I can’t really explain my upbringing without speaking about Hyderabad and Hyderabadi society which I was born into and grew up in. It was a very different place from what we see today. I don’t mean that in a judgmental fashion, but just to state facts. Let me explain.

We had time. We had friends about whom we did not care what they owned; only what they were. After all, we all went to the darzee to have our clothes stitched. All of us wore our elder siblings’ hand-me-downs without shame or embarrassment. We read Louis L‘Amour – I still do. Ice cream was an outing to a place in Maozzamjahi Market (that shop still exists) that made it in wooden buckets filled with ice and it came in all kinds of fresh fruit flavors and was full of crunchy ice crystals. We had servants but they were more in the nature of family members who took care of us. They ate what we ate, some slept in our house and some in their own cottages (outhouses) next door in the same compound. They had the authority to correct us children if we stepped out of line including administering a clip on the ear if that was required. They received a salary of course, but in addition, all their needs and the needs of their families were taken care of by their employers; ranging from medical care to schooling for their children and eventually getting them married. When they died, we took care of their last rites. We children never called them by name. They were always addressed respectfully as brother or uncle or aunt. Of course, that didn’t apply to their children who were our playmates and some eventually came into our service when we and they grew up. Consequently, we had people who had been serving our family for three or four generations or more.

We lived in houses with large compounds (yards, gardens), big trees, shrubs and grass, and the regulation Hawz (water cistern) which played both a useful and decorative role. There being no powered means of drawing water, all water for gardening came from the Hawz using muscle power. Ours was to one side of the garden and I had planted Water Lilies in it. You plant the Lilies in a pot and sink the pot. After a few days, the thick shiny leaves come to the surface. The flowers were gorgeous, and the leaves and flowers provided refuge for small fish which I had put into the cistern; guppies and other tropical fish that eat mosquito larvae. Without the water lily cover, they would be very quickly eaten by the Pied Kingfishers which were always on the lookout for an easy meal.

I love gardening and did all the work myself, sometimes in the first rain of the season, getting soaked in it while I worked. I can still (believe me) feel, yes actually feel, the soft, crumbly, brittle feel of good soil mixed with good, organic manure that I would fill into the 18″ x 18″ pits that I dug for my rose bushes. Our garden had Hoopoes, Mynahs, and Rose Ringed Parakeets. The gables of the tiled roof of our house had nests of the House Sparrow (Khana Chidiya – Khanchudi in Dakni) which lived up to its name. They made an incredible din starting at first light all the way until it got dark with a short lull in the middle of the afternoon when the heat made even the sparrows shut up. Their nests were considered a nuisance because of the of bits of grass and feathers they littered. But today I would gladly give anything to see a sparrow in Hyderabad city. The sparrows would eat the grain that was scattered for our chickens and also take from our dining tables when we weren’t looking.

In summer you could see them with their wings raised slightly, their little beaks half open, panting in the heat. We would put out an earthenware dish of water for them and any other birds that happened along. They were bold little birds which sometimes got tame enough to eat from your hand. Today thanks to the widespread use of pesticides in our fields, which poisoned their food, and the change in our architecture, which deprived them of nesting sites, sparrows have completely disappeared from our lives, and we are impoverished by their absence. It is amazing how one can get emotionally attached to a bird. I recall the delighted reaction of ‘meeting an old friend’ when recently I saw some sparrows in Bangalore airport. They seem to have found nesting sites under the eaves of the airport roof and eat from the tables in the food court.

We had a lot of crows – grey and black and the occasional raven, completely black with a deeper, coarser call. The monsoon’s arrival would be announced by the Koel’s (Cuckoo) call which many find irritating. However, I love it as it signals rain and departure of the intense heat of May. Koels are brood parasites and lay their eggs in Crow’s nests after pushing out the crow’s eggs. The poor crow couple unwittingly hatches and brings up a rival, apparently unable to distinguish between the eggs or the chicks. There were a fair number of Spotted and Ring-necked Doves (Faaqta) and Red Vented Bulbuls and of course Green Bee Eaters. We had Scaly Breasted Munias, Owlets, Purple Sunbirds, and Lesser Golden Backed Woodpeckers. Then there were the Babblers (called Seven Sisters), busily grubbing in the leaf litter under hedges and bushes. At night the Peepul tree in the garden used to be filled with Grey and Pond Herons and Egrets, roosting there with much argument about who could sit on which branch, meanwhile sending down a rain of guano. Not a safe exercise to sit under the Peepul unless you wanted to be painted white in bird droppings. Strangely we didn’t see too many Rock Pigeons in those days except on the outskirts of the city or in Golconda Fort, Makkah Masjid and the Qutub Shahi Tombs. Today Hyderabad is filled with pigeons and devoid of Sparrows, Hoopoes (Hudhud) and almost all the other birds I mentioned above.

We used to go to Kamat Hotel or Taj Mahal Hotel every Sunday morning for a breakfast of Masala Dosa. That was usually preceded by Idli/Vada combo and followed with Basundi and freshly ground and roasted filter coffee. The aroma alone was enough to send any coffee lover into paroxysms of delight. That was a big highlight because our cook did not how to make Dosas and in any case it was much more fun to go to Kamat/Taj Mahal and eat it there. I can still smell the aroma of a mixture of ghee, agarbatti, sambar and filter coffee which was Kamat’s trademark perfume. We would go for a walk on Tank Bund, the dam of Hussain Sagar. The rock on which the Buddha statue now stands used to be the post-fishing drying dock for cormorants. The lake had fish and did not stink. Sometimes I would walk along the railway track which at one point crossed a small inlet of the lake. There was good fishing there if you cast from the track itself. Of course, you had to watch for trains and run back to the embankment and get off the track but that was a game.

We did not have telephones. Only those with ‘pull’ could get a phone. For ordinary mortals, a phone connection took fifteen years to materialize. If you paid Rs. 15,000 (an absolute fortune) you would get a telephone connection in three to four years. We had to either go to the post office to make a call or request a shopkeeper who had a phone to allow us to make a call. After the call, you were closely questioned about what you had said, to whom, why and told what you should do about the matter. They charged Rs. 2 for that and listened to the conversation and dispensed free advice if they thought you needed it. Or maybe it was simply a bonus for using their phone. But no matter what, you politely listened, nodded your head appropriately, thanked them and left. Everyone lived everyone else’s life. In the days when a cup of tea cost Rs. 0.25, Rs. 2 was a lot of money.

We traveled by bus most of the time. I went to school by bus and later cycled. A great feeling of freedom to have my own transportation, when I got my bicycle. It was a Raleigh. Buses were clean, ran mostly on time and were very cheap. We had a car – a Fiat 1100, which my father paid Rs. 11,000 for in 1962. He sold it eventually in 1979 for Rs. 30,000. Was that asset appreciation or inflation? He got one of the drivers at Hyderabad Allwyn Metal Works, the company where he was the Medical Officer, to teach me how to drive. When I had learnt and had a license, I asked him one day if I could take the car to visit a friend.

He replied, ‘No. You can have a car when you buy your own.’

‘So why did you teach me to drive?’ I asked him.

‘Because that is an essential skill that you need to learn.’

And that was that.

Should I write a concluding paragraph to this? Or should I just leave it, because that, was that?