People have many reasons for visiting cities. A broken heart, for example, might inspire a tear-drenched trip to Paris, in order to seek romantic succour (or to jump off one of its lovely bridges into the Seine, if you want to go out with a splash). You may pack a bag and head for Kolkata because you grew up there and the memories stick to you like rosogolla syrup. You may go to Dhanbad because you were forced to do so at gunpoint. In my case, it took a brilliant anecdote to make me want to go to Lucknow.
An old friend of my father’s, a gentleman who had grown up in the city, was regaling us with after-dinner stories of his college days. ‘Listen to this’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I was heading home after a late dinner at a friend’s place, and I hailed a cycle-rickshaw. The fellow wanted five rupees, which, even for that time of night, was extortionate. I told him as much.’ ‘How much will you pay?’ he asked. ‘Not a paisa more than two rupees, I said, and he looked at me as if I had insulted his mother.’ ‘You see that banana skin lying there?’ the fellow pointed. ‘For two rupees, you can step on it and slide your way home.’ The entire conversation took place in chaste Urdu, of course, so the nuances are lost in translation – but what a retort! And what a city, where a cycle-rickshaw man rips you to shreds without so much as raising his voice. I made up my mind then and there that some day I would go to Lucknow, and perhaps be cut to size by another erudite transporter of people.
Well, here I was, after three years of almost-but-not-quite making it. I had stepped off the train with my head full of vivid pictures – mosques, minarets, bustling markets, narrow alleys, charming residents and an overall sense of culture and graciousness. What I got was hordes of over-eager autorickshaw drivers, each clamouring for my custom and, er, vigourously massaging their groins at the same time. As a shatterer of fantasies, the classic testicle-grab stands alone, let me tell you. Still, I suppose it was naïve of me to have expected to step into the Lucknow of the Nawabs of Awadh. That period was, as they say, a whole different ball game. Back then, it was a city renowned for its adaab, its tehzeeb and its culture of ‘pehle aap’ (‘after you’). Today, it’s the capital of Uttar Pradesh, an unfortunate enough fate quite by itself. Nothing ventured and all that, so I stepped out of the station (a very nice station, I must add, built by the Brits) and into the raucous hodge-podge that is modern Lucknow.
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