Another poem that flowed through my pen as my lips brimming in the elation of the city, Hyderabad. This poem, “Hyderabad’s Camelot” is the continuation of my previous poem ‘The City was Born’
Overture: This poem describes how Hyderabad has been nurtured in Bakshi’s lap; how she extended her boundaries by accepting everyone, how she’s viewed around the world; how her gustatory pleasures gave the world her ambrosia, the Hyderabadi Biryani; and finally, the envy it mustered in the far away land, Britain. [To those who do not know, Bakshi is the daughter of Quli Qutb Shah and Bhagmati. And also the Hyderabad I allude to in the poem is the *Hyderabad State* ].
Hyderabad started forming words
Liketh a child in a crib
Morning and evening
Greeted by multitudes that
Swelled like a sea fed by rivers
Besotted by her unearthly charm
Beholden eyes
Her skin glistening liketh a silver moon
Her dainty limbs sprawling soon
From Charminar to Aurangabad
From Raichur to Adilabad
Her speech strident
As her clepe in Arabic suggests so
Liketh waxing gibbous to full moon
Her greatness
Boundaries, countries, continents
Accepting in her womb
Liketh earth men both good and bad
Her love shimmering
Liketh an ocean under the moonlings
She became the prose, she became the poem
She became the intrigue, she became the life
Eclectic was her gustatory delights
Her palates
Qubani ka Meetha, Double
Pathar ka Gosht, Hyderabadi ‘ka’ Marag
Her tongue blessed the grains so
Earth manufacture ambrosia
Celebrated as Hyderabadi Biryani
Zephyrs flared her nostrils
Wafting the aroma of Irani Chai
Her gullet
And velvety Osmania biscuit
While shine in her postprandial face unmatched
To all the fire mustered in the world.
Luculent she was in the raiments
Of jewelry glittering like thousand suns
With the Kohinoor, the Darya-i-Noor.
The Jacob, The Hope,
The Great Mughal, The Orloff
The skies they open, they open
Her blinding sight reached
Miles and miles away
Pangs of envy unleashed
In a far-off land
Miles and miles away