‘With modernity, we lost the essence of our unique Hyd’

This week’s Hyderabond introduced us to HARIBABU KASTURI, a striking architect who has watched the city of Hyderabad grow and change since the early 1990s. In this conversation, we were shown the exquisite transformation of history, particularly in the Old City. We were indeed experiencing the best of Nizami culture in this private conversation — a culture that readers of today would love to read about.
“It feels almost like I’m reliving my childhood memories with this interview. I was born and raised in Khairatabad; therefore, I have vivid memories of the early 1990s. I believe I can now describe those glorious days when we lived a luxurious lifestyle and how, as a result of modernity, we lost the essence of our unique Hyderabad over the next 27 years,” commences the computer science graduate from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University.
The NTR Garden of today, which used to be known as Mint Compound, served as a sizable playground for children, teenagers, and locals. Cricket was played on the same field by at least four teams, without a single field being overlapped. After NTR’s death, our interviewee feels we lost the land to NTR Park. He continues, “Near the entrance to NTR Park today, there were enormous, seven-story buildings that were the abandoned remnants of a thermal power plant. We used to sneak into those buildings with our gangs and play hide-and-seek; these buildings may be seen in Venkatesh’s Kondapalli Raja movie too.”
The entire area was buried beneath the Tank Bund, including the road beneath the Khairatabad flyover, the Necklace Road, and the IMax theatre. He still recalled seeing trucks fill the bed of Hussain Sagar with boulders and silt to create space for today’s IMAX. All children should enjoy this adventurous region, he suggests. As children, they used to sneak into the water of the tank bund and feel like heroes by not telling their parents. “When we were younger, we loved taking double-decker buses throughout the city and hated getting on single-deckers because we thought they weren’t up to par. These double-deckers had bells that would ring when the bus pulled to a stop, and we would play tricks by ringing at random stops. Our favourite routes to sneak in and out of were 5K, 7Z, and 9C,” he added.
In those days, gang-related fights and street battles in Hyderabad were both fairly prevalent. He used to receive unofficial notices that someone would be beaten up the following week, and witnesses would also be beaten up. There have been times when he saw two ethnic groups fighting while travelling by bus from Narayanguda to Chader Ghat! In fact, “Curfews were incredibly prevalent back then; we used to secure full closures for companies, schools, and other establishments. We also dared to purchase kites on the black market inside a strong RAF security perimeter.”
Then, after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, he met a group of folks who, in the wee hours of the morning, literally burned the wooden sleepers on the railroad tracks. For the first time in his life, he witnessed the damage that an enraged mob can cause to public property. Or, “Combination of diesel, electric, and steam engines travelling between Kachiguda, Nampally, and Secunderabad. Up until 1999, Hyderabad operated steam locomotives between Hyderabad and Secunderabad. It was amazing to watch, with the train moving slowly and emitting steam the entire time.”