Reminiscing the trip after a year

I had lost steam since a year and got busy in the mundane life all over again. Recently visited a presentation by the artist Tushar Joag who had taken up a motorcycle journey from Mumbai to Shanghai via the Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat and Three Gorges dam in China. The presentation has fired both of us up to do an exhibition/presentation in the near future. Until then I want to continue reminiscing the journey through this blog.

Lucknow - the veiled city

I was looking forward to visiting Lucknow through out the trip. I had an image of Lucknow in my mind - almost a collage, through the stories and hindi cinema, of a certain romantic cultured grandness, rich language, dance, music, minakari, colored glass.

Walls of 'The Residency'

We reached Lucknow after a long interesting journey through small villages, almost by nightfall. Just at the outskirts the snarls of a modern day Indian city hit us - congestion, honking, crowd, traffic jams, filth, dust and above all the exhaustion of an entire day journey. The romantic image was shattered for the time being.After 3 hours of looking for a place to stay we finally crashed in a UP tourism hotel. The next day felt better and so did the city though it was still congested, dusty and faceless but not unlike any other city of this scale.

The rich grandeur of Lucknow was not visible on the streets and in the daily life but was locked up behind the walls of protected monuments. We first went to The Residency. It was the site of the first mutiny of freedom in 1857. Around 10,000 British were held inside the 33 acre campus. Even today in its ruins it looked grand. Completely made of thin bricks about 5.5”x3.5”x1” the structures like villas, banquet halls, treasury etc. with its 5’ high plinths looked extremely grand. I hadn’t seen such exquisite brick masonry in the country with perfect flat arches, semi circular arches, columns, 2’ thick walls, high plinths with servant quarters in the basement and huge gardens. It was like mini Savannah (Georgia) but in ruins. The brick masonry reminded me of Roman ruins. Cluster of bricks together were dressed as stones on some walls and I think in its full glory it would be made to look like stone construction.The entire campus was filled with couples making out in each and every corner. 

After spending 3 hours there we tore ourselves away and headed towards Bada and Chota Imambra. The approach to the monuments was classical and its grandness could be felt from miles away.  Being a weekend the monuments were infested with tourists, school children and touts. We entered Bada Imambra after warding off the touts – even from inside the structure was grand. Except for the central hall the rest of the structure was closed off for renovation. The courtyard outside was enough to transport you into Lucknow’s golden era. Through out our exploration the touts kept bothering us saying that a couple is not allowed to roam alone and finally we were officially stopped from going into the labyrinth and were asked to be accompanied by a guide. This was the last straw – by now we were fuming mad. That sanctity of architecture was snatched away by the guides/touts. After futile argument for some time we stormed out and demanded for a refund of our tickets which surprisingly we got.

Entrance of Bada Imambra

We vowed to come back to Lucknow on a week day. The rest of the monuments we saw from our bike – no more getting off in a pool of school children and touts. The city had its grandness veiled in the form of gated monuments while the rest of the city de-evolved into a faceless 2^nd tiered Indian city with congested, dilapidated old city and  a misfit counterpart of a concrete, aluminum and glass clad new city. 

At the end of the day we headed towards Ambedkar Smarak couple of km outside the main city. It was a humongous campus of pink stone with its own dedicated entrance bridge over River Gomti. The entrance had a huge 80feet tall statue of Ambedkar on one side and of Mayawati and Kanshiram on the other. The 100 acre campus looked like a huge narcissist belch. The amount of money spent on this monstrosity could have helped in protecting and maintaining the veiled city – but such a logic does not work in urban planning!!

Mosque at Bada Imambra

We went back and ended the day in an urban respite of a movie, dinner and ice cream and hoped to come back to explore the city once again.

St. Mark's Residency School