An eclectic collection of the food available around Charminar

Charminar on a busy evening

Introduction

The Charminar (lit. “four minarets”) is a monument located in Hyderabad. It’s recognised globally as a symbol of Hyderabad and it’s culture. Built at the centre of the city originally to commemorate it’s foundation (and also to mark the eradication of a cholera epidemic), Charminar now stands centered in the hussle-bustle of the “Old City” and it’s vibrant society.

The Deccani cuisine is variant and doesn’t suffer from a lack of variety. There are many dishes which can be said to represent the cuisine and locals will start a tempestuous argument upon the exclusion of any such dish from the Dastarkhān. This article doesn’t intend to provide a list of the most authentic or representative dishes. It is a collection of my food experiences around Charminar in a format possible to conclude in a single visit and also gives an opportunity to see some of the monuments around. A heritage walk and a menu dégustation combined, if you will.

Travel

There is no provision for four-wheeler parking anywhere close to Charminar. The parking for two-wheelers is also sketchy and you will end up parking in some by-lane nearby. You can take a metro to the MGBS metro station and walk from there. The suggestion is to reach the neighbourhood by two-wheeler or by public transport. You will have to walk between places, so be ready to walk around 10 kilometers throughout the day. The pedestrianisation of the immediate vicinity of Charminar also makes it impossible to complete the entire trip on a vehicle.

The first stop - Munshi Naan

Char Koni Naan being packed at Munshi Naan

Founded in 1851 by Mohammed Hussain Saheb, who worked as a Munshi(Persian word for contractor/secretary) in an office under the fourth Nizam of Hyderabad, This shop arguably serves the best Naan around town. He learnt making the Naan on a visit to Delhi. The shop is situated in the Purani Haveli area, the operation goes on oblivious to the traffic around. There are many other shops with the same name, but the one in Purani Haveli is the authentic one.

Get a Char Koni Naan (lit. “four cornered bread”) per person packed from Munshi Naan and head to the next destination.

Chai and biscuits - Nimrah Cafe & Bakery

View of Charminar Kaman from atop the Charminar

If you head south from Munshi Naan down the Mir Alam Mandi road and take a right into the Kali Kaman road and go past Kali Kaman, you’ll arrive at the historical fountain “Gulzar Houz” built 400 years ago. From this place, the Char Kaman(lit. four gateway/arches) are visible, The east kaman which we just crossed - Kali Kaman, the western one called the “Kaman-e-Sehar-Batil” (lit. “the arch of the magic breaker”), the northern one called Machli Kaman(lit. “arch with a fish”) and the southern one - Charminar Kaman is visible along with a view of the Charminar itself. In the olden days, A big fish made of bamboo and paper was left hanging at Machli Kaman on the lunar new year, hence the name. Initially called the “Kaman-e-Sehar-Batil” (lit. “The arch of the magic breaker”), the name is now corrupted to “Sher-e-Batil”. It was a gateway that lead to an area that housed lot of royal palaces extending up to the river Musi, these palaces no longer exist. Mir Momin (The planner of Hyderabad & then Peshwa) erected a large stone pillar to its side and inscribed verses to ward of evil spirits. That’s how the name came to be. Continue from Gulzar House towards and past Charminar to find Nimrah Cafe & Bakery.

Refreshing Chai and biscuit platter at Nimrah

Nimrah opened in 1993 and is one the original Irani cafes in the city. It opens early in the morning and serves authentic Irani Chai and biscuits throughout the day. Order an Irani Chai and an assorted platter of biscuits(and Osmania biscuits for tasting their speciality). They also serve butter buns, Dil Khush, milk & fruit breads and bake new stock once every half an hour. They have varieties in Chai too for personal preference - Pauna (Milkier, three-fourth milk and one-fourth decoction), Sulemani (Black tea), Khade Chamach ki Chai(lit. “The tea with standing spoon”)(Chai that purportedly has so much sugar that it’ll make a spoon kept in stand up), Cutting Chai(Stronger and smaller serving).

Stand outside Nimrah, sip some Chai and take in the beauty of the heritage structures around - Charminar, Unani Hospital and the Mecca Masjid.

Government Nizamia General Hospital / Unani Hospital

The Hauz at Mecca Masjid
* A Hauz (lit. water tank) is a place to cleanse oneself in a mosque before prayer

Soup - Rumaan Restaurant

Laad Baazar looking relatively deserted early in the morning

Walk through Laad Bazaar to head to our next destination. Laad Bazaar(Laad meaning lacquer is used to make bangles) is a very old market popular for Bangles. This Bazaar consists a one kilometer stretch of shops and has been operating since the 16th century. It is popular for bangles, sarees and wedding related items. Take a left turn from Laad Bazaar onto Moti Galli road to find Rumaan Restaurant.

Paya at Rumaan Restaurant

Get seated in the first floor of Rumaan and order a Paya(lit. “legs/hooves”). A single Paya serves 3 people comfortably. Paya is a soup of mutton legs slow cooked over mild heat with a variety of spices. Sneak out the Naan you got packed from Munshi Naan and eat it with the Paya. While Rumaan offers Naan too, nothing beats Munshi Naan.

Just around the corner, you’ll find Chowmahalla Palace(from chār mahallāt, lit. “four palaces” in Dakhni). Seat of the Asaf Jahi Dynasty and the official residence of the Nizam, Chowmahalla currently hosts a museum, a clock tower that’s been ticking away since 250 years give or take, the Nizam’s luxury car collection (vintage) and a souvenir shop to buy books and pearls. Worth a visit if you can spare some time.

Chowmahalla Palace

A Rolls-Royce in the Nizam’s collection

The seventh Nizam - Hyderabad’s last ruler had a lifelong obsession with cars. The richest man on the planet until he died, It is said when Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd refused to sell their car to Mir Osman, he bought some old Rolls-Royce cars and used them for garbage collection, which damaged the image of the British luxury automobile maker. The company requested him to stop and began gifting him cars. Eventually he had acquired 50 Rolls-Royces.

Entrée - Al Akbar Fast Food Corner

Chicken 65 with Warqi Naan at Al Akbar

Walk towards Moghalpura road from Moti Galli road and take a turn towards charminar to find Al Akbar Fast Food Corner. This location is marked a bit sketchily on maps, so ask the locals. Sit in the first floor or the family section if they allow(read. if there’s a girl/woman in the group). Order Chicken 65 Boneless and Warqi Paratha. Enjoy a scrumptous chicken dish with the soft paratha.

Candy for the kids - Afjan Dates & Nuts

Candy and nuts at Afjan

If you want to carry some stuff back home for kids or relatives, head straight past Charminar from Al Akbar to Afjan Dates & Nuts. They have a huge collection of dry fruits, candy, chocolates and coated dates.

Entremets - Milan Juice Center

Malai & Mulberries at Milan Juice Center

Head back past Charminar if you’ve visited Afjan or cross the road if you’re at Al Akbar to find Milan Juice Center. Order Malai & Mulberries to cool the stomach a little bit.

Main Course - Hotel Shadab

Enamel tile tapestry at Badshahi Ashoorkhana

Hotel Shadab at night

Head past Charminar for a kilometer and take a turn at Madina Circle onto High Court road to find Hotel Shadab. There are a few heritage structures around inluding Badshahi Ashoorkhana and the state high court. Visit them to exprience the aesthetics and history. Note that Badshahi Ashoorkhana is a religious place and might need females to dress modestly and wear a head covering. The Badshahi Ashoorkhana still retains shiny enamel tiles laid four centuries ago and has an enamouring design. The high court was built in the Saracenic style by the seventh Nizam on the ruins of Qutub Shahi Palaces.

Chicken Biryani at Shadab

Enjoy the cafe-like or Takht style seating on the first floor and order a chicken biryani. One biryani serves two. You can order a “Thums Up” to go with it if you are the carbonated soft drink type. Enjoy the biryani with raita and mirchi ka salaan served alongside.

Dessert - Matwale Doodh Ghar

Special Lassi at Matwale Doodh Ghar

Walk past Charminar for a kilometer and half to find the Matwale Doodh Ghar Lassi & Faluda shop opposite Darussalam Bank. Order the Special Lassi to cool things off. The special lassi is a lassi mixed with Khova(sweetened and thickened milk), icecream and rose syrup (Rooh Afza).

Petit four - Hameedi Confectioners

A box of Jauzi Halwa from Hameedi

On the way back to the city, Visit Hameedi Confectioners which is situated just opposite the Mozamjahi market. Hameedi Confectioners began as only a stall in 1913, when a 15-year-old Turkish boy, Muhammed Hussain, started selling sweets. His special dish, the Jouzi Halwa(from. Jauz/nutmeg) was such a hit among people that the seventh Nizam heard of it and visited the store to try it out. He loved the halwa to such an extent that he sent a letter with the royal seal to Hussain praising his sweets (Even today, this letter is on display at the store).The Nizam loved the sweet so much that he announced that the shop be named after his brother-in-law, King Abdul Hamid of turkey(accounts vary, some say it’s named after his son’s nickname). The sweet shop sells turkish dishes, one such dish being the special Jauzi Halwa. The Ashrafi sweet here is worth trying too. They sell a quintal of the Halwa every day.

Mozamjahi Market before sunrise

One can wander over to the Mozamjahi market to shop and have a look at the clock tower. Constructed in 1935 by the last Nizam, it has many shops now and also houses a very old famous ice cream shop aptly named “Famous Ice Cream Shop”.

Fin

This concludes a lengthy gastronomic and cultural tour of the surroundings of Charminar. Of course there are always more places to see and more dishes to sample. I will note down a few worthy of mention, Interested folks can fit some of them into their itinerary.

Additional Mentions

River Musi and the Salar Jung Musuem at sunrise

Interiors of Aza Khana-e-Zehra

• Aza Khana-e-Zehra is an ashurkhana built by the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan in memory of his mother Zehra Begum. It houses a beautiful chandlier and interiors.It is close to Munshi Naan and can be visited at the beginning of the trip. Note that it is a religious place and might need females to dress modestly and wear a head covering.
• Salar Jung Museum is one of the three national musuems of India. It started as an extensive collection of artefacts by Salar Jung III, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad. This is a vast musuem and ideally takes up a day entirely in itself to visit.
• Pani Puri and Kesar Pista Lassi at Agra Mithaiwala
• Shahjahani Kunda (A dry fruit based drink) at Nazeer juice center
• Mutton Lukhmi (Square shaped meat fritters) at Pista House

Notes

• Start your visit in the morning to avoid crowds. But too early in the morning and nothing will be open, so check the timings of each establishment.
• If the pandemic is still on by the time you travel, wear a mask and don’t go on weekends to avoid crowds.
• A lot of the food stalls have dopplegangers on maps masquerading with the same name. Check if the general locality that mentioned matches.
• Be observant of the customs and rules at places of worship

A 2 day travel guide to Hampi

View from Mathanga hill | Credits: Priyanka Raga

What’s this

This is a rough guide to plan your weekend trip to Hampi.

Hampi is a UNESCO world heritage site located on the banks of the river Tungabhadra. It is connected with Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Goa through overnight buses and trains. Hampi has a warm, dry climate year-round. Winter (Dec–Feb) is a common time to visit as the weather is cooler. The hot summer (Mar–Jun) is less busy, and is followed by the monsoon season.

Day 0

Secunderabad Railway station | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

Travel

We started from Hyderabad on a friday night aboard the Manuguru - CSMT Kohlapur Express. As is with Indian Railways 😆, the train got delayed by 4 hours. You might lose the first half of your day at Hampi, so plan accordingly. Sleep well as you have to be well rested for the day after. Alternately, you can drive overnight from Hyderabad/Bengaluru.

IMPORTANT: reserve tickets at least a month before to avoid hassle

Day 1

You’ll arrive at the nearest railway station - Hospete Junction. Hampi is around 12 kilometers from Hospete, You can either choose to take an autorickshaw or board the bus to Hampi from there.

Hospete Junction | Credits: Priyanka Raga

Stay

You’ll arrive in Hampi close to the ancient bazaar and Virupaksha temple, there are lot of homestays here. You can pick any one for cheap with a decent bathroom. We chose one with a view. Luxury options like Hyatt are available at least 30 kilometers away.

IMPORTANT: prebook the stay

View from homestay

Food

Good option for breakfast is “Old Chillout”. Their English breakfast and pancakes are top notch. You can play with the kittens and dogs that frequent the place.

English breakfast at chillout | Credits: Priyanka Raga

The hambs at chillout

Lunch and dinner is really nice at “Mango Tree”. They have various cuisines and comfortable floor-deewan style seating.

Mango Tree | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

There are lot of other options around if you want to explore.

IMPORTANT: Non-vegetarian food is prohibited in the ruins area, so stick to veg or eggs. Too much craving?? Travel outside the ruins area to find places that serve meat

Start your adventure

Durga Temple

Start in an auto to the Durga temple near Anegundi. There’s a scenic view to experience from the top and few small attractions nearby including a Goshala and a cave.

Durga Temple | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

Lakshmi Temple

Now take an auto to reach the ancient Lakshmi temple in Hanumanahalli. You’ll be greeted by many monkeys and the serene rectangular tank - Pampa Sarovar.

Pampa Sarovar | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

Monkeys at Lakshmi temple | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

Anjanadri

Now take an auto to reach Anjanadri, the hill on which Hanuman was supposedly born. You’ll have to climb 575 steps to reach the top, but the view it offers is worth the hassle. There’s a temple on top which has a floating rock supposedly from the rama-setu.

View from atop Anjanadri

Sunset point

A short hike from the top of Anjanadri-betta on boulders will take you to a spot famous for watching the sun set amidst the tantalizing landscape.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you reach here some time before the sunset, so you don’t miss the opportunity to chill out and take a timelapse

Just a tree

Sunset point

Virupaksha Temple

Now rush back in an auto to Virupaksha temple near your homestay. It closes around 8:15PM. If you’re lucky you’ll be blessed by the temple elephant - Lakshmi. The elephant pays homage to the deity and the temple closes for the day. Alternately you can go there in the early hours of the next morning to witness the elephant’s daily bath ritual (you perv 🤬).

Virupaksha Temple | Credits: Vinay Narayanan

Lakshmi the elephant

End of day

Have dinner at Mango tree and go to sleep. The first day was mostly hopping between places in an auto. The second day will be completely on moped/cycle. Wake up at least an hour before sunrise the next morning

Day 2

IMPORTANT: Hire a guide for the full day and ask him to wait outside Achutaraya temple an hour after you start for Mathanga hill

Mathanga Hill

Walk from you homestay past the bazaar street opposite to Virupaksha temple to reach the Mathanga hill and start climbing to witness the sunrise. Bring along headlight/torches if it’s very dark. Breathe in the view and take some goofy pictures. You’ll find many millipedes along the way.

Millipede

Achutaraya temple view from atop Mathanga hill

Achutaraya Temple

Climb down the Mathanga hill on the other side to enter an intricate temple complex that is the Achutaraya Temple. The Achutaraya temple is an ancient Vaishnavite shrine.

Achutaraya Temple

Like every other major Vijayanagara temple complex, Achutaraya temple has it’s own ancient bazaar street right outside, Meet your guide here.

The bazaar opposite Achutaraya temple

Start walking towards the Vitthala temple complex. You’ll start seeing a lot of interesting structures along the way, make sure to ask your guide about them.

Few of these things are:

King’s balance. This was the place where the annual tulabhara or the weighting of the king against riches and grain used to take place. The riches and grain are then distributed among the poor.

King’s Balance

Temple Barracks. These were used by the soldiers protecting the temple.

Temple Barracks

And there are a lot of Mantapas (Open walled structures)

Mantapa

Krishnadevaraya and his two wives

There’s a temple with Varaha seal on both sides of the entry gate on the way to Vitthala temple.

You’ll reach the Vitthala temple complex after a short walk.

Vitthala Temple

Vitthala Temple is a 15^th century temple dedicated to Vitthala-Vishnu. It has many attractions including the famous stone-chariot featured on the Rs. 50 note, musical pillars inside the Ranga Mandapa, Marriage hall and Ramayana carvings.

Vitthala Temple

Stone chariot

Musical Pillars

One of the many mantapas inside Vitthala temple

Carvings depicting the stories in Ramayana

After coming out of Vitthala temple, start walking back along the bank of river Tungabhadra.

You’ll see a small structure along the bank. This is the Purandaradasa Mantapa in which the great poet Purandaradasa who composed more than 75,000 classical compositions sat and composed his songs.

Purandaradasa Mantapa at a distance

Keep walking and you’ll come to Kodandarama Temple. Here you can find coracle boat rides, if you’re up for it. Keep walking onto Hampi Baazar Street and then your homestay.

Kodandarama Temple

Coracle point

IMPORTANT: Have breakfast now and check out of the homestay if you’re only staying for 2 days as you’ll not be needing the room anymore and can avoid another day’s charge

Go hire bicycles/mopeds now. They’ll be located very close to the homestays.

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to take locks from the vendor and lock your cycle whenever you’re leaving it outside

Bicycles

Your guide will be going on their motorcycle from monument to monument, just follow them.

Hemakuta group of temples and Kadalekalu Ganesha

There’s a monolithic statue of ganesha that was commisioned in the Vijayanagara era by a peanut merchant.

Kadalekalu Ganesha

Badavilinga temple

A shivalinga surrounded by water from a canal commisioned in the Vijayanagara era by a poor woman.

Badavilinga Temple

Path across the monuments | Credits: Priyanka Raga

Underground Shiva Temple

A shiva temple built below ground level, the main sanctum remains flooded with water in monsoon. Bats have made it their home and an extensive stench of Guano prevails.

Underground Shiva Temple | Credits: Priyanka Raga

From here you’ll go on to see a lot of royalty related monuments. For most part, only their basements survive. The wooden structures have been destroyed and burnt by invaders. Few of them did not pass the test of time like the Nobleman’s quarters.

Hazararama Temple

A rama temple located in the Royal enclosure with beautiful bas relics and black granite columns inside.

Hazararama Temple

Hazararama Temple outer wall consisting of panels depicting scenes from the Ramayana

Hidden Treasury

An underground chamber to store riches

Hidden Treasury

Aquaduct

An engineering marvel of the bygone era, it brought water from a canal to the bath.

Aquaduct

Square stepped tank

A beautiful symmetric bath tank made from black schist stones used by the royals.

Stepped Tank

Mahanavami Dibba

A large pedestal on which the royals performed Mahanavami celebrations and rituals.

Mahanavami Dibba

Lotus Mahal

Another engineering marvel with terracotta pipes inside pillars connected to a water tank on the top. The water evaporates through the lime pillars resulting in a cool breeze. Meant for the queen.

Lotus Mahal

Elephant’s Stables

The stable that used to house the 11 royal elephants. The neighbouring structure for housing 11 mahouts has been converted to a museum.

Elephant’s Stables

Cycle from here to Queen’s bath.

Queen’s bath

The royal bath for the king and his queens. It is surrounded by a moat

Queen’s bath

Now have lunch at the Pink Mango nearby

The Thali at Pink Mango

Archaeological Museum, Kamalapura

The museum is just opposite Pink Mango. It has a lot of coins,carvings and artifacts on display.

Pillars on display at the museum

If you’ve booked a bus/train later than 8:00 PM and you’ve finished everything so far by 5:00 PM, you can visit the Daroji bear sanctuary nearby which closes at 5:30 PM.

Cycle back to Hampi Bazaar street infront of Virupaksha temple, you’ll find a bus/auto to take you to Hospete to board your train/bus.

Additional

You can extend your stay for few more days and fit in a visit to Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal.

If you’re starting from Hyderabad and don’t want the hassle of planning everything, book a trip with Hyderabad Trekking Club like I did.

Fin.

What is functional programming ?

Functional programming is a programming paradigm in which most computation is treated as evaluation of functions. It emphasizes on expression evaluation instead of command execution. – Wikipedia

When did it all start ?

In the 90’s, there was a war between declarative programming and imperative programming. Declarative programming then represented by logic programming languages like Prolog and early functional languages like Erlang. And imperative languages were represented by procedural languages like C and object-oriented languages like Perl. These used abstract data types and procedures (sequence of commands) to compute.

You can infer, no doubt that imperative languages won, given the present state of computer languages. One big reason for this is that the process of writing code in an imperative fashion closely mimics the way programs are executed inside the computer. The theoretical basis of the modern computer being the von Neumann computer.

Image by Kapooht - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

As you can see, the von Neumann model is closely mimicked by the execution flow in imperative languages. There is a strong correspondence between mutable variables and memory cells, variable dereferences and load instructions, variable assignments and store instructions, control structures and jumps. This sort of intuition helped programmers adopt them faster.

What changed?

It’s time to remember a legend. Gordon Moore. He observed that the number of components on a dense integrated circuit doubles every year. Moore’s Law

Image by Wgsimon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Over the past few years, the trend has subsided as controlling the current flow in the thin channel is becoming more difficult. We cannot make chips smaller anymore, unless there are revolutionary advancements in technology. To keep up with the growing demand for computer power, we’ll have to add more cores on a chip or use more chips. Huge volume workloads that require horizontal scaling are becoming more common. So we’ll have to write software that better gels with the hardware we have.

There are two facets to this problem

• Parallel programming
• Concurrent programming

Parallel programming means using multiple units of hardware to compute something and speed up the process. But the program itself doesn’t require this, it can still be solved on a single unit of hardware without any loss of functionality apart from speed.

Concurrent programming refers to programs that are inherently concurrent - multiple processes executing at the same time, that need to process large number of requests. Eg. Twitter. This has to be done in real-time and cannot be done in a sequential way.

While using conventional / imperative programming to implement either of these, we face some fundamental problems.

The root of the problem

let’s look at some pseudocode now

var x = 0
async { x = x + 1 }
async { x = x * 2 }  

// can give 0, 1, 2

The above program has two asynchronous operations running. We can see that the output is non-deterministic. This non-determinism is caused by concurrent threads accessing shared mutable state.

non-determinism = parallel processing + mutable state

Out of these, parallel processing can’t be avoided as our processors aren’t growing anytime soon. Hence we have to avoid mutable state.

The Solution

Here come in functional programming and pure functions.

When is a function pure?

• It returns the same result if given the same arguments (it is also referred to as deterministic)
• It does not cause any observable side effects

So functions that use global objects for example would be impure functions.

In functional programming, the programmer would no longer have to worry about manually iterating values or accessing the elements of a data structure. All those would be hidden away in a declarative expression. This is so helpful that the imperative languages have now picked up some style in their syntax from this.

Example: two ways of iterating in Java. The second line is the modern form of expression

for ( int i = 0 ; i < list.size ( ) ; ++i ) { doSomethingWith ( list.get ( i ) ) ; }
for ( SomeType s : list ) { doSomethingWith ( s ) ; }

With programs made mostly of pure functions, there’ll be less mutable state to deal with. We can now think in terms of function compositions. Making one function out of others, this is sort of like thinking in terms of space, whereas imperative programming is thinking in terms of time. You don’t have to worry about concurrent accesses in the functional example, as for each request, it can be served by it’s own space, without worrying about affecting others. No need to worry about race conditions, deadlocks etc.

Example : Scala

A simple example in Scala of how easy it is to parallelize stuff in modern functional languages with built-in functionality for parallelism. This code separates a list of people into minors and adults.

val people: Array[Person]
val (minors, adults) = people partition (_.age < 18)

Now the same code parallelized

val people: Array[Person]
val (minors, adults) = people.par partition (_.age < 18)

That’s it. No worrying about writing the parallelization code, locks, software transactional memory YADA YADA

The Functional Renaissance

This fundamental compatibility in building concurrent programs has brought back functional programming into the limelight. Now we also have languages that play to the strengths of both the paradigms (Scala). The brevity achieved while writing programs in the recursive way also helps.

Done! 🎉

Additional resources

• Martin Odersky, “Working Hard to Keep It Simple” - OSCON Java 2011
• John Backus’s Turing Award Lecture

John Backus’s Turing Award Lecture was a watershed for the programming-language community because the inventor of FORTRAN, which was the dominant programming language of the day, stepped forward and said that the main stream of programming practice was flowing in a most unproductive direction. His lecture “Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?”

• lambda-the-ultimate Good blog on programming language design

FUN FACT

Any function that relies on a random number generator cannot be pure 🤔