Born into a middle class joint extended family in Secunderabad, I was the youngest in the family among a brood of cousins who also stayed with us. My father worked for a pharmaceutical company and my mother is a housewife.
My annual exams were fast approaching and I was busy preparing for the same. My cousin sisters and brothers were busy with the preliminary examinations in their respective schools or colleges while I diligently put in at least 3 hours of study every day.
Come summer and my mother would be busy preparing for the year long supply of Pickles and
“ Vadiyalu”( Vadiyalu is a type of fitters which are prepared in the summer and eaten the whole year until the next summer comes. There are many types of vadiyalu which are cooked and dried under the sun. My mom used to make the batter early in the morning and we all used to put vadiyalu on our terrace. Usually the hot batter is taken by hand or a spoon and are kept on a wet cloth to dry. In the evening my mom used to bring them and used to peel the vadiyalu from the cloth and again they are dried for another two days. And these were stored for more than a year and they can be fried when ever required). We would love the fresh home-made pickles with curd rice. My annual exams were due to finish in a fortnight.
Suddenly one day my father announced that he would have to go to China for audit purposes and that his family too could accompany him. But it was that mother could not make the trip to China with father. Being the eldest daughter-in-law in a large extended joint family carried its own set of responsibilities – you know. But it was however decided that I could accompany him to China which incidentally was my first destination abroad. I was literally on cloud nine.
We lived in our ancestral house, built in the nineteenth century by my grandfather. It is a fairly large house situated in one of the bye-lanes of ‘Charminar’.
Charminar is the emerald of Hyderabad city. The majestic beautiful building built with granite, lime, crushed marble and mortar is one of the prime tourist attractions of the Andhra-Pradesh state in India.
Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah who was the fifth ruler of Qutb Shahi dynasty built Charminar in 1591 shortly after he had shifted his capital from Golkonda to what is now commonly known as Hyderabad. He built this famous structure in celebration and remembrance of the elimination of a plague epidemic from the city. It is said that he had prayed here for the end of plague that was ravaging his city and vowed to build a masjid at the very place he was praying. In 1591 whilst the laying of the foundation of Charminar - Quli prayed; “Oh Allah, bestow unto this city peace and prosperity. Let millions of men of all castes, creeds and religions make it their abode, like fish in the water”.
Today, one can see the city as evidence of the prayer being answered. The mosque became popularly known as Charminar surely because of its four minarets. In Hindi and Arabic, ‘char’ is the word used for four and ‘minar’ means minarets.
The Mecca masjid mosque which is so sacred to the muslims is at about a ten minute walk from our house. Our locality is predominantly a muslim area. But people of both religions, Hinduism and Islam live amicably as neighbors. Ours is an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family. But my parents are secular at heart and imbibed these feelings of secularism in the minds of the children as well.
The Maulvi (priest) of the mosque is a very close friend of my father and he would often take me to the mosque. I would hear the Arabic prayers and hymns being chanted though I haven’t the faintest idea of what they mean. Some of them I know by heart – as well as I know the Lalitha sahasranamams (a Hindu scripture in which the deity is referred to by a thousand names). Uttering these prayers also gave me the same kind of courage and mental satisfaction as when I chanted the Hindu prayers. I was sure that my prayers had reached God. Whenever I had my exams I ran across to the mosque to pray so that I may do well in the exams. I remember some of my cousins including myself even joined our childhood Muslim friends in fasting during the holy month of Ramadhan. We both made merry during the Idd festivals and they would join us during the Diwali, Holi and Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations.
Come summer holidays my uncles and aunts would visit us with their families and I would have a great time sharing the goodies brought by them with my cousins and playing with them. I would accompany my aunts around Charminar. They would almost always visit the ‘Chudi Bazaar’ and buy me also various kinds of bangles. I have a great collection of them. We would help ourselves to ‘Hyderabadi biryani’ accompanied with ‘mirchi ka saalan’ and ‘curd raitha’ followed by ‘double ka meetha’ at the ‘Paradise’. I used to love to go shopping with my uncles and aunts and almost always accompanied them just for this treat.
Sometimes my uncle who came visiting from Chennai, would also take us kids along to visit the Golconda, Golconda fort, the Hussain Sagar lake, the Nehru Zoological park, the Salar Jung museum etc, in and around Charminar.
But my family never went out of station during any one of our holidays. My father lived frugally. His day starts with the ‘sandhya vandanam’ (a salutation to the sun). He avoids comforts and luxuries, things he considers non essential. Essential needs – food, medicine and clothing are well provided for. We eat on the floor and the furniture of our house made of Burma teak wood which my grandfather had got it brought from Burma. Everything in our house has the old world charm about it. So when my friends at school would talk about where and how they had spent their holidays I would have nothing to boast of.
So I jumped with joy when my father decided to take me to China. I could hardly contain my excitement. Luckily for me – the passport and other things were in place. I just had to wait for Dad to complete all the other formalities. I drew out a list of to-do things in China and also a shopping list. Mother wanted pearls from China. She believed that the best quality pearls came from China, some Feng-shui items, and some Chinese souvenirs.
My father’s colleagues who had been there insisted that we carry along some ready to eat packets in ample quantities as vegetarian dishes were hard to get by. It was a one week trip you know! So we got packets of ‘upma’, ‘pongal’, ‘biryani’, ‘bisi bele bhath’, noodles and some packets of tomato soup, sweet corn soup etc., which needed to be only dipped in hot water and they would be fit for consumption. Half of the suit-case was filled with such food packets.
The D-day arrived. My father’s colleague Mr. Reddy Sekhara also accompanied us. We boarded a Thai Airways flight from the Shamshabad airport which was itself a one hour drive from our house. I was nervous as this would be the first time that I would be boarding a flight. This flight was from Hyderabad to Bangkok. From Bangkok we needed to take the connecting flight to Shanghai. Unfortunately we couldn’t get to see Bangkok though there was a four hours gap between the two connecting flights as there were riots in Bangkok at the time. It wasn’t safe to venture out of the Bangkok airport.
After four hours we were on the flight which would take us to Shanghai. It was a pleasant flight journey to Shanghai. I was excited to set foot in Shanghai – the place about which I got to read only in the encyclopedia of History and places. It is known for its high-tech infrastructure, culinary delights, museums, traditional Chinese temples and gardens, huge shopping malls and its natural beauty. As soon as we came out of the airport, we found vending machines selling phones, which also translated English to Chinese, which would be useful during our stay. I could see that Shanghai was among the most vibrant and exciting cities in the world. It is surprising that the blending of the modern with traditional was so seamless here.
Some of my father’s business friends picked us up at the airport an
d drove us straight to the fifty two storied NOVOTEL hotel. We were given a room on the forty second floor with a good view of the city’s tallest buildings, Shanghai tower and Yang-pu river. The hotel was splendid in every way and the scenery was glorious. We were served a complimentary breakfast of bread and jam and tea. Then we went off on a plant (production site) visit. Sekhar uncle carried a camera along as it was mandatory to click pictures in the plant site area.
I accompanied my dad as I could get a feel of the city. Shanghai was a busy city with hoards of people all desperate to get rid of their money in the abundant shops. Its concrete flyovers and high rise buildings made it a modern city. I was however interested in getting away from these areas and went in search of markets and older areas of the city. We went to an up-market restaurant for lunch but we could not stomach even the smell emanating from the kitchen. It was in front of the dining hall with live snakes hung from the wall. Live lobsters, crabs and fishes were placed in large aquariums. People could choose and pick which one they wanted to eat and the chef would immediately cook it and serve the guests in a jiffy. Even vegetarian