Nampally Station Road is an arterial road in Hyderabad connecting the old, upmarket business district of Abids to the Hyderabad Railway Station. This road and the area near the station are now congested and chaotic. When I drive through this chaos, memories of the 1950s Nampally stream before my mind.
My parents came to Hyderabad in the late 1940s from interior Tamil Nadu as my father was offered a clerk’s job in a small private bank at Abids. My parents, elder sister and I formed an idyllic lower middle class family living in a small rented house in Nampally. The locality where we lived was called Gadwal Rani Compound. Before the liberation of Hyderabad, this area of about an acre formed the rani of Gadwal’s Hyderabad retreat. It had a majestic bungalow surrounded by small quarters for the rani’s servants and service providers. As recalled by my mother, the place was a feast to the eyes, with orchards, fountains and streams meandering through colourful flower beds.
After Independence, the rani’s bungalow was converted into a college and the many servant quarters were rented out to tenants like us. Our neighbours in the compound were mostly Telugu and Tamil families who had also migrated to Hyderabad mostly for jobs in the Railways or private sector. These families mingled and bonded well, possibly to compensate for the loss of roots in Andhra and Tamil Nadu, from where they hailed.
We stayed there till I finished my fifth standard. It was unforgettable for its simple delights and joys: flying kites, playing marbles and holi, bursting Deepavali crackers and setting up ‘golu’ for Dasara. Occasional visits to the movies, strolls in the nearby public gardens, the ritualistic yearly visit to the All India Industrial Exhibition and the circus, were the bonuses.
The Nampally Station Road was calm, clean, laidback with a few buses, rickshaws and an occasional horse-drawn tonga. Now, it is truly a symbol for the race of the fastest growing metropolis in India. True, I am driving an air-conditioned car; true, I carry a cell phone that can connect me with anyone; true also that the genteel, nawabi city has transformed into a dynamic IT and services hub. Yet, somehow, the heart longs for the simple joyous Nampally life of a bygone era.
Tennyson’s lines occur to me as I think about an irrevocable, vanished past: “What is this life if, full of care We have no time to stand and stare No time to see, when woods we pass Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.”
S Ramachandran
Email: sram1949@gmail.com