HYDERABAD: the first time I went there was with my old man and his

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film crew. We were there to make a documentary called The Fragrance of Love on the Muslims of India. We shot around the mean looking Charminar, the structure that connects the city to the rest of the cities, the towns and the minds of people in this small and big world.

That edifice raises many questions I do not consider knowing the answers to. Stuff like when was the Charminar conceived? When was it made?

How long did it take? Did the architect have a great love story?

Was he nice to the workers?

Where did they stay? What was love like in that downtrodden neighbourhood?

Memory goes, `Hey you! Out there in the dark, have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient? The year was 1997, close to the time when I went to meet the queen.

So, like I was saying, we were there through the aegis of my dad, and we were that afternoon on film, me and my uncle at the vast, mammoth and extravagant Golconda fort, that stretches out for miles. I recommend the fort, but maybe when it is cooler, again we have to figure that one out. This place may not have a winter but from November to March, the skies bring on the cold, somewhere between frostbite and a nippy breeze.

Now we are talking serious food here, no monkey business.

This place is known for it's biryani namely the Hyderabadi Biryani. And the place to go, at least where we lunched was the good old Hyderabad Gymkhana.

It was a sumptuous spread where expectation met the quality. What you also should know is that with this dish you have raita and salad on the side, preferably onions. When I went back the same year, we drove in a white Ambassador. But there was so much pain that evening as we drove around town; those eyes, that I am told have fought and won so many battles, were soaked in the cages of the heart. There was heavy rain and the food was left uneaten at the five star place in the queen's chambers that night. This place is lucky for tropical love; try it, there is a lot of dew that falls here.

He ordered Hyderabadi biryani yet again. He remembered that this place was known for that and bagaray baigan, another dish he had been acquainted to recently with a cook from this city.

See, this way we get wise with food and it always helps this way.

The stomach is this way, love is the other way. Words don't describe it. It is time for the lucky guys. For the double lucky, it stays over. It has a name; beautiful youth.

There is a series of shops that sell bangles, special ones that you won't find any place else.

White, golden, red, green and black, she bought black and white, but lots of them she bought, they knew who she was.

She must have bought the golden ones also. I just hung around, and it was a pretty film story, and I was a foppish character.

When we came back we stayed at the Ramoji Rao studios which stretch out like time across endless acres of land. It is an excuse to lie that you are somewhere in the open, in the outback, more so the mountains, when actually it is just at the outskirts of the city.

You can be in a French saloon, a home in Orissa, a street in Calcutta, a place in Delhi, by the bay in Bombay, on the hill in the north, in a foreign country even in Rajasthan, in Gujarat, in Bangalore, in Madras and in short, in the realm of the voyager. Ramaji Rao has created in a couple of streets sets from here there and everywhere.

Utopia? No place is like home Mr Rao That is fiction. Welcome to the real world.

On the first trip we were there that evening at the palace of the Nizam of Hyderabad. We saw his jewels, part of them, and the cloak, the robes and the sword. My father had organised the gems and the decorum to be viewed. It was dusk and I have an impression you can only revisit them in retrospect.

There is a cuddly bus service from the city to the studio.

When I came back for the fourth and fifth time, there was lots of friendship but I was perched headlong at the end of a candle. Yet it was the time of Ramzan and if the first time I flew there as an eagle, the second was flying high, rocking, cracking, bursting and loving.

The fourth trip was still good.

There is a lot of gaiety and beauty during Ramzan.

The streets are filled with fairy lights and food, hustle, bustle and many people. Everything had changed. It was a poor shadow of what it had been for me here. Now it was a sparrow screwed town.

But the resplendence and splendor of Ramzan takes nothing away from that. It is like day in the night around the Charminar. Visit the restaurant Niagra. The food with masala is great but the emptiness had set in. I was faking it.

I went again to the shop where bangles are sold around the Charminar. This time a ghost walked in and picked up a bunch for a dead thing.