Hyderabad’s cafe culture has been booming for the past few years, and the city is now home to some of the most charming and cozy cafes that cater to book lovers. Whether you are a literature enthusiast, a bookworm, or just looking for a relaxing place to unwind, these cafes offer the perfect ambience to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. With their comfortable seating, warm lighting, and delicious coffee and tea, these bibliophile-friendly cafes are the ideal destination for those looking to indulge in some quality reading time.
If you are among the bibliophiles, then here is the list of cafes in Hyderabad where people don’t come to paint the town red but to turn pages of interesting books secretly and enjoy coffee and food.
1. Farzi Cafe
Farzi cafe got a new shape last year and over 6,000 books have been racked up for book lovers here. The cafe is located in Jubilee Hills and scores of customers visit here to have coffee while reading books. Lifestyle, food, fitness, health, sports, art, and culture-related books are available at the café. Take a sip of coffee and read your favourite author’s ideas.
2. Comic Social
Comic Social is the first comic-themed café in the city which not only serves Italian and continental food but offers a wide variety of comic books to read. The cafe has a huge collection of rare comic books and is a must-visit cafe for those who love to read these kind of books. Marvel and DC enthusiasts would fall in love with this place.
3. Roast 24 Seven
The uniqueness of this cafe is that it opens at 6:00 am early in the morning and closes at 4 am, which means it is closed for only two hours out of 24 hours. The cafe has two branches, one is in Hitec City and another one in Gachibowli. These two branches offer a range of books to keep bibliophile customers engaged.
4. The Coffee Cup
The management of ‘The Coffee Cup’ cafe has come up with a unique idea. Located in Sainikpuri, this cafe has wide collection of books for retail as well as reading purposes. You can pick up the interesting book you want to read while waiting for coffee and can go with a book back home too if you purchase it.
5. Roastery Coffee House
Roastery Coffee House is located in a bungalow in Banjara Hills. The cafe house offers free WiFi to customers who want to read e-books. So, if you want to have a healthy breakfast or amazing coffee, come here and enjoy it while reading favourite book online.
6. The Hole in the Wall café
This cafe at Jubilee Hills has three areas that are decked with wall art, bookshelves, and board games while its outdoor area has swings seats. You can enjoy an English meal here, apart for other popular dishes which are trending in the city currently.
Mirza Waheed’s 2014 novel tells the story of love and hope in times of war, writesMuskan Fatima
Mirza Waheed (Author)
Mirza Waheed’s novelThe Book of Gold Leaves is a story about Kashmir, about the spirit of resilience that makes natives to cling the hope in wake of challenges.
Mirza is a Kashmir-born, British storyteller who quit a promising journalistic career to become a full-time novelist. His debut novel The Collaborator was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award in 2011. The Book of Gold Leaves, published in 2014 was shortlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize and the 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Set In the 1990s
The Book of Gold Leaves is set in the 1990s war-torn Kashmir and at it captures a love story of devastating beauty at a time of political strife in Kashmir. Faiz is a Shia papier-machie artist who supports his family by painting pencil boxes. His artworks are sold overseas in countries where he cannot travel. He is a dreamer too and often dreams about creating a masterpiece. Roohi, the other lead character in Mirza’s book is a young damsel who is a Sunni. She is a woman with dreams in her eyes and when her dreams are shattered she does not let her hopes die or her heart harden.
They knew each other as kids and are reunited as adults only to fall in love with an all-consuming intensity. The love they share is the kind of love that Shakespeare talked about – a love that is beyond all impediments and thus cannot be altered.
By no means, however, is their story a fairytale where a happy ending is awaited all along. Instead, it is a story where the heart is fragile and full of heartache and yet it chooses to be a rebel and love regardless of the consequences. The beauty of the book and the plot lies in the details of how the war tears their story apart and how they bravely face it in the hope that the war will end one day as it always does.
Times apart, the story is set in a space, where Shia-Sunni tensions have been part of history’s baggage. The storyteller ensures the love bloom, transcending the narrow sectarian divide. This is despite the fact that Faiz, the key character in the film, becomes a militant and is known as the “papier machie militant”.
Family Support
The family dynamics and history have also been woven with great delicacy. Farhat who is the little sister of Faiz shares a beautiful bond with Roohi. The bond is like that of sisterhood and comfort. While Faiz is away from home Farhat and Roohi become pillars of strength for each other.
The Book of Gold Leaves by Mirza Waheed
The writing style is poignant and lyrical. There is incredible use of imagery and the prose has been written in such a way that it leaves the reader with a sense of catharsis.
The scent of home is spread throughout the book from the scenes set up in Khanqah to the water bodies described with incessant beauty. One can almost imagine themselves walking down the lanes in Habbakadal and gazing at the houseboats while on a Shikara ride.
There is a sense of melancholy felt throughout the novel which gives the sense that the book shares a personal connection with the author. In fact, the book cover carries a picture of Mirza’s late grandfather’s paper-machie artwork.
Communal Relations
One of the underlying themes that this book explores is the Hindu-Muslim relations in Kashmir. On TV screens and in political discourse, the relationship is often portrayed of a rivalry. Mirza not only describes the plight of Hindus who left their homes but also explores the ground reality of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir. He portrays with utmost delicacy how both communities have shared a history of utmost love and tolerance.
Just like in real life within one story lies multiple other stories waiting to be explored and understood. The side characters in the book carry within themselves a complexity of their own.
One such story which goes parallel to the love story of Faiz and Roohi is that of Shanta Koul, the Principal at Farhat’s school. Army barracks are being set up in the school and youngsters joining militancy has become common news. Shanta Koul is forced to watch as her life and the life of those around her are stripped of any stability that existed before the war and the turmoil.
Interestingly, Mirza skips indulging in who is at fault. Instead, he leaves it to the reader to form opinions and conclusions. He merely shows the aftermath of it all and does what storytellers must do- tells the story.
In Kashmir the silence is loud and the waiting is long. Although amidst all of it Mirza Waheed does not fail to slide in a glimmer of hope within the little moments of joy shared by the characters.
This book is a slice of life filled with spirituality, family history, love, longing, hope and in the midst of it all a feeling of home that Kashmir never fails to give.
24L school students to get Rs 200 cr worth books, uniforms in Telangana: Edu min
Hyderabad: Telangana education minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy said that free distribution of notebooks, textbooks, and school uniforms, that sum up to a cost of Rs 200 crore, among 24 lakh students in Telangana’s government schools will be uptaken.
On Wednesday, during a review meeting with officials of the education department at the Secretariat, the minister said that the free distribution was facilitated by chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao with a generous approach towards the development of the education sector.
“Children studying in primary schools would be provided with workbooks also. The requirement of notebooks for students in high schools was already taken into count and supplies would be made accordingly,” said Sabitha.
Additionally, students will be receiving bilingual textbooks this year along with two pairs of school uniforms, worth upto Rs 150 crore, in total.
Directing that the free distribution be taken up in the presence of parents, and public representatives, Sabitha said that the schools will reopen on June 12 and the new academic year should commence in a festive mode.
Talking about the ‘Mana Ooru-Mana Badi’ programme, the minister asked officials to expedite the arrangements in government schools by June first week.
At the time the book came out, some critics seemed surprised at how deeply it drilled into the anxious self-centeredness of a growing child. “The world may be in serious trouble, but for Margaret Simon and her friends, the real crises have to do with breast‐growth and the competition to see who menstruates first,” sniffed an otherwise positive New York Times children’s book reviewer in November 1970. Well, yes, for a standard 12-year-old, that sounds about right.
It didn’t matter what the Times thought, anyway; the kids handled the publicity themselves, making the book a viral hit before viral hits were a concept. Blume had fortuitous timing, Leonard Marcus, a children’s book historian, told me: Margaret came out just as publishers were starting to issue children’s books in inexpensive paperback form, and mall stores like B. Dalton were starting to sell books outside of the watchful eyes of librarians and traditional bookstore clerks.
And a forbidden book will always have appeal. Almost as soon as Margaret was published, it was banned in certain corners; Blume has said her own children’s elementary school principal wouldn’t shelve it in the school library because it mentioned menstruation. In the 1980s, conservative warriors Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell made Margaret and other Blume books a target of their ire. Schlafly’s Eagle Forum put out a pamphlet titled “How to Rid Your Schools and Libraries of Judy Blume Books.”
The bullseye on Blume’s work remains today. This spring, Forever was one of 80 books banned from Florida’s Martin County school system, along with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Last year was a record year for book bans in the United States, with 60 percent of the bans directed at school libraries and classrooms. Some objections to books have evolved since 1970 — many of 2022’s banned books were targeted for LGBTQ themes, including Gender Queer, a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about explaining nonbinary and asexual identity to friends and family. But a common thread to book bans, then and now, is discomfort about frank discussion of sexuality.
In that context, the movie version of Margaret doesn’t feel like something that would rile up the Phyllis Schlafly set. It’s a gentle, charming period piece, an exercise in nostalgia — so reverent of Blume, who served as a producer, that it starts with footage of her reading the entire first chapter aloud. Florida legislators might also be pleased to know that, as much as Margaret and her friends talk about getting their periods, the film treats the actual event with 1970s-era restraint: not a drop of blood appears onscreen.
In other words, the movie is safe — more so than the book felt, when it left a monthly flow to your preteen imagination. And while it’s sweetly faithful to the Margaret text, the fact that it’s emblazoned on a giant screen, in a public setting, seems to me to undermine its spirit. Sitting in the theater, I imagined a version that might actually make people squeamish — like the period jokes that show up now in Michelle Wolf’s comedy routines and edgy TV shows like “Broad City.” In her time, Blume was that kind of fearless, says Anita Diamant, the author of Period. End of Sentence, a book about destigmatizing menstruation. That’s why “she became this legend.”
But if the kids in my theater seemed unfazed, watching sanctioned fare in the company of adults, they clearly still had secrets of their own. One group of girls slipped down the aisle just as the lights went down and ran in and out together, whispering, over the course of the screening. They looked to be 11 or 12, Margaret’s age, wearing matching cat-ear headbands, taking part in a private scheme that adults wouldn’t understand. Who knows what book they’re passing among themselves.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In this series we ask authors, Guardian writers and readers to share what they have been reading recently. This month, recommendations include a memoir that wrestles with singleness, poetry that feels alive and excellent audiobooks. Tell us in the comments what you have been reading.
Yara Rodrigues Fowler, novelist
Recently I’ve been reading Abolition Revolution by Shanice Octavia McBean and Aviah Sarah Day, both trade unionists and activists in direct action feminist group Sisters Uncut. This book adds to the excellent emerging literature about police, prison and border abolition in a UK specific context (another I’d recommend is Against Borders: The Case for Abolition by Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha, and Liberty’s recent Holding Our Own report). Abolition Revolution is very special because McBean and Day combine deep theoretical and historical knowledge with practical organising experience, specifically in the context of violence against women and austerity. If you feel that there must be a better way to deal with harm and violence then this book is for you.
I’m co-writing a play at the moment, called Conference of the Trees, with Connie Treves and Majid Adin, based on the work of poets involved with the Change the Word Collective, Sarah Orola, Lester Gomez Medina, Diyo Mulopo Bopengo, Ian Andrew, Yordanos Gebrehiwot. I’ve spent over a year reading and rereading their poetry, much of which appears in An Orchestra of Unexpected Sounds, and it is still as crisp and alive as the first time I encountered it.
Fiction-wise, I’ve been enjoying audiobooks recently: I loved Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and am now listening to Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Madand Furious City (having previously read it in physical form), which is also very well produced.
Yara Rodrigues Fowler is one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023. Her second novel, there are more things, is out in paperback now. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Hollie Richardson, Guardian writer
Women have been taught that it is a weakness to say we want romantic love. That it’s better to post something positive on Instagram about being a “strong, independent woman” than publicly admit to wanting a relationship while struggling to find the right one. That it is a failure not to find love as soon as you recognise you’re ready for it.
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In her memoir, Arrangements in Blue, Amy Key totally gets this – she’s been single for over two decades. “It scares me to lay out all the ways in which absence of romantic love touches my life,” she admits in the introduction. “I must be brave enough to say aloud, I did want it. I do want it.” And it is her bravery, this vulnerability, that makes it such a generous read for so many of us who haven’t felt comfortable enough to say, “I like my life but I want more”.
Key uses the songs of her favourite album, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, to help guide us through her life without a romantic relationship – and, although I was initially quite sceptical, it works naturally as she writes about being child-free, living alone, travelling solo, friendships and attempts at love. Key’s background as a poet is evident: her writing is gorgeously lyrical, but she is also unafraid to share the colder, harsher parts of being single.
Arrangements in Blue is a short read, but each page feels so full and worth savouring. I already have friends who have sent me screenshots of the parts that made them feel so seen. And I have sent them mine.
Percival Everett. Photograph: John Davis/Windham Campbell prize
Paul, Guardian reader
For me, this year has been about discovering writers I’ve never read before. This month’s biggest discovery has been Percival Everett. His most recent novel, Dr No, is a comic masterpiece, but it is his novel The Trees that has been a real revelation to me. The descendants of people who committed lynchings in the past are being murdered, their corpses found with those of their long-dead victims. Everett shows how monstrous these crimes were, and how guilt is passed through the generations, but what makes the book so remarkable is its humour. Much of the dialogue is in the form of repartee between the characters, and it is often hilarious, despite the dark subject.
Patrick Gale is another writer new to me. His most recent book, Mother’s Boy, tells the early life of Cornish poet Charles Causley. It is beautifully written, and sent me back to the work of this very private man.
I’m late to the party, but Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is every bit as good as everyone says, and Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water is beautiful inside and out, a deeply poetic and moving account of a tentative affair between two young people.
Finally, I’ve just finished Play It As It Lays, by the remarkable Joan Didion. An account of the breakdown of a female actor in 1960s Hollywood, it’s beautifully observed and a really powerful book. I’ve read a lot of different writers this month, but all have in common that sense of looking into someone else’s world that the best fiction can convey.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The Kraszna-Krausz book awards recognise individuals who have made an outstanding original or lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contribution to literature concerning photography or the moving image. Two winning titles are selected annually, with prize money of £10,000 divided between them
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of attempting to ‘erase’ the name of India’s first Education Minister and Bharat Ratna, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, from history because he was a Muslim.
NCP national spokesperson Clyde Crasto said that the BJP-led government at the Centre is using the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) to wipe out Maulana Azad’s identity and his glorious contributions from India’s education system.
Citing instances, he said a para in the first chapter of the old Class XI NCERT political science textbook said: “The Constituent Assembly had eight major Committees on different subjects. Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad or Ambedkar chaired these Committees.”
“However, in the new version of the same textbook by NCERT, the name of Maulana Azad has been omitted and the same sentence now reads: ‘Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or B.R. Ambedkar chaired these committees’. This is truly unfortunate,” Crasto said.
Suspecting a systematic conspiracy to delete Maulana Azad from history, the NCP leader pointed out how last year the Minority Affairs Ministry had abruptly discontinued the ‘Maulana Azad Fellowship’, which was started in 2009 (by the former UPA government) to provide financial help to students from six notified minorities for a period of five years.
The NCERT comes under the Government of India which is currently led by the BJP, and therefore the question that comes to the mind is whether they are seeking to obliterate the name of India’s first Education Minister because of his religion, Crasto said.
“There appears no other reason why they would do this to the first Education Minister of Independent India and one of our leading freedom fighters. The NCERT must clarify and answer to the citizens why Maulana Azad’s name is missing in the new version of the textbook, and how it will rectify this error,” Crasto said.
Maulana Azad, a distinguished Islamic scholar, author, academician and a prominent freedom fighter, was elected as the youngest President of Indian National Congress aged 35, and later led the historic Khilafat Movement.
After Independence, Maulana Azad served as India’s first Education Minister for over 10 years, during which he laid the foundations for the country’s massive academic network. Acknowledging his contributions, his birthday – November 11 – is celebrated as National Education Day.
New Delhi: The Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF) on Friday criticised the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for making changes in textbooks of Class 11 and 12 that include omission of some chapters on Mughals and colonialism.
The DTF refused to agree with NCERT’s submission that omitting chapters on colonialism and Mughals would not make much of an impact on students’ learning process.
The teachers’ body also did not back NCERT’s view that the latest change in syllabus would take “a certain extra pressure” off the students.
The NCERT has also cited the impact of Covid on students across the country behind the changes in syllabus — a submission the DTF did not accept.
DTF president Nandita Narain said most of the subjects in Class 11 and 12 are optional for CBSE students.
“If any student picks History in Class 11, he or she needs to develop a deeper understanding of the historical episodes in the next class as well,” she said, adding the NCERT’s claims of rationalisation and rationalisation of the curriculum have no merit.
DTF secretary Abha Dev Habib said the Constitution talks about development of the scientific perspective of the citizens, and “the NCERT’s latest move goes against this very idea”.
“… also, from this point of view, India’s pluralistic and inclusive nature for diversity cannot be saved. This approach would also eliminate any possibility of India emerging as the centre of science and technology. If ‘WhatsApp University’ is given a free hand to have its say in schools, colleges and universities in the same way, it will seriously affect Indian democracy,” she said.
SRINAGAR: The Directorate Of School Education (DSEK) on Friday warned all recognised private schools to stop compelling parents to buy books, stationary items, and uniforms from a particular shop.
DESK in a circular said that said that directorate and its subordinate offices are receiving a lot of complaints from the parents against the private schools forcing them to buy certain items from shops recommended by them.
“The books prescribed by these schools should have been available in the open market. There are some more complaints from parents wherein it is said that a large number of books are being prescribed by the private school authorities for primary classes, which unnecessary burdens the tender minds and mars the creativity,” DESK said in a circular.
Further, some private schools are forcing parents to purchase extra books for classes 6th, 7th & 8th in addition to the books prescribed by JKBOSE which amounts to extra burden on the learning of students and goes against the recommendations of National Education Policy 2020 which advocates age appropriate burden free learning of students, the order reads.
The order further reads,” The schools by prescribing additional books are going against the guidelines which are not prescribed by the Board to which the schools affiliated not only flout the recommendations envisaged in Rule 8A of J&K School Education Rules, 2010 & revised guidelines of School Bag Policy, 2020 released by Department of School Education and Literacy Ministry of Education, Government of India, but also poses extra financial burden on parents.”
Resorting to such illegal practices by few private schools is against the ethics and norms/ guidelines issued by the Government from time to time.
Henceforth, all private schools shall notify through their websites the list of subjects and the books prescribed by the Board to which they are affiliated and no other subject or book shall be made mandatory. Under no circumstances, any school shall ask parents to buy books from a particular bookshop, it said.
“It is enjoined upon all the private recognized schools to desisit from compelling the parents to purchase books or uniforms from any particular shops and change of books thereof. Further, parents should be given wider choice to purchase of books or uniforms from the open market. Any deviation from these instructions, if noticed shall be viewed seriously and action will be taken as per the provisions of law which inter-alia includes de-recognition of schools, withdrawal of managing body,” the order said.
DESK directed all Chief Education Officers to constitute special monitoring teams involving cluster heads, Zonal Education Officers to verify the complaints received on account of sale of books and uniforms by the private schools/ prescribing additional books or pressing parents for purchase from any particular shop. Action taken in this regard shall be submitted to this Directorate on monthly basis.
