Tales that demand our attention

The last time I thought about Allahabad, a city that has been a strong proponent of GangaJamuni tehzeeb, was when the BJP-led government renamed it. For Allahabadis, this step was not only political but deeply personal. Udbhav Agarwal’s for Prayagraj describes how the saffronisation of the city is tearing into its social fabric:

“Boundary walls, bridges, and trees were painted in cartoonish Hindu motifs. Crossing the Subhash chauraha one day, I noticed an odd traffic sign. It was in five languages — Hindi, English, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, but no Urdu — and it marked the way to another city: Saraswati Hi-Tech City”

The author presents us with a wry account of the city reeling under urbanisation, stripped of its glorious past, thickening with buildings that have converted it into “a battleground of old cliches”. A PhD candidate in political science at Johns Hopkins University and desperate to find a thesis topic, Agarwal

Areturns to the city to grapple with the question: What makes a city smart? For an entire summer, he tries to chronicle it in atypical ways — by talking to a parkour artist, setting up a Grindr date, and poring over the autobiography of a migrant writer. While Agarwal is despondent to see the place changing, the book doesn’t rely much on memory, with only a slight mention in the prologue of the strange ways in which Allahabad remained knotted inside him: “I’d introduce myself as an Allahabadi, even if saying ‘I am from India’ made more sense...”

In the chapter Saam Daam Gun Bhed, Agarwal describes the rampant crime and corruption. He writes about a district magistrate who bulldozed a resident’s house because the latter didn’t pay the demanded bribe, and about a lawyer who fights for the powerful and believes the law is meant to rein in the herd. The sad reality is that the victim is always an average man with no political connections.

The last two sections talk about two pertinent issues that face the young people of any small city. Apna Time Aayega deals with joblessness, the scarcity of professional choices, and the implications of choosing an unconventional career. The chapter starts with: “If the outsiders were impressed, the insiders wanted to get away.” Using the refrain ‘Yahan Koi Scope Nahi Hai’, Agarwal mentions the mushrooming of coaching institutes to help students ace entrance examinations and move to better places.

The chapter Fse Fyaar, F se Firaq is an allusion to Firaq Gorakhpuri, a famous gay Urdu poet from Allahabad. Neelam Saran Gour mentions him in her book, Three Rivers and a

A for Prayagraj; A Short Biography of Allahabad Udbhav Agarwal 128pp, ~399, Aleph

Tree: The Story of Allahabad University: “He could stop the man come to deliver the gas cylinder with the disarmingly candid proposition: ‘Tum mujhe mohabbat karoge?’” Through a Grindr date, Agarwal reveals the prevalent regressive attitudes towards homosexuality, and how young people have to choose between being ostracised or moving out of the city.

Many writers have written about this city that resists easy theorising. Its condition, attributed to the government’s insistence on dissolving links of communal harmony, can be summed up by Agarwal’s sharp observation: “A Hindu Rashtra needs Hindu metropolises. Our cities are being experimented upon, they are turning into laboratories… These are contagious tales, red, they demand our attention.”

Udbhav Agarwal’s precise detailing brings forth Allahabad-Prayagraj’s contradictions, its past slowly pushed to the corners by malls even as its residents jostle hard to move out.

Kinshuk Gupta is associate editor,

Usawa Literary Review