Lucknow III: Tourism

One evening I decided that enough was enough, the situation was getting out of hand, I needed to stop living by the screen light of my laptop. The clinching moment was when I ordered Domino’s pizza in the middle of answering emails. Here I was, on my tenth day in the city, a stone’s throw from the Hazratganj market with all the spiced kebabs of Lucknow on offer, for less than 200 rupees no less, and I was inside a guest room ordering Domino’s. (It was cheese-burst though, so I can’t say it wasn’t worth it.) And the European girl staying in the room upstairs had already been for a ‘history walk’ to the bhool-bhulaiya, after having arrived just the previous night. Unacceptable.

So the next day, on the way back from office, I got off at the Hazratganj bus stop and allowed myself to be absorbed into the beehive of people that was permanently present at the entrance of the market. The first order of the evening was to get a taste of the famous Lucknow kebabs. I floated along the waves of the crowd, using my elbows to convince myself that I was carving my own route, and slipped into the largest restaurant that wasn’t called Moti Mahal. (Every single city seems to have at least a few Moti Mahals, offering varying quality of what they consider North Indian fare, though many of them have nothing to do with each other. Of course, Hazratganj had one too. The common-ness of the name made dining in a Moti Mahal an un-novel thing to do.) The inside was grand in a familiar way, with tables and chairs wrapped in white cloth till the floor. The menu looked pretty regular, more or less the same selection of kebabs that the Delhi places offer. I ordered a safe-looking chicken kebab, with roomali roti that is ever a mystery with all the folds and whatnot, and a Coca-Cola which in my head was an essential part of the authentic kebab experience.

They took at least 25 minutes to bring the kebab and roomali roti, leaving me to stew in grumpiness from hunger. But when the food arrived, I got a taste of that Lucknow kebab magic after all. They were the simplest and softest kebabs I’d ever eaten, chicken with the scent of elaichi, delicate and powerful. The roomali roti was fairly Delhi-like, but with swirlier fairy folds, and even the coke tasted better after a bite of the kebabs. This thoroughly satisfied me, and I could happily go back to living in front of the laptop and ordering guiltless Domino’s in the homestay.