Rocked from all sides, solidly

By K. Venkateshwarlu

HYDERABAD, AUG. 9. The breathtakingly beautiful rocky ridge, one of its kind close to the city off the Old Bombay road towards Khajaguda, protected as heritage precincts under Regulation 13 of the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority Zoning Regulations, is being blown to pieces manually and using dynamites.

Groups of labourers can be seen perched atop the ridge, overlooking equally magnificent Malkam cheruvu, relentlessly chipping away the boulders disfiguring and dismembering them from the huge rock formation, a virtual symphony in stone. They are blissfully unaware of the fact that the entire area is protected by a regulation like a listed heritage building, irrespective of whether it is a Government or private land.

They had been doing this for quite some time. "We sell each block at Rs. 3.25 to the contractor. We have been asked to clear the entire area of these boulders and given the freedom to sell the blocks away," Krishna, a labourer, says. "It is not just the manual chipping. We can often hear deafening sounds of blasting of the rocks using dynamites, rattling the windows", says Atluri Murali, a faculty member of the History Department of University of Hyderabad, who stays close to the ridge, forming part of a 2,500 million-year-old heritage. "It is not only the ridge but even the three lakes abutting it are endangered," he says.

The Society to Save Rocks has taken up the issue with the HUDA but no action has been forthcoming. "We have brought this to its notice but it is of no avail," Mrs. Frauke Quader, secretary of the society, reveals. "It was after much efforts that this and eight other rock formations were brought under a protective regulation".

It is not for the first time that the rocky ridge caught the attention of the colonisers. A similar attempt was made to pulverise the rocks on the other side of the ridge, a part of which was allotted by the Government for the cine workers housing colony. It was foiled thanks to the stay granted by the High Court. Surprisingly, the entire rocky ridge area has been identified as a `residential area' in the draft master plan of the HUDA. Rock lovers are wondering how this could happen when the HUDA itself has included the ridge in the protective list.

Apart from this ridge identified as `Rock Park', the eight natural rock formations under protective cover are-- hillocks around Durgam cheruvu, `Bear's Nose' near Shilparamam, `Mushroom Rock' on the University of Hyderabad campus, `Cliff Rock', `Monster Rock', `Tortoise Back', `Toadstool' and `Obelisk', all in Jubilee Hills.

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Section  : Southern States
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