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Literary Review
BOOKWATCH
Culture and decadence cheek by jowl
Shaam-e-Awadh: Writings on Lucknow, edited by Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Penguin, Rs. 395.
Even the most disdainful and class-conscious grudgingly accept that Lucknow is one city where the courtesans, too, had class. Mark the past tense. Lucknow — despite being the capital of the country’s most populous State — is a city whose time has come and long gone. If anything, the last Lok Sabha election result was a resounding slap to a city that has always been central to Indian politics. Never before has U.P. been so insignificant to the central power equation.
But, phoenix-like, it has risen thrice and may well do so again. And, if you can ignore the mess it has become and stop wallowing in the past, the city — quite like Delhi’s Old City — can still enthral with the dregs of the Lakhnavi tehzeeb. Shaam-e-Awadh is an ode to this distinctive culture that survives despite the ravages of time in the most unexpected of quarters.
Edited by Veena Talwar Oldenburg — who has contributed more than one article to this collection — this anthology seeks to evoke the many moods of a city where even eve-teasing was done with a degree of finesse. Through the writings of Munshi Premchand, Mark Twain, William Dalrymple, V.S. Naipaul, Allan Sealy, Shakeel Badayuni, Mirza Ghalib and others, Oldenburg takes the reader through Nawabi Lucknow, its opium dens and kothas, and provides an introduction to rekhti — the underside of Urdu poetry.
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