Vanishing worlds in the city of nawabs
Circumstances may have taken Lakhnauwaalas away from Lucknow but it is impossible to truly separate them from the city, writes Mehru Jaffer in A Shadow of the Past.
I grew up in Lucknow, which, in the 1960s and ’70s, was chaotic, overcrowded and laid-back. In the eyes of a young girl, though, it was still one of the most romantic cities in the world. This was where communities gathered together to celebrate every festival, where art and culture flourished, where a walk down fashionable Hazrat Ganj — called ganjing — was equivalent to strolling down London’s Oxford Street.
That leisurely ganjing has now turned into frantic shopping and bargaining; very few remember the city’s old-world etiquette, and the famous pahle aap, which signified giving precedence to others, has now become a joke. Today, Lucknow, the capital of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, is still as chaotic and overcrowded as it used to be. Sadly, its soul is missing and that is why Jaffer’s book is so important.
The city of nawabs, Lucknow, built between 1775 and 1856, was once famous for its monuments and food and also its incredible intangible heritage. The imminent loss of that intangible heritage is a recurring theme in the book. Lucknow’s Shia nawabs of Persian origin, who were a minority community within a minority community, made love, harmony and peace the state policy. Jaffer describes the model of inclusive governance that the nawabs built, which was responsible for different communities coming together to give birth to the beautiful force known as Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb: the emphasis was on unity not division.
At the dawn of the 19th century, the city was famous for its architecture, study of science, theatre, music, literature, poetry and the arts. Above all, there was that generosity of spirit epitomised in the still-popular saying: Jisko na de Maula, usko de Asafud-daula, “Whatever God forgets to propose, Asaf-ud-daulah will dispose”.
The city that Asaf-ud-daulah built and his descendants nurtured, where every local market lane was filled with the fragrance of crushed rose petals and jasmine flowers, where the heady aroma of savouries fried in clarified butter hung over poetry mushairas, and where justice and camaraderie flourished, is now no more. It was devastated in the aftermath of the Uprising of 1857, and a sophisticated way of living dwindled with the beloved Nawab being exiled to Kolkata. The Partition was another blow to the crumbling edifice. The palaces, gardens, pavilions, and royal bazaars, in danger of collapsing into shabby neighbourhoods, are now just symbols of the grand past. Jaffer brings out this loss in wistful, almost lyrical, prose.
But all is not lost! Mir Taqi Mir and Mir Anees have not been forgotten; contemporary intellectuals, poets and dastangos like Saleem Kidwai (who died on August 30 and will be sorely missed), Abhishek Shukla, Deepak Kabir, Askari Naqvi and Himanshu Bajpai continue to nurture the cultured interests of the nawabs, and educational institutions and their students continue to carry forward the city’s scientific temper.
Towards the end, Jaffer laments the shrinking of breathing spaces and of the freedom to laugh and to love. But she also strikes an optimistic note with her hope that citizens realise that it is now up to them, “to make sure that they do not let go of each other’s hands held together in undying friendship for so long.”