Lucknow
Nawab Wajid Ali Shah from http://lostcityproducts.com/blog/?cat=119
Lucknow. A city of nawabs who liked to bare a nipple in their royal attire, of schools where white school boys were once served beer, of Mutiny that besieged terrified British wives and their babies and babas, of the courtesan Umrao Jaan – equally accomplished at shaayari and seduction.
A city of gastronomic orgies. Where Tunde Miyaan serves you his lip-smacking kebab and paranthe carelessly, nonchalantly as he knows customers will pounce like pariah dogs outside a meat shop. Where the Id festival stocks narrow lanes with twinkling lights, doodh and sewiyaan. It’s only here that young fellows in delicate achkans, whizzing on their bikes – Pulsars and Karizmas, finally come to a halt.
But let’s not relegate the city to myths and fables, fantasy and allure. The city now takes immense pride in it’s generous sprinkling of malls, similar looking structures offering global indulgences like multiplexes, popcorn (“Plain mixed with caramel please”) and Big Bazaar.
It all began with Barista and then CCD arriving in the city. Before that Ganj-ing was the in-thing to do in Lucknow; Ganj-ing as in loitering up and down Hazrat Ganj, once a wide boulevard, with stops like the British Council Library, Burma Bakery and Mayfair Theater decked with sepia prints of Hollywood icons. Now of the three, only Burma Bakery remains. Perhaps, between books, cinema and coconut biscuits, the last were the most difficult to forego. Ganj-ing meant skipping Aminabad to look at more western clothes hanging along the pavement around Lovelane.
But if you want to entertain guests, show them the authentic maal, Aminabad is where you go. Here you can buy chikkan suits, pair them with dark sunglasses for an elite luncheon or simply don a salwar-kurta to pass a hot intolerable afternoon with no electricity due to load-shedding. Chikkan-kaari - complicated embroidery on see-through fabric, not just above but below the cloth too, showing off its intricacy in shadows; much like Lakhnavi women glimpsing from veils and hijabs, quickening their steps past tea-shops where men lounge.
Mangoes, MB club – Timepass in Lucknow. Come April and you’ll find yellow walls of mangoes as you drive down roads. Come July showers and flimsy tarpaulin of make-shift stalls sinks under the weight of the downpour and finally tips a flood all over mango mountains. Dussehris, safedas, langdaas and chausas. Fruit to be soaked to a delicious coolness in buckets,and devoured by a family and relatives sitting in a ring. Fruit to be carted off to business associates by the peti, and received in turn to mark good relations.
MB Club – a club with a marked colonial hangover, where men hold their whiskey long and lovingly and women don't mind their tipple either. Once a privilege of feudal lords and prominent defense citizens, it’s a place to pass a mellow evening in, as shikaar goes on overhead in miniature Mughal paintings; a retreat after a day of horse races at the cantonment, where Telibagh ki Rani and Bijli give each other stiff competition, kicking up dust and loud cheers. Maybe you’d sight here, the winner of the May Queen Ball held the previous night at Surya Club before looking away politely.
Out on the roads, you can now not help but run into intimidating statues of the Chief Minister Mayawati and her idol Dr Ambedkar. Recently, the city has gained quite a fortress-like demeanor with thick walls, I-won’t-budge-an-inch pillars, and parks that make an authoritative statement. You’ll find the manifesto of Mayawati’s party crammed in small print on huge hoardings at traffic lights. And not just one, but three or four hoardings so that drivers in no direction may feel left out. Perhaps the policemen still bring traffic to a stop when a politician, or anyone with a laal-batti atop plays Schumacher on the roads. Gunmen and supporters careen by, hanging on jeeps or discussing important matters of statecraft behind tinted windows.
However, Lucknow itself feels secure enough. It’s the hinterlands from where violent stories reach, of the antics of the goons in the fields. Meanwhile housewives in Nirala Nagar or Gomti Nagar continue to pen shaayari, hoping to publish a book one day, spurred on by what else, but the city’s atmosphere.
Smelly ol books
Filling questionnaires once in a while, as fun as painting toes.
1. One book that changed your life
Can’t decide between Mistletoe farm, and Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt, and Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre and just maybe Wuthering Heights. No, actually not Wuthering Heights.
Mistletoe Farm, built all the pleasure in tramping outdoors, looking for rabbits and snakes. You know a kiddie version of Man vs Wild. And then, as in all Enid Blyton books, the picnic mats or ‘high-tea’ would always be loaded with scones (never seen them), large chunks of fruit cake and ginger ale. Mean aunts were the ones who serves thin bread slices with light buttering. Food was constantly passed to dogs under the table.
Full Tilt – 21 year old Dervla Murphy cycled from Ireland to India, going over Afghanistan mountains, falling sick, sorting visas, fighting off men towering over her bed at night by whipping out her revolver. A true story there.
2 am
No position is the right one. Can’t breathe through the nose, the wind passage seems clogged. Breathe through the mouth and it’s parched in a few seconds. Gasping for air like a fish out of water. Turn on the fan and it’s too windy, and even under sheets one is too vulnerable. Switch off the fan and it’s stuffy. Another sweep of goosebumps, of chills. Nervousness like suddenly needles pricking under the skin. As if all the molecules inside are not very certain where their exact position is. Sleepy delirium but no sleep. TV that one has stopped registering. Books where after a point one can’t identify a Rushdie from a Rohinton Mistry. 5 trips to the fridge, of opening it, only to shut it as one is not really hungry at all. Another attempt to sleep. Face down or face covered or foetal rocking. No use. So much bechaini inside. The continuous tingling feeling as in before a sneeze, not just in the nose but the whole body. But no sneeze of course. Fuck Insomnia.
G.O.A
Ragdoll beating.
Goa.
Control your body.
What control your body?
Position your legs.
What position your legs?
Just hold on tight
For the rodeo ride.
As the speedboat swerves flambouyantly
We hope it lives up to it's name - Lucky Star
Because tied behind on an inflated raft,
We aren't feeling so lucky, or loved or blessed by God.
Just gripping, grasping and rejecting our limbs, trunk, head
To flail, loll, fling and jerk about
As we're dragged on uneven waters
Tossed high up
Flying like frisbess and then wham, bang, landing time.
First impact butt
Next neck,
Next total recoil.
Like slow motion videos of how and when airbags pop out
In smooth sedans.
Sand in my mouth, in my underwear
No idea what's seaweed and what's my hair.
Sputtering, we totter to the beach
Collapse and let masseurs run their hands.
Few seconds later, we sit like nothing ever happened
In flimsy threads, separating stars from long distance flights.
And the fire descends from the skies to the sand
As a fire eater comes along
Juggling three bottles.
He misses now and then.
A better performance than the smooth, perfect showman
Who does not triumph, fail, recover and exult with company.
Waves foam, froth and every now and then run up
To our toes and candles
Where we sit and eat.
All's good.
Little do we foresee
Ourselves tossing once more
3 hours later
On a weak Activa doing it's best
Down the wrong long road,
Towards a flight to catch.
Bravely sinking into potholes,
Leaping over speedbreakers.
While sleep holds on tight,
Snuggling in the crevices, convolutions of our tired brains.
Goa still parties on.
Two people flee.
Bye bye sea.
Like whaaa…
Like fish nibbling at feet? Like counting dew drops on leaves for inner peace? Like opening your pores to jasmine wafts? Like that Tibetan bowl that makes a sound on circling it with a wooden stick? Like scratching pups under their foldable ears for hours? Like sitting in a window pretending you are the breeze? Like provoking sneezes to clear the system and head? Like alternative hot water cold water gushes on your head for reinvigorating gasps? Like swallowing live fish for alimentary canal clearing? Like a marathon on whisky to get the best of both worlds? Like watching tired people sleep peacefully? Like pulling lost cords out from pyjamas? Like cupboard cleaning? Like chai in a mountainside tapree? Like lying in hay? Like forgetting where u are? Like an awesome pedicure? Like cinnamon and pepper freshly ground? Like smelling crisp sun-dried sheets? Like blue Jodhpur doors? Like a terrace with paapad and chillies drying on it? Like untwirling on a wound up swing.. whizzing faster and faster and then a little beyond? Like lost in a boat you’re carrying upside down on your head? Like the smell of whitewash? Like eating ice after a fresh snowfall? like getting off an air conditioned airplane into blustering winds holding tightly onto your topi? Like a surprise hug and a swoop and a wham? What alternative therapy dye want?
To MS Word & blog
Dear MS Word,
Nice to see you again. Waiting, eagerly with your cursor blinking. All clear and blank to be used.
Been a long association, huh? First in school, with articles from teenink.com stored in careful docs and folders. My own writings, the unsure ones firmly passworded. And here today, you’re making my living.
So much written, a lot backspaced. Rants, secrets, immature expression. Narratives, stories, unrhyming poems, reflection, retrospection. And then I stopped retrospecting. So, then a lot of TVC scripts, radio, print ads.
Umm.. where is this going. Is it just sentimental, maudlin thinking like a drunk old man at a bar. Why analyse so soon in this post about it's tone, it's purpose? Why not just let go, flow? As Ravana does. Even as students do, sparkling bright when they present things that have been said, discoveries that were made long before they were born. Or as Bhumycka does, blowing me over every time, with just the nakedness, strength, perverse truth of her writing.
Maybe it’s time to hear something new, mind opening. Hey mom, I need one more conversation with you. Shaadi-free. “Dimaag ka dahi” free. And then maybe it’s time to write something new. A blog dying is person dying. But then, as Sartre would say – What’s the use of suicide? You are either a worthless living person or a worthless corpse.
Cheer up, pinch your cheeks. I am not that cynical or down in the dumps. The worth of life’s been proven again and again to me. Drunk nights of fun, rides, pats on the back, falling in floaty love. Wait … am I missing something here? I don’t know.
Oh shut up Malvika! (I just began a sentence with 'Oh!' Lol.) Not backspacing again. At least this just gives my blog some electric heart thumps.
Actually, maybe blog, you were shifted around so much, left to gather your entrails at times, your links revised, images lost, by very well meaning people that you became kind of stray.
MJ
Steinbeck
"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job."
I hunted for a worthwhile book far and wide, high and low, among bestsellers in book stores, from promising friends.. and finally found one that had somehow escaped notice for a few years, tucked away in the good old family bookcase. Opened the book.. yellow pages and all; and found mom's ink scrawl - Divine book 1983.
Lift
This lift is fitted with IB device – Introspection Broadcaster. Feel free to mull over personal thoughts. Also fitted with R.B.E.C.O – Random but Effective Conversation Starters. Use generously. In case of emergency, use KVITC – Kryptonite Vial in the Corner. You shall duly transform into a superhero and save the universe and in doing so, salvage the elevator from grave peril as well. To tackle annoying co-passengers, break glass with hammer. Please bring your own glass, your own hammer. Lift Capacity – AMPALWA – As Many People As Love Will Allow. In case of complaints, contact Elisha Graves Otis. Kindly knock at his grave before interrupting.