Lucknow II: Commute

The homestay was located behind Mayawati’s house, which was its claim to fame apart from the word of mouth from happy guests. I soon grew fond of the commute. The journey had three legs. The first was a walk along the winding lanes behind Mayawati’s house (the fifteen foot walls were safeguarded with five foot fences) till one found a (manual) rickshaw that would take one to the auto-rickshaw stop near the Hazratganj Market. Said winding lanes were below a highway, and passed by a number of interesting semi-underground havens. One was a large wall which had become a canvass for a variety of human expressions, including chalk graffiti, slogans, plain-paper posters of the local politicians, and urine from Indian males. Another was a nondescript shop of all the odds and ends that one can ever need, from biscuits in-lieu of breakfast to cigarettes, coke, chips, paan sachets, and tiny bottles of coconut hair-oil. The classic Indian kinara shop. Yet another haven was a nondescript temple, barely as big as the kinara shop, and with a vague gota-trimmed triangular flag waving above its orange-covered roof and a deity seated in the dark interior from where incense fragrance wafted out and mingled with the humid hanging air.

Once you arrived at Hazratganj Market, the second leg of the journey began. The auto-rickshaw stop stood across the archway of the old market, offering a packed glimpse of the place. Encrusted with shops on at least three or four storeys, the entrance was like a layered cake with a tuition centre on top of a restaurant on top of a garment store. My favourite was a tuition centre named ‘Epic’, which had the tagline ‘Even failed can pass!’. From here you took the shared-auto, which for fifteen rupees took you across an amazing distance at an alarming speed. Unlike the more expensive ‘personal’-auto, the shared-auto followed a definite, pre-defined path and had at least three other people, both major safety points as a young woman. We would zip by the detailed chaos of Hazratganj, and in a matter of minutes find ourselves along the massive, broad, vast highway with the bare building architecture, broad pillars, statues and waterless fountains gleaming under the sun, signifying the new glory of Lucknow. A few more minutes, and we would be among the shady groves of one of the V-khands, a residential neighbourhood where the office was located. 

This is where the third leg began. The shared-auto dropped you off at X and Y prominent hospital. At this point it was crucial to figure out which direction you needed to take. So packed was this area with identical sized shops, that the four points of the crossroads were impossible to distinguish as a newcomer. It was only once I had the names of all the shops memorised that the direction became intuitive. From here, you could either walk the final kilometre to the office, or, if you were lucky, take another (manual) rickshaw, feeling like a princess on this light-wheeled chariot. 

The most vibrant part of the commute was on the way home. The evening would start cooling the streets, and various impromptu kitchens would spring up on both sides of the road. Everyone who lived in the streets, from beggar men to women selling bhuttas, would come to the road with their pots and pans, large, clean and sturdy. They would light firewood and coal, and begin cooking dals, chopping onions, green chilis, tomatoes and potatoes. The evening would soon become fragrant with the smell of freshly cut herbs, and the street would be lit by the fires and embers of the open kitchen. It was a moving and organic sight, this communal daily dinner.