Inside the Charminar

Inside the Charminar
Originally uploaded by Maleaji.

Today I broke down and bought another copy of White Mughals, mainly for reference and for new ideas of places to go around Hyderabad. For those of you who haven't read it, he talks about how shocking it is that so little historical research (in English) has been done on the Deccan, and how little interest there is in Hyderabad. This is my favorite line: "Unlike the immediate, monumental splendor of Agra or the Rajput cities of the north, Hyderabad hid its charms from the eyes of outsiders, veiling its splendours from curious eyes behind nondescript walls and labyrinthine backstreets. Only slowly did it allow you in to an enclosed world where water still dripped from fountains, flowers bent in the breeze, and peacocks called from the overladen mango trees. There, hidden from the streets, a world of timelessness and calm, a last bastion of gently fading Indo-Islamic civilisation where, as one art historian has put it, old 'Hyderabadi gentleman still wore the fez, dreamt about the rose and the nightingale, an mourned the loss of Grenada." It's the most perfect description I've read.

Anyway, if you look in your trusty copy of the book (Megan, I'm basically talking to you), you might recognize the symbol from this picture, unless its only included in the "for sale in the Indian Subcontinent only" version.