Paan stains, lichen, graffiti put off tourists at Charminar

HYDERABAD: The historic Charminar still continues to remain the cynosure of all eyes in the city, but many tourists from within the country and abroad are less than overwhelmed by it.
Not only do a large number of visitors feel that the 400-year-old structure needs a facelift, they are stumped at the lack of maintenance and wonder why the authorities have done so little to save the city's icon.What appalled tourists the most were the lichen-covered and paan-stained walls of the edifice, as well as the fact the government has done very little to get rid of these.
For instance, Janyl Chytyrbaeva, a Kyrgyz journalist based in the Czech Republic, felt that the Charminar could have been "maintained better" and was not being used "properly". Visiting Hyderabad along with Goa, Mumbai and Delhi, Janyl said: "India is not using historic monuments for its benefit. One cannot see much effort to reconstruct them and make these places educational or meeting spaces for the public as I see in Czech Republic. Charminar has the same meaning in Kyrgyz as it has in Urdu." She added: "Charminar is similar to the Triumphal Arc in Paris but is more 'humane in nature."
While Janyl sees striking similarities between monuments in Kyrgyzstan and Hyderabad, particularly in terms of architecture, Jim Singer, a visitor from Jersey City in the USA, who is here to attend a friend's wedding, was disappointed the moment he set sight on the monument. "It looks magnificent in pictures on the internet but is quite the opposite in reality. There is hardly any space to move, making it impossible to have a proper look. I went inside and saw graffiti on the walls. My guide told me it was done a long time ago but the authorities could have done something to get rid of them," said an unimpressed Jim.
On the other hand, tourists from other states such as Deepak Shah from Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, said they were awed by Hyderabad's symbol. "Charminar is very beautiful and I think it is one of the most imposing buildings I have seen in the country," he said.
Meanwhile, city based art collector Mohammed Safiullah on Thursday claimed that he saw tourists defacing the walls recently. "I was there two days ago and two boys started defacing the stucco walls by stabbing it with sharp objects. However, it is the Bhagyalakshmi temple that reduces Charminar's aesthetic appeal the most. In response to an RTI query, the ASI was quite secular when it stated that the temple was an unauthorised construction," Safiullah bemoaned.