Lake: Now what?

An email I received reminded me that I'd not visited the Mart since it closed for the winter vacation. Over the next few days what is being done will take some shape and we know what is being built. Meanwhile, work on the Ganj is also progressing steadily.

The Bailey Guard Gate

The Bailey Guard Gate: Doing too good a job can make something look artificial. Repairing the walls of the Residency was important to prevent them crumbling but the job has been done too perfectly! The Supreme Court had once observed that preservation does not mean reconstruction. That is what has happened here. But like the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas that draws people interested in American history what has been done here is good. The Alamo on the other hand had been destroyed completely, which makes one wonder about the present construction that people visit.

Photography prohibited

Friday, December 17, 2010 Took two of by three grandsons to play in the Residency.

The more one sees...

The more one sees the less one understands!
Thursday Morning I took another walk to see the progress/regress at the lake. Mart Assembly being over and with school closing for the winter vacation from tomorrow Dec 17 the Hashman Shield NCC competition was held. The Principal and Vice Principal are centred on top in one pic with the teachers working furiously to finish their registers, which one can presume should not have had much updating under normal circumstances. I doubt Mr Elton De Souza would be impressed with the hard work during a college event, even less so, Mr T. Savaille but he has just come back after a heart condition.
I'm allowing the other pics speak for themselves!
In small type: Clayton Roberts seems to have not got over his tiring trip to Lucknow this past summer.

Memorial

Tuesday Dec 14, 2010.

The memorial to Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell at the Residency.

Blast from the past!

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Time Out -- Lucknow's curative ekkas

Girish Bhandari

---

I emerged from the railway station and hopped aboard the very first vehicle I sighted. Three hours to `do' Lucknow. The vehicle lurched, squeaked, as is its wont, and set itself in motion.
"Sahib, this is the result of having fallen on bad days. There was the time when the grandfather of my grandfather regularly shared the dastarkhwan of Nawab Asaf Ud-daullah," said the gnome-like figure with a withered, ash-grey beard. "Regard, huzur, this ekka. In the good old days these four posts were plated with gold. Yes, these very same posts, and their glitter blinded the populace."
Now I, of course, knew the reason for the gnome's patter on this bone-chattering journey. No, no, not bone-shattering, for shattered bones are bereft of speech, and here every one of my bones was loudly wailing. I gathered that the ekka was 200 years old. "And Dilkhush," the gnome pointed to the miserable source of traction of this medieval instrument of torture, "was a prince among stallions." I looked into his eyes as he applied the whip to the toothless Dilkhush, looking for mocking irony or the glint of levity. There was none.
"And look at what has happened, tauba. The tanga-wallahs have stolen a march on us. Tauba. You face south when travelling north. It is devil's invention, this tanga, sahib." I was vaguely aware of the controversy over the historical ekka and the parvenu tanga, but had never suspected that the feelings ran so deep.
"And look what has happened since azadi. They are making the ekka wheels by machine. Tauba, tauba. The eccentricity of the handmade wheel was what gave ekkas their power to cure stomach ailments."
Gastroenterology by ekka rides! We were nearing the frontiers of alternative medicine. The gnome read the disbelief in my eyes and explained the matter in more detail. "On a perfectly-macadamed, butter-like road, the perfect ekka should make one feel that it is full of potholes. That's the secret of its curative property: the eccentricity of its wheels. And I can tell you when my grandfather's grandfather went to visit Nawab Asaf Ud-Daullah, the speed and swerve of his ekka had to be seen to be believed. A lesser mortal would have been thrown clear of the ekka, but not my grandfather. Oh, what a man he was. Never a stomach problem..."
We were nearing the Residency now. "When I see it, I weep, huzur. My grandfather's father laid siege to it and but for treachery, the red-faces firangis would have quit after the gadr. And his body was brought back in his favourite ekka -- this very same." I tried to rig an expression appropriate to the memory of a great martyr.
Suddenly he whipped Dilkhush in a sadistic frenzy and true to his description, the ekka swung violently from side to side. If felt like a scale eight earthquake. I would have been thrown out, had it not been for the fact that I was clinging desperately to one of the posts, which was once plated with gold.
"Now that's it, huzur. By this evening, all your stomach problems will have melted away. My grandfather, for instance... This is bhulbhulaiya. Once you get in, there is no getting out, unless you take this naksha with you. Twenty rupees, huzur. My grandfather's uncle's brother drew it and it is the very same map..."
This journey itself was taking on the proportions of a bhulbhulaiya, and there seemed to be no getting out. I decided I had received enough treatment for all my stomach problems past, present and future, and was headed for an overdose. I snatched the naksha out of the gnome's hand, leapt out of the curative ekka and vanished into the labyrinth of the bhulbhulaiya.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

John Cline

burrababa@hotmail.com
 

Lucknow Vintage Car Rally

zxx Sunday, Dec 5, 2010.