The siege of KBR National Park: Concrete closing in on Hyderabad’s green heart

The year was 1978. Two little boys on a bicycle disappeared into the horizon. Moments later, two men in their mid-50s came bouncing down the same lonely road in a beach buggy, angling for young women as cameras rolled. On one side ran a long wall, revealing a hint of vegetation within. On the other lay barren land, broken only by a few tin-roofed sheds.

The men were thespians N.T. Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao, playing carefree 20-somethings in the Telugu film Ramakrishnulu. The road connected Banjara Hills Road No.2 to the Jubilee Hills Checkpost junction. The sheds were Annapurna Studios, barely two years old then.