Hyderabad

Hyderabad, 29.2.2012: Treasure Hunters in Hyderabad

 © Chenna Reddy am Telefon, im Hintergrund: Schatzsucher © Foto: Philipp DudekTreasure hunters in Hyderabad are going to school. For two days, they have dug up sections of the athletic field at Vidyaranya High School with excavators. Now, they are standing on a small hill upon which the Birla Temple is enthroned above the school with electronic measurement equipment, driving metal rods into the earth and calling out numbers to one another. Reporters in Hyderabad are also going to school. For the fourth day in a row they are standing on the little athletic field at the foot of the hill directing their cameras at the treasure hunters. The only people one does not see at school are the pupils. They have a holiday, although their final exams are coming up in a few days. At present, other things are more important: jewels and gemstones.

A mason announced that, on his way to take a leak, he’d discovered a corridor in the bushes of the hill during construction work on a neighbouring plot. At the end of the corridor was a door and behind the door he found jewels and gemstones. This happened four years ago. It wasn’t until last weekend that the treasure hunters’ excavators arrived. The mason, who no one has yet seen, only told a freelancer at a newspaper his story. The freelancer kept the story to himself for three years and then did not tell his newspaper, but an acquaintance, Sitarama Raju. This is where the story gets fishy. Raju is a functionary of the Indian coal giant Coal India Limited. He proudly tells the press how he got access to the school grounds: "I pretended to be the father of a pupil and snuck onto the grounds. There is a concrete door there, about this thick," he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about ten centimetres apart. "No," he did not see a treasure there, he says. "But the corridor, it’s there." The reporters grin. No one really wants to believe the story.

Raju claims he discovered the concrete door a year ago. But it wasn’t until last week that he informed the director of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Prof. P. Chenna Reddy, who ordered the excavators. Suddenly no one could recall the exact location of the corridor and the door and the jewels. So, first the athletic field was dug up and shortly thereafter Reddy’s authority on the treasure hunt playground was undermined. Early in the week following a visit to the excavation site, his superior, Minister Vatti Vasant, said, "I don’t think anyone here actually knows what they are doing. I told the officials that they should work with special instruments if they believe that something is under the ground here, instead of digging away everywhere at random."

Since then, countless state authorities have been cavorting on the school grounds, measuring the subsoil with special devices. The corridor leading to the treasure must be somewhere. Department director Reddy is under a great deal of pressure. The relations with the smugly smiling reporters are strained. Over the past few days, a number of newspapers have begun referring to the treasure only with inverted commas. Not only the journalists, but many residents believe that the treasure is something entirely different: the valuable real estate upon which the school is merely in the way. "It looks to me more like a demolition and not as if they are looking for something of archaeological significance," a preservationist told the Daily Pioneer.

At the weekend at the latest, the authorities plan to present the results of their investigation. "The data indicate anomalies," is now being said. "Sure, anomalies, but not underground," the reporters say with a laugh.

Philipp Dudek
Published in Hamburger Morgenpost on 27/2/2012
Translated by Faith Gibson.

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