Wednesday, September 05, 2012

The Royal Life, like it was meant to be

Wander in the streets where Nawabs once walked, Marvel at the Mahals where they lived and bite into kebabs that were created especially for the royals; you just might find the city of your dreams waiting for you, here in Lucknow

The glories of Lucknow were born accidentally when in 1774 Asaf-Ud-Daulah, the self indulgent nawab who took over the reigns of Avadh, stifled by the watchfulness of his mother Bahu Begum, thought it best to pursue his interests away from his mother whose court was at Faizabad (120 km from Lucknow), which till then was the most fashionable city of India. Hence when the nawab zeroed in on Lucknow, the courtiers, traders, the nautch girls, the musicians, the story tellers, the magicians and the architects all came along bringing with them the glories of Faizabad to Lucknow, which in time was transformed into India’s most glorious court or what Rosie Llewellyn Jones calls “the city of dreams”.

Although architects have been quick to point out the mismatch of architectural styles and inconsistency in Lucknow’s buildings, historian Honria Lawrence writes that Lucknow comes closer to “Nearer to anything I have seen to realize my early ideas of the Arabian Nights and Lala Rookh.” So strong was the Britishers’ longing for their homeland that many imagined Hazaratganj, a grand Gothic boulevard running east to west of the Gomti river, then home to shops run by Englishmen and out of bounds for most commoners, as the Oxford Street of Lucknow. A walk through Hazratganj was a popular pastime called ‘Ganjing’. Walter Hamilton wrote of Hazratganj in 1928: “a very handsome street, after the European fashion…. a well-built new chowk in the centre, with a lofty gateway on each extremity, which presents a Grecian front on one side and a Moorish one on the other.”

An event that considerably shaped Lucknow was the 140-day-long siege of the Residency during India’s first War of Independence in 1857. Well documented, the siege was instrumental in changing the image of the capital of Oudh from a genteel, fun-loving place to a dangerous city that needed to be guarded against. Ironically, the Lucknow before 1856 was not built entirely of Nawabi dreams. It was this settlement at the Residency Hill, a garden suburb where the English lived in substantial bungalows, with a banqueting hall, a Gothic church and a tennis court running past pucca roads that proved to be the saviour of the British.

Though home to great writers, poets and intellectuals, for the tourist Lucknow offers three main delights. The gossamer beauty of its chikan or shadow work, its buildings and food. While reams have been written about Lucknow’s famous embroidery, some of Lucknow’s architectural delights include the Firangi Mahal, 400-year-old palaces once home to French traders. The Sheesh Mahal, with its inlay of numerous pieces of mirrors in different shapes and sizes, presented multiple reflections of objects moving before the mirrors laid in wall niches presenting a violent panorama of colour and beauty. The Moti Mahal, so called because of its pearl shaped dome, was especially treated to reflect the greatest of white brilliance. The Chattar Manzil is a magnificent palace depicting the best of Indo-Italian architecture.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
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