounties, Your heart ached in sympathy with the whole world And your generosity was never for public display".)

Today, in place of all this, there's a major electronics complex, a nuclear fuel plant, numerous assorted industries and, I am informed, research centers for geophysics and photgrammetry… whatever on earth they might be.

Pictures courtesy AP Tourism

Hyderabad City Guide

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