Falaknuma Palace

On our 30th wedding anniversary, my husband and I were in different cities and we decided to celebrate it the following Saturday by having dinner at the very exclusive Taj Falaknuma Palace Hotel at the other end of town. As I was going through some old picture albums, I noticed that ten years ago at about our 20th wedding anniversary we had made a trip to the Falaknuma Palace which was not open to the public but had just been taken over by the Taj Hotel group to be converted to a palace hotel. We had taken some pictures at that time.

Finally, we didn't make it to the Taj Falaknuma Palace Hotel, because on that day, the hotel staff rang us up and said that there was a curfew in the Old City because an MLA Akbaruddin had been shot and was critical and they anticipated riots. There went our dinner celebration! I thought such things can only happen in the Old City which is a law unto itself! The MLA was walking and there came a mob with swords and shot him and stabbed him.....some land dispute. The MLA survived and there were no riots, thankfully.

Just a little further up from Charminar, past the Shah Ali Banda area, the road reaches the Falaknuma Palace. The sixth Nizam's prime minister and relative, Nawab Vikar-ul-Umra had constructed this palace, translated as 'mirror in the sky' in the shape of a scorpion. It was the last word in luxury and grandeur and the Nawab invited the Nizam to visit it. The Nizam, inspite of being the richest man in the world (the Times Magazine had him on its cover seventy years ago for this reason), was bemused by this array of splendour and coveted it. The Nawab then presented the Falaknuma Palace to the Nizam. The Nizam never stayed here but this palace hosted royalty from all over the world. In 2000 the Falaknuma Palace was leased to the Taj Hotel group for a period of 30 years to begin with, and its restoration has been supervised by Princess Esra, the Turkish first ex-wife of the current Nizam who lives in Turkey. After ten years the Falaknuma Palace was opened as the Taj Falaknuma in November 2010. What is worth noting are the frescoes on the ceiling of the state reception room; the two ton manually operated organ said to be the only one of its kind in the world in the ballroom; the large and rare collection of books, paintings, statues, furniture and manuscripts; the jade collection; the famous 100 seating dining table with rosewood carved chairs and green leather upholstery with tableware of gold and crystal; the walnut carved roof of the library modelled on the one at the Windsor Castle; the Venetian chandelier collection including the 138 arm Osler chandelier.

As a postscript, we did visit the Taj Falaknuma and felt the grandeur of the place, the ambience and the food bringing back the Nizam culture alive and here are some pictures we took.

Sunrise at 22 Wellington Enclave

On a hot summer day, the sunrise from our terrace is a cool experience! So beautiful to see the orange orb gliding up the clear blue and orange horizon - the colours are just too pretty and defy explanation! It is an experience really and something the vocabulary limits. We have kind of settled in, into our new place. We wake up in the morning to the AOC Centre military bugle playing the reveille and that is another experience....this, along with all kinds of birds tweeting and flying around. In our old home, we had got used to the day and night traffic and with the foliage reducing, so were the birds, we didn't see house sparrows for years in that area. In addition, the building up of malls and high rise complex has made that a very commercial place. The road next to our home there has become a link road to the hi-tech city. Here, we can actually hear the birds! It is much quieter here and I appreciate that, being a small-town person!



We have a little patch of a garden which is now full of pots and plants from the old place. Before the monsoons, I must lay some new grass for the lawn. The rest of the enclave where we stay has pretty gardens and the landscaping of this place is neat and pleasing to the eye. I'm not much of a gardener but am inspired by the gardens around here. It is a little more of hard work because the soil is not so fertile and has to be replenished with fertilizers etc. But I did get my Easter lilies, some white and some red, and that was satisfying.

This is a town house with other similiar houses, about thirty of them, some on the main road and ours is inside the enclave and somewhat in the centre. Our earlier place was an independent bungalow. The advantage of being here is that the electrician, the plumber, the carpenter are all on call here and oblige us willingly whenever we call. Infact the electrican is the best I've ever encountered in Hyderabad/Secunderabad up till now!

I'm now looking forward to having friends and family over and stay with us. We have a couple of spare bedrooms now, unlike the old place. Summer is not the best time to be in Hyderabad but from end June till February, Hyderabad/Secunderabad is a beautiful place to be in.

It is great to live in Marredpally, Secunderabad, I am enjoying every moment of it!