Dilsukhnagar - A City Within A City

The evening sun, a bright shade of orange, is ready to slide down the shimmering lake.

A purple little house with equally shiny doors stands not too far away. Welcome to Dilsukhnagar, a little city within the city, one with its peculiarities that almost stare you in the face, typical of a place trying to fit into an ‘image’.

Be it a little sign board that reads dentist, but points towards an under-construction temple or red cheeked men on stilts dressed in cheap satin pyjamas and red satin hats dancing to a Himesh Reshammiya number, in a busy market place.

The gentry of Banjara and Jubilee Hills, knows nothing or very little about this place and Dilsukhnagar is too busy carrying on with its life. So it moves at a frantic pace, as if trying to justify its name. Not too far away from the bustling market are about 20 cinema halls, which religiously play movies of favourite local heroes for a good 100 days.

A restaurant sign board jostles for space with sign boards of schools and universities that you might have never even heard of.

But this is now. About two decades ago, Dilsukhnangar was a little place somewhere on the way to Vijayawada. It was, like a local describes it, “a place where you got nothing to eat after six in the evening”.

Mustafa Kamal who got his first job as a teacher in Mumtaz College in 1967, for example, remembers the place as being a “rather secluded area.” “It was almost a jungle. The few houses here were at huge distances from each other. I remember going for walks around that area”, he says with a chuckle.

Kumar, a 32-year-old driver who moved to Dilsukhnagar about six months ago but visited the place as a teenager to see his cousins, still remembers the fear that cropped up in his mind, every time he had to go to that part of the town.

“It was a quiet little area, with a few slums. And since it was so far away and so quiet, it was a little scary.” Today, Kumar describes it as ‘gold’. And why not, his wife has been running a canteen for a college and the returns are not bad at all. Or take Firoz Khan, a bangle seller who moved from a little bylane in Dilsukhnagar to the main road about five years back.

The sales, he says have been going up, thanks to people becoming fashion conscious. “The watch has moved to the mobile. You can see the time there, so women actually wear bangles in both hands. There are bangles for every occasion. I’ve been in Dilsukhnagar for 15 years but the past three to four years have been great.” Kumar and Firoz are just two of the few lakh people who’ve made Dilsukhnagar their home. It was in the 90’s that the neo-rich from Vijayawada who had the money but not enough education, decided to move to Hyderabad to give their children what they had been missing, a city life and education.

Consequently, schools started mushrooming, houses were erected and shops sprung up. And, people from other parts of Hyderabad realised their dream of owning a house in Dilsukhnagar. Soon, many others followed suit.

Subsequently, the place developed an identity of sorts, as unique as Andhra Tea and the colourful curries that Hyderabadis savour.

Like Srinivas Rao who has been living in the area for the past 15 years describes it: “It’s an urban area in a rural setup. It has everything that a place needs. Shopping joints, restaurants, pubs, houses and yet, the roads are in a bad condition, the power cuts aplenty.”However, that hasn’t deterred big names from setting up shop here.

Any educational institute of repute has a branch in Dilsukhnagar too. If Reebok has a factory outlet, you also have Chandana Brothers luring women with their silks. Of course, none of it is far away from say a Swati college affiliated to some strange university, a floor above a parlour, which has a blue-eyed Amisha Patel complete with her more than ‘solah sringar’ staring with unabashed glory from a bright yellow tin board.

And, it looks like everyone wants a piece of the Dilsukhnagar pie. Agrees Maharishi, assistant general manager, Suchir India Developers.

“There was a time when only lower or middle-class people stayed here. Today, the upper middle-class people are also moving in here. Commercially too, it is abuzz with activity. There are traffic jams at four in the morning and you can get food till 1.30 am. Obviously, it makes commercial sense.”

For some like V Maruti Manoj who works with a call centre in Madhapur, it is a place where he can get whatever he wants. “There was a time when I had to travel long distances to go out with friends. Today, everything is right here, Be it restaurants, movie halls or malls.” The traffic volume at Dilsukhnagar is considered to be one of the highest in the city.

It is the only place in the city that could remind you of Mumbai with its many contradictions, with its pace. Of course, no one seems to be complaining, at least not as of now.