Surrounded by rows of books on land reforms and peasants' rights that belonged to a dead Indian communist, Jaideep Undurti, 29, hangs up his phone and mutters what sounds like a mild expletive in an Indian language. It is, for he apologises.
Undurti, a co-founder of the Hyderabad Graphic Novel Project, is exasperated by the news he has just heard. Last month, the state government of Andhra Pradesh, of which Hyderabad is the capital, removed yet another heritage building from a list of protected structures, allowing for its demolition. "It [the Victoria Maternity Hospital] will be replaced by a car park," he says with a shrug.
To Undurti and his partner, Jasraman Grewal, the announcement is one more reason for their project - a painstaking recreation of the southern Indian city's tales, legends, landmarks and lore dating as far back as the 16th century.
Often described as the dark horse of Indian heritage, Hyderabad shot into global prominence as one of India's information technology hubs, and acquired a host of new fans courtesy of its rich cuisine and now world-famous biriani.
But for Hyderabad's loyalists, there is much, much more to the city that remains unsaid, undiscovered and in grave danger of remaining unknown. The Hyderabad Graphic Novel Project was launched last November with the aim of immortalising the stories and characters that collectively contribute to its legendary charm.
Having completed a seven-page teaser, the founders are raising money to colour it and expand it into an 18-page first episode. Currently relying on a Facebook page for publicity, the project has slowly caught the eye of editors in the Indian offices of publishing companies such as Hachette and Penguin.
"The upgrade from Facebook fan page to a dedicated website should take place over the next two months, where we'll upload the teaser," says Undurti, who conceived the project.
Neither Undurti nor Grewal is a native of Hyderabad, but both admit to an instant affinity with it. "It's many cities in one, like heaped carpets over one another. Every now and then, the badly worn fabric of one carpet shows its predecessor beneath. From the markets, which have a very central-Asian flavour, it's only a short drive to the glass and concrete towers of the new city. The people have a ready, fantastic wit - we hope to reproduce it as faithfully as possible," says Undurti, who is from Vizag, a coastal town in Andhra Pradesh.
"Truth be told, it is possibly India's first truly diverse and cosmopolitan city," says Grewal, also 29, originally from Punjab and a Hyderabad resident since 2004.
The external influences began with ancient Hindu dynasties, continued through its Islamic connection by way of contacts with Persian rulers, the Mughal empire and western colonists.
"It's a special city as it has a distinct culture and tradition of its own that is markedly different from its southern neighbours and northern cousins," says Grewal, for whom the Graphic Novel Project was unexpected.
The founders' original intention had been to create a substantial archive of Hyderabad by capturing street livelihoods on still camera. They scoured the old city's streets in 2005 and 2006 for images of toy-sellers, watch vendors and black-magic spell removers, and in the process encountered instances of the city's physical fabric being ripped apart.
"We began thinking of the effect all this would have on the mental/spiritual fabric," says Undurti. "What happens, for example, when you can no longer tell a joke, when a joke ceases to be, when the cross-cultural references needed to understand the joke no longer exist? One idea I was obsessed with was the necropolis, an invisible city, the city beneath the city, that sort of a thing. We joked about starting a magazine called the Necropolitan, a rag for the ghoul-about-town."
In 2007, he and Grewal worked with Yugantar, a non-governmental organisation, on an oral history project titled Archiving Hyderabad, and trawled the city for elderly citizens to record a series of video interviews.
The video project was a joint-venture with an IT company headquartered in Hyderabad. When the business stopped its funding last year, the archiving ended and they were left with more than 80 hours of recorded footage. They had lots of stories, but no listeners or viewers.
"While conducting the video interviews on some specific incidents in the city's history, we were shocked by the cool manner in which stories of people who had no connection with each other fitted," says Grewal. "To give a visual description, our interviews were like Escherian landscapes, wherein the parts become the whole, and the whole becomes something completely different.
The idea of a documentary was quickly dismissed as the costs of reconstructing old Hyderabad were proving to be prohibitive. There was also the added issue of old sites and heritage buildings fast disappearing to give way to malls, high-rises and of course, parking lots.
"We thought perhaps the best medium, in fact, the only medium which could convey this lost city, was comics. We were fortunate in finding a talented and experienced artist from Kolkata - Harsho Mohan Chattoraj," says Undurti.
The interest the project is slowly attracting on India's publishing circuit is due not only to its work-in-progress novelty factor but also to a renewed interest in the graphic novel among Indian readers, whose exposure to comics has largely been limited to foreign influences such as DC, Marvel, Archie's digests, and home-grown comics for children and mythological tales.
Undurti and Grewal are scripting the pilot, which has been illustrated by Chattoraj, who uses numerous photographs of the city and character studies taken by the founders as a reference. "Neither one of us is a real Hyderabadi," says Undurti, "but I think this provides us with an adequate degree of curiosity and objectivity."
At the time of India's independence in 1947, the nizam (ruler) of Hyderabad expressed his desire to be a part of Pakistan. However, the region integrated with India - and left the city with numerous historical accounts.
In researching Hyderabad's history, Undurti and Grewal came across two narrative strands - one by traditionalists, who added charm and romance to every word, and the other by the nationalists, whose own accounts diverge between the pro- and anti-Indian sentiments.
"After reading them all, to an extent we can say luckily all of them left the real stories unspoken. Our biggest challenge has not been to recreate the past stories, but it has been and shall remain trying to show the past. 'You have read history, but have you seen it?' that is our mantra and biggest challenge," says Grewal.
Given the improvised nature of the project, the team welcomes any data, voices and narratives that add colour to the city's "soul". There is, however, one guiding principle: no clichés. Hyderabad's most famous architectural landmark, the Charminar - a 16th-century mosque - and Hyderabadi pearls will not feature in the book.
"Also, our heroes and heroines will be dark-skinned," says Undurti. "Indian comics have subconsciously contributed to the fair-skin obsession in society's psyche by ensuring all their good men and women were lighter than the villains," he adds.
Currently armed with a budget of 50,000 rupees (Dh4,170) for the pilot, Undurti is fairly confident of securing further backing or, perhaps, even a publishing contract. According to him, the sources of funding could be as diverse as cultural organisations from the European Union or Indian-American venture capitalists originally from Hyderabad.
As an example of Hyderabad's historical diversity, Grewal narrates the story of the nizam's French general, Monsieur Raymond. "He was the first general in imperial India to allow people to call him by his name. The Hindus called him 'Moosa Ram' and the Muslims called him 'Moosa Rahim'. It's a nice little secular nugget. He died a few years before the French Revolution [in 1789], and had already brought in the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity."
The general was buried in Hyderabad and, until a few years ago, Sufi saints would assemble by his tomb on the anniversary of his death to sing in his memory.
Information in the form of anecdotes like that of Monsieur Raymond continue to pour in, leaving the final format of the novel undetermined. It could be either a single publication or a series of shorter novels.
Grewal, whose fondness for Hyderabad began 13 years ago at the time of his first visit, says it is best to refrain from analysing the various threads of the project, just as he prefers to avoid defining the city's charm. "Some say it's the air, others say it's the water, and another group says it's the sky. I think it's a combination of the three."
The novel itself has no definite plot. "It does, however," says Undurti "have a purpose. And its purpose is to define the relationship that people feel with a city. For instance, when we read a book, we are programmed to create images for the words we read. It's not intentional, but automatic. The brain or mind doesn't have a choice. So our purpose in writing and creating this book is to invoke instant recognition of Hyderabad and Hyderabadi ways in the reader's mind."
The%20specs
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RESULT
West Brom 2 Liverpool 2
West Brom: Livermore (79'), Rondón (88' )
Liverpool: Ings (4'), Salah (72')
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
RESULT
Arsenal 0 Chelsea 3
Chelsea: Willian (40'), Batshuayi (42', 49')
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
Racecard
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Book%20Details
%3Cp%3E%3Cem%3EThree%20Centuries%20of%20Travel%20Writing%20by%20Muslim%20Women%3C%2Fem%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EEditors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESiobhan%20Lambert-Hurley%2C%20Daniel%20Majchrowicz%2C%20Sunil%20Sharma%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPublisher%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EIndiana%20University%20Press%3B%20532%20pages%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
The specs: 2017 Maserati Quattroporte
Price, base / as tested Dh389,000 / Dh559,000
Engine 3.0L twin-turbo V8
Transmission Eight-speed automatic
Power 530hp @ 6,800rpm
Torque 650Nm @ 2,000 rpm
Fuel economy, combined 10.7L / 100km
Avatar%3A%20The%20Way%20of%20Water
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EJames%20Cameron%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESam%20Worthington%2C%20Zoe%20Saldana%2C%20Sigourney%20Weaver%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E3.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Ahmed Raza
UAE cricket captain
Age: 31
Born: Sharjah
Role: Left-arm spinner
One-day internationals: 31 matches, 35 wickets, average 31.4, economy rate 3.95
T20 internationals: 41 matches, 29 wickets, average 30.3, economy rate 6.28
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs: 2019 BMW X4
Price, base / as tested: Dh276,675 / Dh346,800
Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 354hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 500Nm @ 1,550rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.0L / 100km
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
On sale: Now
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
