Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
Lucknow’s bio, dastaan way!
Mehru Jaffer’s accomplishments as a journalist have long been acknowledged. That she has the gift for spinning yarns is a welcome surprise. In her Love and Life in Lucknow: An Imaginary Biography of a City she tells an evocative tale encompassing all that is special about this city, its history, its communities and its landmarks.
She constructs this imaginary biography as a ‘dastan’, the medieval way of story-telling in modules, independent yet linked in a narrative that can last forever. In this book, she intersperses the short capsules of the city’s history with detours into romance, nostalgia, and comment which augment the culturescape of the city and keeps the narrative flowing in imaginative ways. These wanderings can be reflections on Buddha, the Ramcharitramanas, the river Gomti, the significance of the events in Karbala to Lucknow or the lives of the courtesans. Each departure enriches the narrative and stitches together her ‘dastan’ which derives its strength from lived history.
The narrator is easily recognisable as the author herself who, because of having lived so intensely in Lucknow, brings to the story feeling, concern as well as heartbreak. Her love for the city is evident in the lyricism of her descriptions and the liquid strokes by which she paints the vast canvas of life in Lucknow. Her descriptions are vivid as well as impressionistic and touched by that little bit of gossip that makes any story delicious.
Like medieval dastans, her tale too has characters that appear regularly and
who represent different dimensions of the city. These are not entirely fictional and sometimes easily recognizable.
Naresh, the rickshawala, and Munna Bhai, the kebab seller, for instance, bring with them experiences from different social spectrums and worldviews. The backbone of the story, however, is Bano Bua, long-term friend and the spiritual nourisher of the narrator. A few years ago Jaffer had profiled Bano Bua as a feminist icon of Avadh. Here, she bestows extra dimensions on her. Bano Bua becomes a part-time consulting historian and parttime alter-ego for the author. Bano Bua puts the narrators, fluid flights of fancy into perspective and it is she who leads the author to Bottle Baba, Lotus Blossom and Tamboli Begum, characters with all the elements of magic realism to them. Jaffer’s book is a fitting tribute to Lucknow the city with its ‘rainbow coloured contradictions’ whose denizens have cultivated a culture which thrives on love rather than conflict.
SALEEM KIDWAI