HERE, in Hyderabad, "Old City" and "communally sensitive" are perceptually, permanently, conjoined.

It doesn't matter who you talk to -- hotel managers, cab drivers (including Mohammad Bashir, himself a Muslim, but quick to point out that he does not live in the Old City), journalists, whoever -- they all say it like that: "communally sensitive Old City".

Some say it with rueful tolerance, as pointing to a particularly troublesome member of the family; some with an undertone of embarrassed disgust, as if wishing this blot on Hyderabad’s reputation as a budding cyber capital would somehow just go away; some say it matter of fact. "Communally sensitive Old City...".

For those within the Old City – those who live there, go to school there, work there, often hardly venture out of there – that appellation, "communally sensitive", is unwelcome.

"People can think what they want, but we Muslims have no problems with the Hindus here," says Mohammad Sayed, a young man who runs a fruit juice outlet bang opposite Mecca Masjid, the 400-year-old mosque adjacent the Charminar where, on Friday May 18, a bomb exploded killing nine and injuring nearly three score others.

Sayed points to a corner of the Charminar, visible from where we stand opposite Mecca Masjid. "Look there, that is a Hindu temple, part of the Charminar. (Nestled into the corner of the Charminar, on the side facing Mecca Masjid, is a Bhagyalakshmi Temple where, on the Sunday, a steady stream of devotees come, pray, accept prasad, and move on).

"Yesterday (Saturday 19), they shut the mosque down because the police and bomb squad people were there, so we had to offer our prayers on this road. But the temple was open, people came to pray and made offerings for peace.

"And even on the day of the blasts, when everyone was angry, one Hindu was beaten up a little further down the road, near Shah Ali Bandar. It was Muslims who rescued him, tended to his injuries, then took him to hospital for treatment."

Even on this Sunday, Mecca Masjid remains shut; its giant green gates are shut from the inside, while the smaller gate set in the fence, through which the faithful enter for namaz, bears a padlock. Policemen standing guard tell me that it will be opened, but only in time for namaz; meanwhile, members of the Intelligence Bureau, and the bomb squad, are inside the premises, carrying out investigations. Baghyalakshmi Mandir however is open; devotees keep coming by as we talk, worshipping, accepting prasad, moving on.

M Prakash backs Sayed up. His family owns six shops selling Hyderabadi pearls, all in a row adjacent the Charminar and a pearl’s throw from the site of the blasts. It is a Sunday, the shops are shut, but he has come down to check that all is well in the area.

"We do business here, in this area; we live in the Old City and we don’t feel unsafe at all, not even when the bombs went off," Prakash says, sipping on a mosambi juice to beat the excruciating heat. "Yes, we downed our shutters as soon as the blast happened, but all shops here, even the ones run by Muslims, did that, so it was not like we were fearful or anything."

"Everyone outside the Old City says Hindus and Muslims have problems here, that this is a communally sensitive place. Who ek tharah ka fashion hai, saab," Sayed says. That is not true – we don’t have any problems with the Hindus, all our problems are with the police, and with the government."

Image: At noon on Sunday, the only visible sign of Friday's trouble is the pock-marked front of this shop, adjacent the main gate of the Mecca Masjid

Also see: Terror rocks Hyderabad

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