Lucknow: Fire of GraceBy Amaresh Misra HarperCollinsPages: 369Price:Rs 395Amaresh Misra has a passionate, overarching style. His book is about Lucknow. But he starts with comments on the coastal metros. This is what he says about my home city: "Situated at the far end of the peninsula, Madras seems to combine a provincial reproduction of the two (Bombay and Calcutta). She led the laid-back intellectual ambience of the east and the dynamism of the west into the passionate embrace of an ancient regional impulse."I grew up in Triplicane (Madras), half Muslim, half Brahmin. In the early '40s, when I was 18-20, I had girlfriends on both sides. In the morning I talked about James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man with Lalita. In the evening I went with Maneesza to Star Theatre to watch Ashok Kumar and Mumtaz Shanti in Kismet. Now I feel crushed by Misra's historical verdict.Misra gets better when he plays on home ground: the Urdu, Hindi, Indo-Gangetic belt. He sees Uttar Pradesh as a zone of culture and power. So he is able to link the Babri Masjid's demolition with Kathak and see the influence of folk culture on Hindi cinema. For Misra, Lucknow "burns with a hard gemlike flame". This is evident from the titles of his chapters, one is called "Evenings, Gomti, Henna and the Bagghi". The style grows too intense: "Like a dazzling gem, this catechism has served to incorporate all aspects of Lucknow life." This kind of hyperbole is a feature of the book.Misra does well when he sets out the history of the city, the post-1857 resurgence of Urdu for example. The thrust of the book is to show the inter-relation of what may crudely be called Hindu and Muslim cultures. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Is there anything which can be termed "Lucknawiyat" today? Misra refers to a subtle cultural Hindutvaisation. My view is the old Lucknow culture is dying a slow death in the fin de millennium. Misra's is a good tribute to a lost cause and a lost culture.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 19, 1998--- ENDS ---
