Rohit’s Weblog

If you ask me one good reason why somebody should come to hyderabad, it would definetely be for the food. I have been living all my life over here(except 4 yrs of grad) but I still dont get bored of the food here. So a mention of all the places that have kept me healthy and satiated all these years is worth the effort . Mind you,these are not places I rated based on ambience,service or their intrusion into the pockets. Only one criterion-TASTE.

BIRYANI

Talk about Hyderabad and the first thing that comes to mind is Biryani. There have been lot of contests and debates over which is the best biryani house but my personal favourite is Bawarchi. It has never disappointed me in all my innumerable visits. Need I say more???.

Where: RTC cross roads,just beside the chowrastha.

Also worth a mention: Paradise in Secunderabad ( just for trivia:the owner Ali is a vegetarian ), 4-seasons in Tolichowki,Yatri-Nivas in Begumpet

CHAT

If you consider eating pani puri on a bandi as unhygenic you can skip this part. For chat in hyderabad, Maharaja Chat Bandar is a hot favorite. Ask anybody in jubilee hills and the surrounding areas about Chat and they will be chanting Maharaja. It has already moved three places but has always had its loyalists following its trail. If you are still not convinced check out the community ‘maharaja chat bandar’ on orkut and you will know what I am talking about.

Where: On the road leading to madhapur from jubilee hills, opposite Orchids School

Also worth a mention : Gokul Chat in koti, Hanuman chat bandar in kundanbag and Dimmy’s in Sindhi colony

CHAI (a.k.a Tea)

Hyderabadis love their chai. No wonder you will find a cafe( read kayyff) in every other gully of hyderabad. The eternal combination of irani chai and osmania biskoot is bread and butter for most hyderabadis. Immortalised by the old city style, cafes provides for the best hangouts if ambience is not on your priority. My pick for this category is Madina Cafe in old city.

Where: Pretty close to Charminar,the circle is famous for the cafe and it is called Madina.So just ask.

Also worth a mention : Limrah in Tolichowki, Sarvee in banjara hills(opposite care hospital) , Gaffoor bhai’s chai on road no.10,banjara hills(all through the night)

HALEEM

A Hyderabadi exclusivity!!! only made during the time of Ramzan. This mutton delicacy is high on nutrition and very filling for the appetite. No wonder muslims feast on it when they break their fast in the holy month of Ramzan. This is one good reason for non muslims to await Ramzan and celebrate it in style . My pick for the best Haleem in town is 555 cafe but if hygiene is high on your priority then Pista House.

Where: 555 is near masab tank chowrastha and Pista house is in charminar.(not to worry,it opens its outlets in every gully of hyd)

Also worth a mention : Sarvee in banjara hills, hyderabad house and all the major biryani houses.

ICE CREAM

Ice cream is omnipresent and so is Ohris in hyderabad. For many Hyderabadis like me icecream is synonymous with Ohris. This chain of restaurants started with the name of Havmor offering gourmet sundaes and now it has become a house hold name. It has some signature sundaes which are sinfully awesome. For an icecreamoholic like me,it is a second home. Do try when at ohris- lewinsky,bulls eye and titanic(the biggest sundae in hyderabad).

where: basheerbagh,banjara hills road no.12,prasads,hyderabad central, necklace road.

Also worth a mention : Famous ice cream in mozamjahi market( try all the flavors there and still it wont cost you more than a hundred bucks),amore in eatstreet and madhapur, the kwality walls bandis late in the nite on the empty roads of hyderabad.

CHINESE

Authentic chinese would not go very well with the spice loving Hyderabadis. But there are a lot of places which have incorporated the Hyderabadi flavor. So when you look for good chinese places in Hyderabad don’t be surprised if you don’t find them very authentic. One such place which is an all time favorite among most people is Naan King. It is worth your money and more. Do try the chicken drumsticks there.

Where: Secunderabad,next lane to paradise junction

Also worth a mention : Mainland China in Banjara hills, Ming’s court in ohri’s basheer bagh,Chopsticks in srinagar colony( good for takeaway)

BAKERIES

Mcdonalds,kfcs and pizza huts aside there are a lot of good bakeries which offer good burgers in Hyderabad. The local burgers before the advent of the multi national chains tasted much better. The idea of burger was a lot different and lot better before the advent of mcdonalds. For me a filling burger is the one you get in Universal Bakers. For that matter most of the close-to-home bakeries serve customised junk for local needs.:) If veg pizzas is some thing you are looking for, Pizza den is the place. It is not this hi fi place with waiters doing huddles but it just serves good pizzas. Vac’s pastry house serves some awesome pastries which just melt in the mouth.

Where: Universal bakers in himayath nagar and secunderabad, pizza den and vac’s in thirumalgerry

Also worth a mention: Bakers INN in somajiguda, Midways in banjara hills,Bigbite in srinagar colony

ANDHRA FOOD
The list would be incomplete if I did not mention the traditional andhra food places. I have not been to a lot of these( don’t blame me, I live with my parents) but of the ones I have visited I found Annalakshmi the best. Not a very famous place but I found it had the essentials of a complete andhra meal. Swagath is another hotel which serves very good south Indian tiffins.

Where: Both of them are in Ameerpet( I wouldnt go farther for these I guess)

Also worth a mention: Minerva coffee shop in a lot of places, Chutneys in panjagutta,Spicy venue in jubilee hills.

BUFFETS

For the ideal gourmets, nothing like it. A good spread at reasonable cost and of course good taste is what I would be looking at. There are a lot of places offering buffets at lunch time for very reasonable rates. But I found the most exhaustive spread at Indijoe’s. For me,it is the first place that comes to mind when I am really really hungry and have the appetite to eat a lot.

Where: In city centre mall( do try the other restaurants of bjn group on the same floor)

Also worth a mention: Angeethi in banjara hills, Barbeque nation opposite city centre, If it is late in the nite and you are hungry then OHRIS BANJARA midnite buffet- you may find me there waiting for a place to sit

Caution: All the above are my personal preferences. Extremely addictive, try at your own risk!!!!!

Holi just came and went and it would still take some time for me to get every bit of color off me. I still dont understand the significance of this ‘festival‘ but is quite strange when you imagine a festival to be so un’holy’. Not that I am complaining,I always end up having a blast getting drenched in color. The colors of joy. What is so joyful about colors???? They are so omnipresent that everything in the world is associated with a color. Then why this sudden significance. I guess thats a question for God.But wait a minute, isn’t God having so much fun creating all this color ….. The same color which is the most divisive factor in this colorful world.

What was God thinking? To add to the uniquely distinctive colors of the world,he also tried coloring up the people with different shades,thereby giving a distinct identity to people of different regions. So then came into being the whites,the blacks,the browns and the others. So far so good. What could have gone wrong in such a situation??? Something that even God must be failing to understand-Money

Strangely the economic prosperity of the people started being proportional to the brightness of their color.The fairer skinned homo sapiens colonised the darker regions,enslaved them and downcasted them. Here is the unfair part. The white people have all the money and the better color( I may sound prejudiced here but thats how the world sees). I think the black people are much cooler than the white ones,but I dont think anyone would say they look fairer than the whites. It is so unfair when the word fair(impartial) is used in such good context. The fair were never fair.But the grammarians were fair(skinned) and I guess that explains it. That takes me to another question. Is fair being associated to good looks a perception forced out of economic supremacy.What if the black were the colonisers,would it still be the same perception??? I know it is funny when you ask so many “what ifs” but I guess these things are so ingrained in our society that such questions wont even register to most people.

I guess God only can answer such questions or maybe Russel Peters . Nevertheless we can always have people like Michael Jackson who confuse the Gods and break the color barrier. This post was just a’race of my ‘darker thoughts’(the so prejudiced me) asking me too many questions. I dont think there are answers but it is always good to ask questions.

Sport-A term narrowly used in this nation with ‘the obsessive cricketing disorder’. Being an Indian I would rather stick to the same perspective. Last night I went to watch my friend play for Hyderabad Heroes in the ICL tourney. The stadium was filled beyond my expectation with the spectators trying to associate themselves to a team and support it.Ya I know the local team was playing but what was local in that?-Probably few of our cricketers displaying good fielding skills and few like Rayudu( a prodigy way back in school days) having short stints at batting…but for that it was all the HEROics of Nicky Boje,Justin Kemp and Razzak which saw the Hyderabad Heroes clinch an exciting victory in the contest. So who is benefiting from this ‘rebel’ cricket league?? Probably the local players who are finally seeing some weight in their bank balances or the retired foreign players who are finding their secondary sources of income after a well paying stint at the highest level of the sport in their nations. But is it worth the gamble???

Back to my question-Sport(a.k.a cricket in India) is it a passion or a profession??? A passion when you consider the level of dedication the youngsters put in day in and day out to just make it to the next level. The promise they see in this short lived careers which will keep them happy for a lifetime. The satisfaction of a victory which overshadows every other misery in life.The optimism that makes them fight injuries and bad form. Living the dream of playing for their nation one day. But is it just this or something more????

Now for the villain in the story-MONEY.This is where it all goes wrong. It is the dividing line between passion and profession. Some people are lucky enough to have both.(Sorry software engineers-some people are really lucky:)) If you ask any cricketer about why he chose take up this field you will invariably get the same cliched answer”the passion for the sport”.But does that mean he is not expecting anything out of it. No way-he is human after all. ICL,IPL and many more-these are examples of what money can do to people’s passions. With the BCCI taking the Reliance route in trying to monopolise the league division, I pity the plight of these ICL players who really would be looking into the dark once their 3 year contract ends.But would they have earned even this money if they stayed loyal to their boards.That’s a question left to speculation. After all, for most there is nothing money cant buy.

The ultimate passion for any sportsman would be to play for his nation. The ultimate profession for any person in India would be to play cricket for India. So these two paths would compromise and merge at some stage. But for the other sports like our ‘National Sport’ it is passion that should drive them and a hope to discover a cricket vaccine. What we actually require is an attitude change-Lets hope for the days where every city will support its local teams in all forms of sports and helps building atleast a handful of sporting teams from our billion population ready to take on the world.

And for the ICL matches, I wasn’t too impressed but I guess it is worth the time and money if you are really a big gang and are looking for a place to have some quality fun.And if you are lucky enough like me,you get to see someone like Kemp dispatching the ball out of the stadium.

P.S. -for all those who want to see themselves on TV-no better way:)

What makes hostel life so special???? U gotto stay away from home,wash ur clothes,clean your room,swallow the same mess food for four long years,sleep on the same bedsheet for months together,come back indoors by 930,use the common bathroom structure,fear the warden for all the comon habits …all this and more.But I dont think anybody would have come across a person who hated his hostel life or rather prefers staying at home to hostel.This brings me back to the same question-what makes it so special? mY answer would be-THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE

Staying away from the ‘protective home’ gives you the freedom to indulge in luxuries of a different kind. Probably the word ‘indulge’ is very misleading as it is not what it generally means to most people.The luxuries I am referring to are the situations which will reside in our memories for all the inconvenient reasons.I have had many of those in my hostel life. These are not the luxuries that can be bought because they are consequences of our slightest Impulses.

The most memorable of this was the ‘Coimbatore trip’. There was this sudden impulsive decision to travel for six hours just to have a splash in a water theme park.Thanks to our instant plans there were no buses that evening.The only way we could go was to take the train which left the vellore stn at 11pm.We somehow got ourself to the station just in time to get ourself general tickets.Just like in every other gang we had a guy in ours who was good at handling ppl and getting us seats.But it didn’t work this time and so we had to board the general compartment.I have travelled in crowded compartments before but this was at another level .People were sleeping even on the floor and we really had to balance ourselves on one leg and hang on.There was no hope of the situation getting better as everyone was heading to the last stop-Coimbatore.Time was going by. We were actually laughing at our plight.And slowly one by one,all of us dozed off while standing. Sleeping while standing??–Oh yeah! Been there done that:) The next day was a blast. We were completely exhausted at end of day. Not risking it this time we went to the bus-stand to get a bus to vellore but our trip just had to get better.We did not get a direct bus and so we had to change SEVEN buses in the span of 8 hours to finally get to Vellore at 10 am next morning.I hardly remember which places we had to get off and get on into another bus as all of us were half dead and only got off when the conductors told us that it was their last stop.The next day we slept ,slept and slept. Could I have had this luxury if I was at home? A big  NOOO

The impromptu visits to Bangalore and Chennai sitting at the doorway of the general compartments,watching a Chiranjeevi movie on first day in Chittoor sitting on a bench(the lowest fare ticket-it was a virtual spitoon pool there),eating biryani from a pot on a banana leaf in chittor(it was sooooo yummy),trying to give genuine excuses to our warden for our late nite returns to hostel,getting locked in our own rooms for hours together, going to the local vellore theatre and watching movies sitting on the wooden seats alongside some members of the rodent family:),watching tamil movies,10 fully grown people travelling in one auto,feasting on maggi and lays for days together…and much more….These are small little incidents that make hostel life so special.These are luxuries by every sense of the word as I wouldnt mind going through it all over again. These luxuries are very light on the pocket but the memories they leave you with are PRICELESS.

My first trip after weeks in Hyderabad was more worthwhile than i thought.A weekend in Mumbai-the finance capital of India has left me with an everlasting impression.On friday nite when i entered the CS airport I was spellbound by its grandeur. An airport of international standard built by our own GVK group. Now….is this pride a result of ‘regionalism‘??. I sure wouldnt be mentioning that as you may never know-some ‘political ruffians’ may demolish it saying it has been built by an “outsider”.

Staying away from politics,the most striking feature of Mumbai is its lifeline-the local train. I bought a first class ticket which was 8 times the cost of a normal ticket hoping to be treated ‘Royally’. But the hope didnt last long as it took 2 trains to pass by before I could squeeze into one of them.If this was the plight of 1st class you can well imagine the condition in 2nd class.My friend mentioned that the advantage of 1st class is that the underarms smell a little nicer.:) This is the price the mumbaikars have to pay thanx to the heavy traffic which will take them 2hrs to cover a distance of 10 kms. But do they complain.NO-there lies the charm of the city. On one side there was no place to breathe but everyone was in their own world singing songs,commenting and helping out others.

After almost a roller coaster ride from one part of the city to another I reached Colaba-the most beautiful area of Bombay.Every building here starting from the railway station is in the catholic style. Quite an irony considering the fact that it is the Hindus and Muslims who stake claim to this eternal city and are always invigorated to express it violently.The gateway of India was a stark example of the ostentatious spending of Indian wealth by the English. I dont think we should complain as the govt seems to be making a lot of money from the tourists to this area.The hangouts in colaba are buzzing and exuberant. There is a complete contrast in cultural representation in this area. ‘Night Life ‘ of Mumbai is not worth a mention as it is just like the day there.There are no odd hours.People are in this constant race to get ahead in life and time seems to be no constraint to their aspirations.

Next stop was Marine drive. A walk past this road is theultimate relaxing experience. It was like bright daylight at 3 a.m and I was quite surprised to find the people of the fairer sex confidently roaming around at that time of the nite/day. I can never imagine the same sense of security anywhere else in India. With sea on one side and the offices and hotels for the rich and the famous on the other,the marine drive is quite a treat for the eyes.I lost track of time sitting there and staring into the darkness of the sea.

A city with its own pulse. A city which has seen the worst kind of violence and also  seen many people rise and create history. A city which has a charm of its own.Mumbai-India’s past and its future.          SAlAAm BoMBaY