A protest dinner at the soon-to-be-demolished Garden Restaurant to be held today
Soon-to-be-demolished: The Garden Restaurant at Secunderabad
The aromas…the chit chat over chai… the atmosphere. These are just a few tangible associations that people will miss as Garden Restaurant awaits its destruction. But it won’t go down silently. A group of citizens have joined hands as a “form of protest”, and will be meeting at the restaurant on Saturday to have “The Last Biryani”.
Ashhar Farhan, one of the founders of another of city’s priced possessions, Lamakaan, who initiated the event on Facebook, is expecting at least a hundred people to show up in support of the protest. Farhan wonders, “I do not know if it’s an inevitable part of growth. But I feel the development plan of this city is insensitive. So this dinner is a form of protest with an intention to send across the message that for a large number of people, Metros and the Hitec City doesn’t matter as much as these few spaces do.”
This wouldn’t have happened in the West, believes Farhan and others share that sentiment too. Owner of another cultural hub, Our Sacred Space and also a ‘protestor’, Nayantara Nandakumar, had worked on light rail projects in the US, where “public were part of the planning process”. “Our city’s landscape is being silently effaced. Garden Restaurant was a place where different worlds converged over a cup of chai. I saw an M.F. Husain painting in the house of a civil engineer friend who had long conversations with the Master, before realising who he was. This happened only because of a space such as this. Garden Restaurant is integral to the character of our city.”
Theatre artiste Rahul Reddy, meanwhile, recalls the days when he and his friends would cycle all the way from Lalapet, just to reach in time to have biryani for lunch. He shares, “As kids, we would not have budgets for the other biryanis. So Garden was a saviour. I just hope I do not cry at the dinner.”
( Source : dc )
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