Hyderabad opens heart for Valentines

Hyderabad: Valentine's Day brought a big cheer to pubs, major restaurants and star hotels in Hyderabad. The lovebirds found better and more peaceful joints to celebrate Valentine's Day as they chose these joints for the day-long celebrations and avoid activists of rightist groups who indulge in moral policing.

The hotel managements had taken necessary safety and security measures ensuring that there was no vandalization of the premises for holding Valentine's Day special programmes and assault on the couples during the events.

For a change, parks this year wore a desert look while restaurants and hotels brimmed with couples. According to an official of a five-star hotel, they had come up with special packages for couples starting from Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 which included customised food, cakes and beverages with suitable romantic ambience. Pubs located in the posh Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills and Hi-Tec City were full with young couples in the evening.

Special music and dance programmes were organised, and soft drinks and spirits were supplied to them with huge discounts. Pubs and restaurants had revived the practice of Valentine's Day programmes for the first time after a gap of two years due to the Covid pandemic. Most of the crowd at these celebrations were college-going students and techies who got recently employed. Noted event organizers in the recreation clubs said that in future they were planning to hold the Valentine's Day events like they do for the New Year by inviting international artistes.

On the condition of anonymity, a couple from Dilsukhnagar said that they avoided parks or cinema theatres as they had seen how some groups had been attacking the young couples leading to a lot of problems. In some cases, the police had to intervene and parents of such couples were called to the police station for counselling causing embarrassment both to the parents and youth. Lunch at star hotels is a better option, they added.