Mansions at dusk

What is Lucknow all about: Decadence and debauchery or urbane sophistication? Different people would have you believe different things. The hugely efficient British propaganda machine of the 19th century told us that Lucknow was a den of native sloth and vice, till the day it was annexed and thus rescued by the Company Bahadur.

Indian historians have looked at the city in a different light. For them, it is the epitome of courtesy and tolerance, a city that allowed poetry and dance to flourish at a time when royal patronage for the performing arts was on the decline in the whole of India. The resistance put up by Begum Hazrat Mahal more than compensated the meek surrender by Wajid Ali Shah and his flight to Kolkata.

The truth lies somewhere between the two views. Shaam-e-Awadh, a smorgasbord of essays, letters, a play, reportage, short biographies and food recipes, gives a true picture of the city: sensuous and indulgent, yet brilliant and gentle. The book is a work of passion and great fondness for Lucknow.

The title, "Shaam-e-Awadh" (An Evening in Awadh), reflects the fact that the city comes alive only in the evening. In other words, the people of Lucknow have little to do during the day. In the historical context, this might have been true of the elite of the city. Fed on rent from their land holdings, their lives were all about merriment, though highly refined it was.

Lucknow came into prominence as a centre for Islamic learning, poetry and culture after the decline of the Mughal empire in Delhi in the second half of the 18th century. Asaf-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh, shifted his capital from Faizabad to Lucknow to escape the daily harangue of his mother and wife. He was a benevolent ruler "" he built grand buildings during a famine just to provide employment to the impoverished peasantry. Thus the saying prevalent till today: "Jisko na de Maula, Usko de Asaf-ud-Daula" (Those ignored by God, will be taken care of by Asaf-ud-Daula).

But the most famous Nawab of Lucknow was Wajid Ali Shah. For the British, he represented the worst of the Eastern nobility "" steeped in vice and ignorance and feasting on the blood of the peasantry. Even exile to Matia Burj in Kolkata in 1856 didn't mend his ways and he continued his revelries there also till his death some 20 years later.

But then the East India Company always launched such propaganda as before taking over an Indian kingdom. The debauchery of its rulers became a convenient excuse for taking over Awadh, the most prosperous part of India at that time. The list of loot collected by the British to be sent back to England, produced in the book by Veena Talwar Oldenburg, is an eye-opener. Multiples of it would have been kept by the company officials for personal gain.

The times of Wajid Ali Shah have been best captured in Munshi Premchand's play Shatranj ke Khiladi (Chess Players). Two Nawabs are so involved in their indulgences that they decamp from the city when it is run over by the British. Finally, they kill each other after a dispute over a game of chess. In his film on the play, Satyajit Ray made a significant change "" the two have a row but refrain from killing each other. Ray argued they had lost totally the spirit for a fight.

A lesser-known fact is that Wajid Ali Shah was a gifted poet and wrote under the pen name Akhtar. Babul mora naihar chhuto hi jaye. This famous song where a girl laments leaving her father's home for her husband's was written by Wajid Ali Shah when he was being sent from Lucknow to Matia Burj. In sheer sadness, it compares favourably with Bahadur Shah Zafar's writings on his helplessness or Amir Khusro's rants on Hazrat Nizamuddin's death.

No book on Lucknow can be complete without the courtesans of the city, made famous by Ruswa's novel Umrao Jan Ada. This is where Oldenburg's work is at its best. She has done painstaking research on the city's tawaifs, unearthed facts and has demolished old myths and stereotypes. Unlike Umrao Jan, these women were seldom abducted by "agents" from the countryside and sold to kothas. Mostly, Oldenburg tells us, these were women oppressed at home and found relief working as courtesans.

The last big cultural export of Lucknow was Begum Akhtar. The book contains in its pages a short biography of the singer, her triumphs as well as her tragedies. In conservative Lucknow, she used to perform for men, while women would hear her from the zenana. Her affair with the Nawab of Rampur was well publicised. She found love and home in Lucknow finally, but her libertine ways soured the tale. But her legacy lives on with the handful of disciples she took including Shanti Hiranand and Rita Ganguly.

These days, Lucknow is changing fast. High-rises are replacing the sensuous domes and arches in the city's landscape. The languid pace of life too is changing "" crime and politics have replaced poetry and culture. Not so long ago, it was the pearl of India. For anybody interested in Lucknow and its past, Oldenburg's book is a must read.

---

Shaam-e-Awadh
Writings on Lucknow

Veena Talwar Oldenburg (ed)
Penguin Books
273 pages, Rs 395