The land of the midnight 'biryani'

I landed in Hyderabad one winter evening intent on just one thing — finding that perfect biryani. Friends in the city each had their own opinion on where you got the best version. One bon vivant whisked me off to a five star hotel where the chef was erstwhile royalty. Quite noble his offering too. But the locals scoffed: that wasn’t the “original” Hyderabadi biryani.

The week that followed found me wolfing down biryani, mutton and chicken (though traditionalists swear that chicken biryani isn’t the real thing), for lunch and dinner.
In between, I took in the city sights. The IT boom has seen a huge influx of migrants into the city of the Nizams, home to the Charminar, the Salar Jung museum, Ramoji Rao Film City, and, of course, Sania Mirza. Hyderabad has held up well.

Locals say they have Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam to thank for the wide roads and pristine parks. As chief minister (he styled himself as CEO of the state),
Naidu went on an industrialisation drive — wooing IT majors and corporates with cheap land — that created a new urban middle class with money to burn. It’s another matter that farmers and other rural folk felt excluded and the CEO lost his job.

Hyderabad is no longer a sleepy old town, known for its biryani, pearls and gracious manners. Bright neon signs advertise brands from the world over. Flyovers, that symbol of progress in urban India, abound. They even have a new airport. Hyderabadis go on about how wonderful it is. After all, this is the age of malls, not museums.

And the American connection is hard to miss in Hyderabad. The man selling fiery mango pickle and various podis (better known as gunpowder) that go with rice sniggers when I ask him to pack them carefully as I’m flying to Chennai. It turns out this shop caters mostly to the US-bound, and I get a look in only as a favour to a friend.

Pearls, semi-precious stones and bangles of every hue are the other traditional must-haves. I tagged along when some colleagues trawled the shops on a crowded street in the older part of town. Most were sure they had got a bargain.

The mornings are still quiet in Hyderabad, finding breakfast can be quite a task for an outsider. Idlis in the land of biryani? Never! But things are changing; the techies are making sure of that.

But Hyderabad is still a city for owls. Nightfall is when the party begins. Many of the restaurants have a dance floor: the music is loud and watch your feet. Vigorous is one way of describing the dancing.  Those who watch Telugu movies will know what I mean.

But back to my biryani hunt. By now I had become quite sick of the whole thing; literally too. So I decided to go easy on the food and stuck to fruits and salads for a day and even went for a long walk. 

On my way back, I saw carloads of  people, young and old, descending on my hotel. Was there a party on or a wedding reception? The people at the front desk had the answer. They pointed to the board announcing “midnight biryani” at the restaurant off the lobby.

The marketing men had rejigged the practice in the small hotels near the cinema halls that always served up a fresh batch of biryani at midnight for those returning after the last show.

It was an unbelievable sight: hordes of nattily dressed people happily putting away huge portions of biryani, and khubani ka meetha (stewed apricots served with malai) with utter disregard for the new age concerns about light, low-carb dinners.

Restores your faith in humankind.

May be it was the guilt that I was tucking in at an hour that would have made my
doctor launch into one of her lectures, but, believe me, the biryani had never tasted
better. My waistline be damned.