Narayanaguda. YMCA. Used to be an epic dimension of our daily lives
in 80s. It is all set to change from this Sankranti as the last of the
metro train stations (part of the green line) will open this festival
connecting one of the busiest areas to the bustling Hyderabad Metro to
one of the most vibrant areas which had its sparkling days filled with
fun and frustrations (of traffic). Narayanaguda metro once opened will
go all the way to Mahatma Gandhi Bus Depot in Gowliguda taking the
narrowest roads of Sultan Bazar, Badi Chowdi, Chikkadpally all the way
to Secunderabad Railway Station. This part of Hyderabad, this dense part
of Hyderabad is where we lived for a large part of our lives once my
parents decided to settle down in Hyderabad. Where do I start
recollecting the symbols of our childhood which have now disappeared or
relocated to other ares?
Padmavati Stationery. Still one of the
best stationery shops for artists and students with the best of paper
and drawing materials but fragmented so much that each brother of the
third generation has taken one part of the Stationery business.
The Petrol Pump of Narayanaguda has survived. But opposite Padmavati
Stationery there was another famous stationery shop called Anil
Stationery. While Padmavati was run by close-knit Vysya community, Anil
Stationery had two big shops run by marwaris. Both these shops competed
with cut-throat pricing and competitiveness but once the patriarch died,
both the groups fell out but Anil Stationery folded up sooner, giving
way to a commercial complex that houses some quick service restaurant
and another Padmavati branch of the brothers who split.
Next to
Anil was the Camlin shop - still the original favorite for school-kids -
which had the best of charcoal pencils, postal colors and orange-color
geometry boxes proudly branding Camlin. That shop disappeared almost a
decade back but while it lasted it was the sole distributor of Camlin
products and one of the best-kept secrets of Narayanaguda. They hardly
sold retail products and encouraged walk-in customers to buy wares from
Padmavati or Anil next-door. But our family had a great relationship and
I used to draw and paint in my middle-school using all the special
high-quality colors from Camlin including oil pastels and oil colors.
The high-point for me was in 1979 when I won the All India Children's
Painting Competition conducted by an agency as popular as Shankar's.
Right next to our house, which was atop Padmavati was a famous tailor
called YAK's tailors. The fellow was more famous than today's Reid and
Taylors or Manyavars or Kochin's. He was designing bespoke suits and
exotic dresses for aristocratic men and corporate executives. I don't
remember having anything bought for myself because I was still a toddler
and by the time I wore pants I was out of that area. My father had a
great rapport with YAK's. The highlight of YAK's was in the 80s when
Megastar Chiranjeevi burst open in Cinema. After the film "Devanthakudu"
was released which had Chiranjeevi tame the mighty god Yama, YAK's
owner got an idea to produce a film with Chiranjeevi by launching his
daughter as heroine. The film was titled "Dhairyavanthudu". I don't
remember much about the film but it bombed at the box-office leaving
YAK's Tailors financially crippled. Within a few months, YAK's folded up
and disappeared from the Streets of Narayanaguda.
RK Library
used to be at the place opposite Deepak bus stand. It was the
single-best library of the twin cities and used to be one of the
heritage icons of Hyderabad. Everything from "Competition Success
Review" to "India Today" to Archie Comics to TinTin to Amar Chitra Katha
and PG Wodehouse used to be there. It was the best watering hole for
youngsters as well as elders looking for sensational headline copies of
"Blitz" and "Illustrated Weekly of India" or "Sunday" magazine. Within a
constrained room of 300 sqft, Rashid and his father who ran the shop
with passion and commitment to keep the reading habit alive those days.
It formed the bedrock of my reading habit, made me win several quizzes
including the Tinkle Quiz where I stood Second in 1983 beaten only by
Vamsee Juluri, actress Jamuna Ramana Rao's prodigal son. RK Library,
when I last saw a few years ago disappeared as Rashid became less
interested to keep the circulating library alive, his interests were
into skating since then and that became his main bread-winner vocation.
What I miss is those scribbles in a long-rule registers Rashid used to
maintain which had on each page the name of the book renter, the rent of
one rupee to two rupees per day for each magazine and the deposit money
of around Rupees Twenty Five to Fifty. Magazines like "Time",
"Newsweek", "Life" and "Punch" had higher rents and hiked deposit fees.
It used to be quite a sight those days to see all the boys and girls
park their BSA-SLR bicycles and pretend to browse the books and
periodicals when actually we were all interested to observe each other
and flirt if possible. After we moved out of the area and moved away
from Narayanaguda, when I started building my own book collection which
is sizable by any standard, I always had one eye on Rashid's collection.
If there was anybody on earth who had all the books of PG Wodehouse, I
knew it has to be Rashid. But Alas! I lost touch at the crucial time he
made up his mind to dispose off all his collection to one of the
used-book sharks of the city.
As you walk down the path of Deepak
theater from YMCA, many other shops which had epic followership have
disappeared from the street. Keerti Medical Shop next to the Irani
Restaurant was the most famous medical shop of those days run by
Gujarati brothers - met with the same fate as Padmavati. Lack of
succession planning and split among the brothers. Bapujee Electricals
was another famous electrical shop which had seen better days. Swatantra
Medicals, one of the best medical shops opposite Deepak. It survives
but as a pale shadow of what it used to be. BN Brothers - undoubtedly
the best grocer and supermarket of the 70s and 80s - it had the best
variety chocolates, talcum powders, dry fruits and other confectionary
items. Households flocked to BN Brothers to give any fancy general store
item or edible item including the knick knacks for birthday parties.
Next to them was a bakery run by Aga Khan muslims - it had the best salt
biscuits and crescent chand biscuits and fruit juices those days. Again
disappeared. Rao & Co, another famous dealer of electronic items
had a loyal customer from our house, my mother. In those days, my father
had a salary of six hundred rupees and my mother drew one hundred and
fifty rupees from their vocations but Mr Rao always found a financing
solution to everything we added in the eighties including USHA sewing
machine, Dyanora TV, Philips Radio, Sony Taperecorder and so on. The
last time my mother and I visited Mr Rao was in late nineties when cable
television already became a rage and my mother bought another color TV
for my Baamma on finance.
Back those days, it was possible to
breeze through any distance of unto 3 kms in manual-pulled rickshaws. It
cost us just fifty paise to go to Chikkadpally to meet my cousins. And
most theaters were in the vicinity of Narayanaguda. Shanti theater is
still around, Deepak was next-door too, Venkatesa and Srinivasa we used
to walk to, Basant theater and Venkataramana and Padmavati theaters we
used to walk to. We took rickshaws only to go to RTC X Road theaters
like Sangam, Sudarshan, Sandhya and Subhash (now Usha Mayuri). Odeon and
Saptagiri came much later. Or even to go to Thyagaraya Gaana Sabha in
Chikkadpally. That reminds me of Kishore Theater and the funny story
about it when my father started practicing and also did some project
consultancy.
Kishore was one of the best theaters those days and
had an unsusually elegant facade. You could walk into the door by buying
the ticket right next to the door - it gave you a nice cosy feeling. No
other theater gave you that ambience except maybe Liberty theater in
Himayatnagar. But Kishore was a great theater and it was so close,
closer to our home than either Deepak or Shanti theaters. So close that
once my parents goaded me and my brother Aditya to go to "Alien" a scary
movie about a creature popping out of your stomach in space. The movie
scared my younger brother so much that he said I am walking back home
while I said I will hang on. He ran out of the theater scared while I
selfishly watched the movie - but it was so safe and close those days to
watch a movie in Kishore. If I remember, two of the biggest flop films
of the 80s had their movies inaugurate the theater. One was a Jitendra
starrer "Aasha" and the other was a Telugu film called "Buchibabu"
starring ANR and Jayaprada. Both bombed at the box office but Kishore
gave us amazing memories including films like "Rahasya Goodachari"
starring Krishna and Jayaprada and countless Hollywood films including
Bond thrillers. Then all of a sudden the theater was shut and everything
from Supermarket to Furniture shops sprung up on the outer facade of
the theater.
One of the less-known secrets of Kishore was that
he asked my father to prepare a project report on alternatives to a
movie-flex. My father gave a detailed project report and said it will
cost Rupees Fifty Thousand those days.The owner agreed to pay but after
collecting the Report dodged payment for several weeks and months.
Eventually, my father realized he rendered charity to the owner. After a
gap of over a decade, Kishore became SaiKishore theater and I remember
watching a movie called "Alladin" in 90s. That was the last we saw
Kishore screen a film. It went the same way as Sangeet. In the entire
street of Narayanaguda, only one theater remains and that is Shanti.
As you stroll past Shanti theater, few shops retained their character
and personality. A general store run by an aunty, a typewriting
institute run by two committed brothers which gave Oriental Typewriting a
run for money, an Irani restaurant that was buzzing with people right
until midnight, an Excise Police Station and the Narayanaguda Police
Station. All of them have disappeared. What remains are few icons like
the YMCA, the watch repair shop tucked between two garment outlets, the
Andhra Bank and the Sivananda Mithai Bhandar (which still has the best
Palak Pakoda in town!),Kalpana Hair Dresses, the Cane Furniture Shops
and Canara Bank. Unlike the Sultan Bazar merchants, the Narayanaguda
shop-keepers never got pressurized to move out elsewhere. But they were
disrupted, or got short-changed by the cross-currents of technology,
business cycles, family feuds or change in consumer demand and tastes.
It makes for a more detailed examination of street history that changed
forever well-before the Metro Station can dismounted many motifs and
icons of small business history for good. Narayanaguda was once the epicenter of everything happening in Hyderabad. This post doesn't cover so many other outlets including Balaji Bajrang Mithai Bhandar (still has the best Dhokla, Ajmer Kalakhand, Gulab Jamun in town), PT Reddy Museum (which had a great collection of a Dentist who used to have a TV Set - the only one those days - so residents of Narayanaguda used to flock to the TV every Sunday when Doordarshan started showing movies every Sunday, Srinivasa Hotel (which had good idly and Sambar) and Vijay Cottage (which had good sweets and tasty curd).
Many of them had seen
epic booms but couldn't survive to pass on the baton to the next
generation. Like Apollo Ice Creams which had the best Tutty Frutty ice
creams and other mouth-watering desserts in Hyderabad (almost like
Ajanta Cool Drinks in Vijayawada near Besant Road!).
Narayanaguda had other infamous bits of history too. In the 1980s, the
YMCA Chowrastha next to Shanti theater used to see everything from 7th
Class to Tenth Class exam question papers leaked on the streets in the
wee hours of the day. It was a sight to behold when anxious parents of
mediocre students jostled with each other to pay hundreds of rupees to
buy subject question paper - and all this happened right in front of the
Narayanaguda Police Station. With Metro Station getting hooked to
Narayanaguda at Madapati Hanumantha Rao school, a new era dawns in an
area which had the best entertainment, education and shopping ecosystem
once upon a time in Hyderabad. It is all history now.
