Hydera-bad to possibly nation’s best

As someone familiar with both cities should know Hyderabadis are Delhiites of Indiarsquos South A sense of entitlement of course naturally permeates the rentseeking rich in most political capitalsAs New Delhi has been since 1911 and for the seven cities before it Likewise for Hyderabad that pretty much remained the capital of Indiarsquos richest largest princely state for 224 years under Asaf Jahi dynasty or Nizams as it wereThatrsquos until the Indian government took over Hyderabad state through military intervention termed Police Action postindependence in 1948The party language of Hyderabadis I notice is a mix of showy brashness and warm generosity The latter lasts so long as the former doesnrsquot prevail over a prickly egoFor a popularly favourable surname an usher at a casino in Goa told me he followed a simple rule Watch a Reddy enter just follow the moneyA friendly young wellconnected Reddy has got me into a nightspot in the afterhours while the cityrsquos presumably shut Itrsquos essentially to know someone in Hyderabad Irsquom told a guy behind me just a flashed a gun at the terrace bar I donrsquot turn around to verifyThe cover of the book The Hyderabadis by Daneesh MajidAlbeit in the newer landscape of Hyderabad around HITEC City my host is an oldtime local I know mdash from his peculiarly Dakhani Urdu which apparently also bears tracesinfluences from Marathi Kannada Telugu the spoken parts that the Nizams once ruledTo North Indians this makes Hyderabad a rare city comfortable with Hindi in the South where so many of them moved chasing IT dream jobs late 1990s onwardsAs for the buzzingly nocturnal scene my theory is a city organically upgrades its nightlife if a movie industry resides in it Hyderabad got its showbiz only around late 1980srsquo90sWhich explains hot addresses JubileeBanjara Hills that blossomed with Hyderabadrsquos Film Nagar built from scratch once Andhra Pradeshrsquos superstarturnedCM NT Rama Rao invited his colleagues to move Telugu film production from Madras to his hoodHe offered grants Visionaries like Ramoji Rao wildly invested Telugu cinema since has pretty much surpassed ChennaiTamilIt has primarily swung around five or six family trees related by bloodmatrimony the likes of DaggubatiAkkineni AlluKonidela Rootedness is complete Rebels however suitably prosperItrsquos still the Andhraites who establishedruled this movie industryAs in Telugu speaking people from Madras presidency who merged with the Telugu speaking regions within Nizamrsquos Hyderabad ie Telangana to form Andhra Pradesh Indian states got reorganised languagewise in 1956Was there fiction between the OG Telangana and the more economically demographically dominant Andhra lot in HyderabadSince the first such agitation on that issue in 1969 yes Or even before that in the rsquo50s what with a lsquomulkirsquolsquononmulkirsquo nativesettler divideAs per Daneesh Majidrsquos painstakingly researched book of oral history titled Hyderabadis From 1947 to Present Day being 2024 this Andhraled discrimination could be observed at the movies tooWherein Telangana characters whose Telugu is inevitably laced with Urdu were usually mocked as villains and comical sidekicks This possibly changed once Telangana got separated from Andhra in 2014 making the great olrsquo Hyderabad the capital of Indiarsquos youngest stateA popular example Majid cites is a movie called Mallesham 2019 where ldquothe titular protagonist is shown speaking Telangana Telugu while Abdul a minor character responds in Dakhanirdquo This must be a big dealDakhani was the official language of Nizamrsquos Hyderabad It got replaced with English once the Indian government took overAs Majid narrates this led to Hyderabadrsquos old elites from aristocracy to bureaucracy steering toward the Gulf during the 1970s oil boom Much like HyderabadAndhrarsquos Englishspeaking engineering grads took up STEM jobs in the US later in the 1980srsquo90sI suppose Hyderabad wouldrsquove remained a rich remittance economy best known for its ruinsfortsmuseumsbazaars if wasnrsquot for Y2K a software hoax of the late rsquo90s when key characters emergedLocal entrepreneur Ramalinga Raju Satyam Computers vastly expanded his empire of software clients in the US Thousands of offshore jobs landed in HyderabadYoursquod have to go extra to service such new economy You learn from the Netflix docseries Bad Boy Billionaires Raju even offered Hyderabad Metro for free in lieu of land around tracks There was so much landThe statersquos selfstyled CEOtype CM Chandrababu Naidu from Telugu Desham Party TDP was the right kingmaker at the right time with MPs that could topple governments in New Delhi midrsquo90s to 2004You can tell from Believerrsquos Dilemma mdash Abhishek Choudharyrsquos brilliant biography of Atal Behari Vajpayee mdash how Naidu negotiating as BJPrsquos regionalcoalition partner made Hyderabad the centre ofDelhirsquos attentionOver decades you can experience the effect driving down through shiny architecture sparse highrises from Indiarsquos topend airport since 2008 mdash toward any direction north to Kompally east to Ramoji Film City mdash for scores and scores of kilometres with zero trafficAnd roads wider than the Global South let alone Indiarsquos Rents half of Mumbai with homes thrice its size You could move here in a heartbeat provided jobs exist and nativityrsquos not an issueIn 2024 TDPrsquos Naidu helped BJP form government in New Delhi as crucial regional ally His top priorityrsquos to build Amaravati new capital for Andhra Pradesh that hersquos now its CMIf itrsquos another Hyderabad mdash it would be the future that India desperately deservesMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper