For a few years now I have been hearing this sad story of how the old Hyderabad is no more. How the people have changed. How manners are almost non-existent. How life itself is so different.

Whatever happened to Ganga-Jamni? What happened to Tehzeeb? What happened to Biryani?

Nothing! I mean nothing...just nothing is the same any more.

And each generation thinks they had the best of it all. And every previous generation thinks that the latter is doomed.

I must confess that I too sing the same song often.

But today, I had an accident that shook me up. Woke me up with a resounding clap on my back. And I feel like Gautam Buddha playing lead guitar with Nirvana.

The accident, a small, insignificant and silly one, took place in Attapur. Opposite one of those many ‘numbered’ pillars. (Attapur by the way, is the land that time forgot when the PVNR Expressway was built).

I was taking a gentle turn. And I got distracted for a moment. A sign board it was that caught my attention, mind you. Not a girl. But before I knew it, my car’s engine was resting on the road divider, a small one between the main road and the service road. My car looked like a plane about to take off like a Diwali Rocket. And I felt like a pilot under the renowned G Force.

I got off the car with great difficulty...more because of my girth than the state of mild shock that I was in. But as I touched the ground I saw about ten men standing around me making clucking noises.

Suddenly one guy took charge. Told me to get into the car. Organised the troops and started to rock the car, then tried to lift it. When that did not work he asked me to take out the car jack from the boot.

I am feeling like a worm now...because I thought for a moment that...that was a ruse to get me to the back of the car while the others looted the stuff on my front seat.

But all they did was to manage to get a rock under my tire and then told me to reverse out in one stroke.

I did.

And even before I could get off the car after parking it up ahead, they all vanished. Without even allowing me to say Thank You.

I don’t want to talk about which community these people were. That would be tacky.

But they were all Hyderabadis. Their spirit was Hyderabadi. Their selfless rescue was Hyderabadi. Their going away without a fuss and without any expectation of a reward was Hyderabadi.

The way they teased me about losing concentration because I saw a Restaurant Board was Hyderabadi. The way the Restaurant Owner who had seen the accident, welcomed me in and gave me a glass of water was Hyderabadi.

That’s when it hit me.

Hyderabad never died. Hyderabad never forgot what it was all about.

It is we who have strayed. It is we who have moved onto different places. Allowed ourselves to get influenced by the commercial tones of a cosmopolitan nightmare.

Looks like we thought that becoming businessmen meant that we should forget our roots. Looks like we took innocence and naivety and put it into our boots. Embarrassed with those feelings and emotions in front of our new fangled friends.

Friends who have made deserted hills their gold plated paradise. Reclaimed land from the earth below lakes, like a Money Lender collecting interest.

And yet we call ourselves Hyderabadis.

Hell. The guy who thinks Sheikh Peer was a poet who the world called Shakespeare, is a Hyderabadi. The chap who thinks that Mehmood’s slang is typical, is not Hyderabadi. Not by far sir. I assure you.

And all I can say to those of you who feel like I do...

Come on through...
to the other side!!!