The theatre of operations revolved around Hazrat Gunj on which street were housed two iconic restaurants, Kwality and Royal Cafe; the latter had a live band curated by a proprietor recently returned from the UK. The institution we were targeting was the famous Isabella Thoburn College, which attracted the rich, the pretty, the modern and, occasionally, the radical. All women, needless to add. They would arrive in cars and rickshaws wearing tight, extremely tight, salwars and kurtas on Thursday for a coffee between the hours of six and eight in the evening and the best and the brightest of male Lucknow would follow. A fortunate few actually knew one or two of the girls and one of my friends achieved the impossible: he managed to get a steady girlfriend.
I do not wish to over-emphasise this girl-chasing business and suggest that my life in Lucknow had no other purpose. While I gained no academic distinction at school or later at university, I did not actually fail. My progress was steady if not spectacular.
Lucknow in the 1950s had the most extraordinary mix of characters. For your edification I shall just present two. The late C.P.N. Singh, the prince of Padrauna state who reminded us that big money is not always accumulated through hard toil. We hated him. He wore imported black jeans, he was royal, he was handsome, he had a convertible car which he called Dreamboat. Though he was not very bright, the girls were crazy about him. He had spent six months in America, and one evening he told us a story that had us salivating. It seems in advanced New York a boy could ask a girl for a "date" (a word completely alien to Lucknowwallahs) which the girl's parents encouraged their daughter to accept. It was considered "normal". Then came the killer info: after you had been on the aforementioned date, you escorted the girl to her front door and even if she detested you, she allowed you to kiss her once. That was the peculiar custom of that very peculiar country. I can tell you among my friends, I did not know of even one who was not desperately planning a trip to the US.
The other character I propose to showcase couldn't be more different. He was a down-and-out Shia, he was uneducated, he was jobless (actually, all his life he had never worked), he was ageless (no one knew how old he was), he had no fixed abode and it was a mystery where he slept at night, he had no known source of income.
Despite these crippling handicaps, he was a Lucknow legend. His name was Safdar. Just Safdar. If he had a surname, no one knew it. Safdar survived on his wits. He appeared to know the family history of every person worth knowing in the city, he seemed intimately familiar with the geography of the entire town, he was a self-styled poet and patron of the arts, he carried both delicate and indelicate romantic messages efficiently, frequently adding his own masala. He could fix an appointment with any minister, he had a solution to every problem. Above all, he was fantastic company. In his presence, you could pass hours and hours and never feel bored. He was so furiously sought after—"Safdarbhai, please come and sit at our table" was the constant refrain—that you needed to book him well in advance. People fed him, clothed him, gave him regular pocket money, took him on trips out of town all because he was superbly entertaining.
If you did not know Safdar in the 1950s you were a nobody in Lucknow. It was considered a privilege and an honour to boast acquaintance with this penniless gent. He died tragically but appropriately on the street in Hazrat Gunj of a heart attack. No one knew how old he was when he passed away, no one knew to whom the body should be handed over. His friends buried him.
The refugees came to Lucknow in hordes. They were mainly Punjabis, Sindhis and Sikhs. They set up small and medium-sized businesses, sometimes literally on the pavement. They sold readymade garments, watches, dry fruit, sarees, shoes, dry-cleaning, cycles, books, sports goods.... And they brought with them the passion of refugees. In other words, they were fiercely competitive, determined to succeed. They introduced a revolutionary concept to the existing Lucknow trade: customer satisfaction. This was unheard of in a city where going to a shop or going shopping was an exercise in manners. Instead of the easy indolence, studied procrastination, fixed price (bargaining was considered vulgar), things-take-time-what-is-your-hurry approach, these crazed businessmen were energetic, prompt, price-elastic (haggling was encouraged) and eager, sometimes too eager, to find a customer.
For old Lucknow, the refugees arrived at a time when the local aristocracy, particularly the Muslim aristocracy, was taking its first tentative steps towards difficult pastures in an effort to earn much-needed money. The psychological blow of Partition coupled with the loss of land holdings and talk of socialism prompted the realisation that they could no longer live off the fat of the land. Perhaps, they could engage in some business activity. Sadly, they retreated speedily when confronted with the foreign competition. They were wise. They did not stand a chance.
One of the most poignant and instructive sights in post-Partition Lucknow was to watch an entire class on the run. They had nowhere to go. As a result, they withdrew further and further inwards, locking themselves up in their crumbling mansions, fearful of the outside world. To survive they did the only thing they could: they sold their heritage. Cars, land, chandeliers, paintings, old books, havelis and furniture. Some asked possible buyers to come after dark because it was too shaming to sell during daylight hours.
I remember one of my friends telling me: "Vinod, I have sold a lot of things, but I don't regret it. That's my luck. But yesterday I had my most humiliating moment." I asked him what he had sold. "I sold my bandook (gun)." I promise you I noticed a couple of tears in his eyes. He had been forced to part with the essential symbol of his claim to Awadh eminence. In these days of globalisation, meritocracy, market forces, survival of the fittest, such stories may seem ridiculous, the comeuppance well deserved. In the Lucknow of the 1950s, they heralded the passing of an era, nostalgia for which lingers in limited quarters.
Nothing exemplifies the clash of civilisations better than what happened to Kazim & Co. This was arguably the most famous watch shop in the city. It was managed by a young lad called Nasir Abid whose family had migrated to Pakistan. They left him to look after the profitable business. Kazim & Co was situated in the heart of Hazrat Gunj and it was more than just a showroom. It was a venue where you met for some gup-shup and espresso coffee. The idle and the interesting were instantly drawn to it and it soon became a meeting point for the most colourful people in town. Nasir himself was only vaguely attentive to the business side, spending most of his time at the British Council library. (Returning from Karachi, where he had gone to visit his relatives, and asked how he liked the country, Nasir replied, "It's fine. The only problem is there are too many Muslims in Pakistan.")
Kazim & Co had a sole, bearded, ancient, stooped, sherwani-clad mechanic who appeared to have come straight out of central casting. He marked his arrival and departure with elaborate and exquisite ritual salutations, the sort that would have done Bollywood proud. He never spoke out of turn and always seemed excessively preoccupied, hunched over a timepiece or a wristwatch. Nasir claimed he was the best mechanic West of Suez.
One day, while I was at the shop, a Muslim gentleman, who evidently knew the proprietor well, arrived with a defective wristwatch. He gave it to Nasir and asked whether it could be mended. Nasir handed it over to his prized mechanic and enquired: "Do you think you can repair it?" The watch was duly examined. "Yes, I can repair it," came the reply. The owner was visibly pleased. He exchanged a few pleasantries with Nasir and left. Curiously, he didn't ask what was wrong with the watch, or how much it would cost to repair, or when the watch would be ready, or when he should come to collect it. These mundane details were unimportant; they were never spoken about.
It will come as no surprise that Kazim & Co soon closed down as customers began drifting away to the neon-lit establishments of the Sikhs and the Sindhis. However, Nasir went down honourably: he did not put up a fight.
Lucknow bestowed on me one invaluable gift. It taught me to look at the human being rather than his religion or his caste or the colour of his skin. My so-called pseudo-secularism, which I wear as a badge of honour, comes directly from the experiences and the environment of my early years—years which shaped my personality and character. Of course, I knew there were Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Parsis, even Jews, in Lucknow, and I was dimly aware there was occasionally some tension among these groups. However, for me Muslims meant Id sweets, Christians meant Christmas cake, Sikhs meant hot halwa....
Similarly, I was aware that Banias and Brahmins and Thakurs existed as did Bengalis and Gujaratis and Malayalis, but it never occurred to me that these differences could be cause for rift and division, even bloodshed.
In the Lucknow of the 1950s, we asked some basic questions from an individual. Was he a bore or was he engaging? Could he spin a decent yarn? Could he pull some pretty girls? Could we get a good meal at his house? Did he know any jokes besides the ones he had mugged up from the Reader's Digest? A person's worth was measured by his ability to make others laugh. A talent to amuse was considered priceless. The pompous and the self-important we shunned like the plague.
True, ours was a naive, innocent world where casteism, communalism and regionalism did not rear their heads. People generally speak of secularism or composite culture in historical, ideological or intellectual terms. I lived the composite culture, it still flows in my blood. I didn't pick it up from books or at university. And because I lived it, it has been a permanent implant. In the formative years of my life in Lucknow I became what I am today. I've had doubts about some of my beliefs, and along the way I've chopped and changed them, but faith in secularism has required no post-modern adjustment. I am a secularist for all seasons.
I think of Gianibhai. A magnificent, wise, gentle Sikh who wore his pagdi with much pride and quoted Ghalib six times a day. In north Hazrat Gunj this native Sikh sold delectable open-air kebabs. One day looking at the crass commercialisation of Lucknow courtesy the refugees, he sighed: "Saale Sardaron ne Lucknow ko tabaah kar diya (The damn Sikhs have destroyed Lucknow.)"
My mentor was Gianibhai.
