Sunil Sethi in New Delhi
What better place to visit than the city of the Charminar in the holy month of Ramadan?
The heart of the old city, radiating from the four-towered triumphal gateway built in 1591, is a spectacle of all-night shopping and feasting as the crowds pour out after breaking their dawn-to-dusk fasts.
Dozens of eateries, large and small, run a roaring trade in purveying dishes of haleem, biryani and kebabs; the lanes are vibrant with traditional trades, such as the old street of bangle-sellers with its mirrored stalls glittering with fake crystals.
And nearby, the splendidly restored 18th-century Chowmahalla Palace, where the once-powerful Nizams of Hyderabad were crowned, lived and entertained, draws more than 1,000 visitors a day.
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Hyderabad's new Nizams
Image: A convention centre in Hyderabad.And new Nizams here are to be found aplenty.
I spent a morning in Cyberabad, the high-tech city on the northwest perimeter directly linked to the airport by a parallel freeway, and was impressed by its air of confidence and orderly calm.
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Hyderabad's new Nizams
Image: Microsoft's India headquarters.Next door is the 260-acre campus of Indian School of Business set up 10 years ago, with Nizam-worthy endowments, by Indian industry. Competition for its expensive master's programme is fierce - about 570 of 4,000 applicants make it - but it is rated by The Financial Times as the 13th best B-school in the world.
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Hyderabad's new Nizams
Image: A view of Indian School of Business.But ISB's purpose is not to create workaday 21st century Nizams, he added. "I have this palace but I don't have the money to be able to subsidise worthy students who will go out and do good rather than produce only good profits."
ISB's state-of-the-art architecture was created by the Atlanta-based firm of John Portman.
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Hyderabad's new Nizams
Image: Hotelier Priya Paul."My theme was to reinterpret Hyderabad's legendary jewels in cutting-edge architecture and design," she said.
To this end, she commissioned top Indian and foreign names in the world of art, fashion and design (that include Subodh Gupta, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Conran & Partners and Jean-Francois Lesage) to imagine the hotel's restaurants, nightclubs and luxury suites.
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Hyderabad's new Nizams
Image: Jagan Mohan Reddy's house in Hyderabad.I saw my friend Anvar Ali Khan, one of the city's consummate chroniclers, and asked him where Hyderabad's future lay in the unfinished agitation for a separate Telangana.
"You mean what people want here?" he said with a sweeping gesture to indicate the vastness of the fourth largest state in the country.
"Only one thing: they all want the keys to Hyderabad."
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