Lucknow: Food, glorious food

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The night was short and I left Ayodhya on a tempo with a bunch of school girls destination Faizabad to take a bus to Lucknow. The bus itself was a dirty piece of rusty metal. People would wipe the seats with newspapers before sitting down. The ride was shorter than I had anticipated: two and a half hours. It was semi-comfortable as I had to keep my big bag on my lap and there was little legroom. I sat next to an engineering student (everybody I meet seems to be one!) checking his notes on the Leibniz theorem. Another guy tried talking to me but the pan he was chewing and the broken English didn’t make for a very productive conversation.

Once in Lucknow I get robbed 50 rupees by a rickshaw to the train station to leave my bag for the day. The train station looks nice with its pastel red towers. The clerk at the cloak room didn’t seem excited by his job but he gave me a little piece of paper I’d better not lose. I sat at the station restaurant to cool off, waiting for lunch time.

For lunch, I went to Tunday Kababi. Apparently, it’s a century old institution making the best Lucknow-style kababs in the world. It’s located in a half-broken street in the old market area of Aminabad. Outside the restaurant, I could see the cooks preparing the food. They would throw small patches of spiced mutton meat inside a giant oily skillet and they would come out as crunchy yet creamy pucks of flavored mutton. Mmmmm… Next to that there was a chicken barbecue station and a bread-making area. It all looked very appetizing… I stepped inside the basement restaurant (hey there’s a picture of the owner with Sharukh Khan!) and took a seat next to the fish tank. There were big multicolored fish including one of those albino-ish eel-types, and a small turtle. There was a doll pretending to be eaten by a giant plastic spider under water. The fish kept trying to mess with the doll’s hair. An old Muslim reached over my table to film the tank with his low-def phone. It was a bit obtrusive. He also snapped pictures of me eating and looking at the fish (Huge “click” sounds).

I ordered mutton kabab with a saffron paratha and a pepsi. Man, was it good! I had the texture of peanut butter and the spices were off the hook! I then ordered beef kabab with those roti that look like handkerchiefs and a pepsi again. Double whammy! I strongly recommend this address. In fact, I strongly recommend Lucknow itself.

The Bara Imambara is unimaginably beautiful. It’s a palace complex built by the Nawabs from the late 18^th century onwards. The first gate lead me to a very lovely garden surrounded by finely-carved walls covered with stone Hershey’s Kisses and little towers. The second gate opened the door to another dimension: A domed, sculpted and twisted mosque on the right, the edges of which seemed to be made out of intricate brown lace. On the left, a three-storey (or was it four?) step-well that would have been magnificent if the water was clean. Right in front of me: a giant palace with a succession of windows and openings over what seemed to be a giant hall. Again, the Hershey’s Kisses on top.

I got inside the palace in what is known as the Bhool Bhulayia (aka. the labyrinth). I needed to take off my shoes and take out my pocket lamp because the hidden stairs and never-ending hallways could have been treacherous. I navigated around the building and ended up on the roof where the view was magical. Back down, I had a well-deserved ice cold soda, checked out the palace interior (there was a large hall after all) and saw the step-well.

A short walk form the Bara Imambara, there is the Chota Imambara, another palace, a bit more modest but a very lovely area to spend a quiet hour or so. There is a palace of course, topped by a golden dome. Inside, there was the silver throne of one of the nawabs and portable tomb replicas that were used for processions. A lot of colored chandeliers, too. The garden is very peaceful with a large water basin in the middle. I saw a kingfisher dive for food in there. There were palm trees and flowers and lots of naked flower pots. From time to time, I would spot a mongoose working its way through the bushes and between the pots. In fact, I saw plenty of them. One almost got through the palace entrance! There’s also a small former hammam and tombs that are dodgy replicas of the Taj Mahal. By now, I’ve probably brushed aside about 5 wannabe guides who tried to sneak up on me: they pretended to be security; they made small comments as if they were also visitors, etc. I’m starting to know how they work…

Across the street, in a large red stone former palace (another one!), there’s the “picture gallery” with life-size paintings of the nawabs including one who purposefully has a wardrobe malfunction and exposes his left nipple. Weird. There’s a tall clock tower in a desolate park, left behind by the Brits who had made Lucknow one of their local strongholds.

I then got into a scuffle with a cycle-rickshaw. We had agreed that he would take me to the Residency for ten rupees (I admit, it was low, but I was going to give him more at the end). We left the clock tower and he started wandering around asking me if he needed to go straight ahead or turn. Dude, you’re the driver! In the end, he had agreed on the ride without understanding a thing I said. It’s happened quite often but usually I realized it earlier. Anyways, we got into a big argument at an intersection because he now wanted WAY more (a policeman served as interpreter). I ended up giving just 5 rupees and left on foot angry. All the other rickshaws, trying to get me, got the “No” equivalent of a middle finger. I was really pissed.

Fortunately, I walked into a park that had rusty and screeching rides like a pirate ship and a tilt-a-whirl. The paddleboats looked like they were sinking and the giant slide was overgrown with weeds.

I managed to get to the Residency before 5PM. This is where the Brits held tight during the 1857 revolt. It used to be the HQ of the local governor with all his entourage and the administrations and churches that go with it. The siege of Lucknow must have been terrifying. For months, bombs and bullets would riddle the buildings from outside the fortified compound and people from both sides died in the thousands. The area has been left as it was at the end of the siege: in ruins. Red-brick bullet-holed weedy ruins. The park itself is very peaceful, ironically. This is where local couples come to hide, flirt and smooch. There was lots of wildlife too: tweet-tweeting birds, click-clicking squirrels and yap-yapping puppies (I helped one out of a big stone gutter). Walking through the overgrown cemetery was very eerie as tombs would appear behind bushes and tall grass: the perfect setting for a ghost story.

After walking around the park until sunset, I rode a cycle-rickshaw down main road in what was surprisingly a very modern downtown. Shops were still open and people of all ages were window-shopping on the sidewalks (real sidewalks!), looking into brightly-lit clothing stores (Benetton! Reebok! Tommy Hilfiger!), walking past luxury hotels and neon cinemas (Heroine, now playing) and hanging out outside restaurants or against food carts. I’m planning on staying in the area before I go to the train station. There are supposed to be some nice restaurants and a good sports bar. Enough to keep me entertained before my night train back to Delhi!

Daily nugget: A sign at the Bara Imambara said that “To spread filth is the nature of the animal, we are human”. In fact, the palace was pretty clean so being all philosophical just might work.

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