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For 75 years, the Deccan Chronicle has been the newspaper for the city of Hyderabad. The year 2013 marked our anniversary, a milestone, and a tribute to reporting on events and people from this grand old city.

We documented Hyderabad's tumultuous social and political events, witnessed the sunset over the fiefdom carved out in the eighteeth century from the grand Mughal empire and now, there's a new dawn again. Never has a region changed so much, in so little time.

To commemorate our 75 years in Hyderabad, we have, however, chosen to pay attention to the closing years of Nizamshahi, the modern city's splendid formative years, filled with fantastic stories of delight and decline. Almost everything, from Nizxam VII, Mir Osman Ali Khan's matchmaking skills to the day Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri landed at Begumpet airport, is in the following pages.

The text relies on research conducted by our journalists at the India Office Library in London, the archives of the Deccan Chronicle and recording of oral evidence from Hyderabad-based actor from the era.

This book primarily is a dedication by a newspaper to the city it calls home.