And They Model God

Ambling through the labyrinthine alleys of Saadatganj, I came to a place called Lakadmandi. I briefly question myself, is this really Lucknow? The rest of the city seems another world, light years away. Peeping inside the open doors I got a sneak peak of the practiced hands behind the intricately modeled clay idols of Ganesh Lakshmi we pray before, each Diwali since times immemorial.

Entire families are involved in this grueling task, an art endowed on the blessed, shall we say. But it is grueling indeed! Eight months each year, these generally unlettered people prepare the idols from black fine mud from pond-beds. “Ek namoona haanth se banta hai, phir usse saancha banaa ke baaki saare bante hain (We create one sample with hands then prepare a dye from which we cast all others),” explains young Mahesh. Patience is the truly the fruit of life for them.

Obtaining mud is no mean feet these days, having exhausted the nearby suitable plots of land. “We are compelled to get the mud from villages because new plots are beyond our means,” laments Raj Kumar. But it is probably the zeal and the urge to live that sets them going despite all odds. These unsung artists make do with the earnings from two months before Diwali when they vend their wares for the rest of the years.

I found that I was two months too late to actually see them work hands on. “Ab to aapko sab jagah rangai hi dekhne ko milegi (Now, you will only get to see the painting part everywhere),” explains Awadhrani, fussing over a Ganesh idol with a fine paint-brush in the scanty light of an oil-wick. Walking on, I realise how right she was. Every house hold was rushing with the final touches and packing, busy to the extent of replying to my questions in monosyllables.

These people see no impact of the Chinese made idols or the silver idols on their market. “Aadmi chaahe sone ki murti bhi khareed le par pooja to mitti ki hi hoti hai (One may even buy a gold idol but it is customary to pray before a clay idol),” opines Pawan Kumar Prajapati. Most of these people don’t even bother to set up an outlet anywhere. “Big retailers from Delhi, Bulanshahar, Katni, Gonda and Allahabad and many other places come to purchase our idols,” explains Kailash Kumar.

Some of these people also make idols of other deities and surprisingly, humans too, all they need is a photograph. The life size works range in thousands as against the small idols which sell in the neighbourhood of Rs 30 per pair. Some of them like Prajapati get contracts from temples after the Diwali rush is over, but all are not as lucky as him. For at most they either make clay toys which no longer sell as well or end up working as daily wage labourers. For the latter, life merely drags on.

Where Begum Akhtar Rests For Eternity

Driving through the convoluted alleys of Saadatganj, an important business hub of the Nawabs, you have to diligently hunt for Pasand Bagh. The area was once central but now it is nothing more than an obscure extremity of Lucknow. Once there; you immediately wonder where the bagh is for the name so overtly suggests its presence. Well, it's grudgingly lost in the jaws of time.

Somebody directs you to a lane and you realize that it has a dead end. All that is visible is a rusted corrugated metal gate, shut upon your face. Just as self-doubt begins to irk if the lane is the lane, it dawns that the misleading gate isn't actually locked. One is tempted to peep in, as one last effort before aborting the quest. And it comes more as a relief than as a pleasant surprise, but certainly well worth all the trouble taken especially for the thirsty music loving historian. Entering the gate, the tomb confronts you. The tomb of Begum Akhtar.

Begum Akhtar was born as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi in Faizabad in 1914 in a traditional family where professional musicians were looked down upon. Her musical journey began at her enterprising uncle's initiative because of whom she got to train under Ustad Imdad Khan, the great Sarangi exponent and later under Ata Mohammed Khan. Her burning desire for music, lead her to distant Calcutta with her mother to further hone her natural talents under the tutelage of great stalwarts like Mohammad Khan and Abdul Waheed Khan. Finally she became the disciple of Ustad Jhande Khan Sahib, which gave her the final sheen.

For those who came late, Begum Akhtar was synonymous with the concept of ghazal, khayal and thumri gaayaki. She immortalized her own definitive style of singing, a style that few have been able to match. She was a spontaneous performer who sang whatever the audience requested for, branding each composition with her inimitable style. Begum has nearly four hundred songs to her credit. She was a regular performer on All India Radio and she usually composed her own ghazals with most of her compositions being raaga based.

She took the music world by storm with her maiden performance at the tender age of fifteen. The renowned poetess Sarojini Naidu had once immensely appreciated her recital at one of her first concerts organized for charity. This gave young Akhtari Bai all the confidence she needed to continue performing. Before she knew it, performing became a lifelong addiction. Soon, she completed her first Gramophone record carrying her ghazals, dadras and thumris and the storm raring inside her got an outlet.

With the advent of the talkies era in India, Begum Akhtar acted in some Hindi movies in the thirties. Like all other contemporaries, she rendered her songs herself in all her films.

Soon, she moved back to Lucknow and Akhtaribai Faizabadi was married to barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi in 1944. She got a new name, Begum Akhtar as part and parcel of a new life. After the alliance, she disappeared from the scene for five long years. All that we know about her during this hiatus is from what her disciple Shanti Hiranand writes, "She enjoyed being Begum Abbasi for some time and flitted around the city as fit for an aristocrat's wife." However, her infatuation with the glamorous title did not last too long, and she soon found herself yearning for her only subterfuge. At the same time, she lost her mother which further heightened the restlessness brewing within. She fell seriously ill and ultimately physicians compelled Barrister Abbasi to relent and allow Begum Akhtar to take to music again.

So, in 1949, she returned to the recording studios, the Lucknow Radio Station and soon after, to stage performances. She continued performing right to the end of her life. She finally breathed her last soon after her last performance in Ahmedabad and was brought down to Lucknow and buried in Pasand Bagh.

With that one burial, we buried a life much larger than life. Imagine a woman who lived like a queen who ruled over the hearts of all her fans her entire life. She would shower gifts on all around her, to the extent that she would give away, there and then, even a shawl or a diamond if somebody would casually pay her a complement.

She loved her students like her children, 'Ammi', as she was so fondly called, epitomizes all that she meant to them. All her life, through thick and thin, she taught music to all who cared to learn from her, for not a single penny at all.

A liberated soul that she was, she lived royally in her 'kothi' on Havelok Road in the city. She was extremely fond of perfumes and she would rave about it for days if somebody happened to gift one to her. Such was her simplicity. She won hearts wherever she went, including the pilots who flew her to various parts of the country for her numerous concerts and the ordinary people. In fact, there was a man who would sell lemons claiming them to be grown in her garden. He would scribble her name everywhere, from doors to roads. He was one die-hard fan who boosted her popularity immensely in the city.

Today, the compound around her tomb stands encroached. Near her tomb, in two make-shift shanties live some people. "Hamein Begum Sahib ki bahu ne rakha tha maqbare pe seva ke liye," they say. They have never been paid for the job and they are indifferent. "Hum to majdoori karte hain." And amidst all this you suddenly realize that the place is hauntingly barren, maybe because her voice doesn't reverberate in the ambience when she practices.......maybe inside.

Memory Lane

Some time or the other, we have tormented our minds with questions such as what our parents were like when they were young. What they did for leisure, for pleasure, for entertainment, for attainment, for adventure, and of course, where did they do it all.

In order to excavate that illusive parental past, we’ve gone to the extent of snooping for answers and in the course have hollered our aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, the rarely common teachers and even that long lost friend of our parents who surfaced suddenly out of oblivion. But the greatest problem is that, all versions of the answers vary widely, wildly, weirdly and of course, vividly.

So how does one find an answer? To begin with, let’s put things into perspective. Our parents, in essence, were no different from us and our kids won’t be much different either. We have sufficient reason to believe that they hopefully won’t go to places much different from those that our forefathers, fathers and not to mention we, instinctively flock to.

Anyway, we shouldn’t digress. Grapevine has it that amongst the various hot-spots, the favourites have been the India Coffee House, Madras Mess, Rover’s and for the relatively elite, Benbos. The India Coffee House was a typical coffee shop. It was the intellectuals’ and politicians’ haunt. Lots of brain storming would happen here, crucial decisions would be taken, if nothing else then lots of leisure hours would be spent there amidst thick smoke gracing the air.

There has always been the studious lot who thronged the libraries. This cult had sufficient options available to provide them food for thought. “Hum log bahut movies nahin dekhte the, haan sabhi libraries ki membership zaroor le rakhi thi humne” recalls Dr Jyoti Bhushan Pandya, now an Ohio based Anesthetist, hailing from Lucknow. He was referring to the British Council Library, the American Cultural Centre, Acharya Narendra Dev Library and the Amir-uddaulah Public Library. He adds, “Our life was not really glamorous, we indulged in the so called Ganjing and window shopping and observation was a hobby. We would quiz each other on ‘did u see this’ and ‘did you see that’.”

This genre of youngsters would also not loiter around without sufficient reason. “I had my camera, so we would go around the monuments and the zoological garden experimenting with the camera, trying things learnt from books in the libraries,” reminisces R M Kapur, now a city based computer vendor.

Some words from Ramchandra Guha’s story called ‘The Wrath of The Grapes’ in the January 2003 edition of The Hindu are worth a mention here. He very aptly wrote, “For the young, ‘Going Ganjing’ meant parading your new clothes on the streets of Hazratganj; for the slightly older, it meant a triple pilgrimage to the Coffee House, the British Library, and Ram Advani.”

The movie buffs found solace at Mayfair, the best ever. It would only screen English movies and the rare Hindi classic. It was almost a cardinal rule that anybody visiting the city just had to watch a movie at Mayfair. This genre of opera lovers would predictably bunk college or claim to be studying at a friend’s place.

The brats would swagger in the Love lane until the Janpath market came up. It had small kiosks selling trinkets, foreign goods and some costume jewelry which would attract youngsters in droves. And the brats would go there to enjoy some thrill out of ‘accidentally’ rubbing the feminine shoulders in the labyrinth that it was. The Romeos would go to the Imambaras, The Residency and Dilkusha Gardens. One found enough proof of expression of undying love on the walls of these monuments.

There was the Devils playground in Cantonment on Sultanpur Road which was the army’s driving range. Youngsters would flock to the place to try their hand on some tricky driving equivalent to the stunts of today. This place was quite analogous to the 1.3 km long Marine Drive of Lucknow (the road opening on Gandhi Setu)--A place for the adventurous and a little brash.

But today, The India Coffee House and the Madras Mess bear poor resemblance to their past glory. The dear old Rover’s is going strong, for it chose to morph appropriately with time. Benbos, the symbol of affluence, though, has long since seized to exist, to the utter chagrin of its die-hard fixed clientele.

BCL and ACC are dead and Acharya Narendra Dev Public Library and Amiruddaulah libraries are nearing extinction, it’s only a matter of time now. There are no libraries to refer to anymore worth the name. Today’s typical youngster has to make do with his college library or trust the internet, an option he has gradually grown to trust and prefer. But the bibliophile still aches for the romance of a library.

Mayfair doesn’t project anymore. Ganjing has lost its original charm. Devils playground does not entertain civilians. Historical monuments do not invite. The libraries are defunct. Intellectual discussions? Coffee house? Does anybody ever say pahle aap?

Lucknow isn’t what it was, is it? Mull over it.