There are multiple reasons why Lucknow is not what Lucknow used to be. Because of the city's reluctance to encourage new experiences, Lucknow is no longer considered the Paris of the East.
The New York based founder and former head of MTV World Nusrat Durrani provided much food for thought as he concluded that the city seems to be trapped in nostalgia.
Durrani should know as he is a Lucknow boy. He is an award-winning filmmaker and eager to hear the voice of the young of the city. Durrani would like to see the city's youth follow their madness and not allow nostalgia to swallow up their life.
Durrani grew up in Lucknow but he did not allow his love for the city of his birth to imprison him. He is constantly on the road in search of experiences that enrich his life. His new film 'An American Prayer' was shot across seven cities around the world during the Covid pandemic in 2020.
Durrani sees himself as a spy who is forever in search of new stories to share with the world. He has been tickling his mind to create a new global mythology about Lucknow, about India. It is frustrating for him to find many people in the city living in the past. That kind of attitude leaves very little space for new narratives, he said.
"This nostalgia is not something the young people have to inherit... I am eager to hear the voice of the youth and the stories they have to tell about the city," Durrani told storyteller and interviewer Valentina Trivedi last week at an event hosted by Lucknow Bioscope, an initiative of the popular Mahindra Sanatkada Lucknow Festival (MSLF) that attracts audiences at this time of the year from across the world.
The MSLF has listed Durrani as a nayyab nageena or unusual gem in a long list of citizens in Lucknow who are considered precious.
After all, cities need to grow and change, connect to the world, take inspiration from visitors, migrants, youth; evolve and flow like rivers. The past is gone, and to be learned from and celebrated, but it's not the future.
"My hometown of Lucknow has a fascinating history but it's like an illusion perpetually disappearing in the rear view mirror," added Trivedi.
Like other great battlegrounds of culture, politics and renaissance- Tangier, Cape Town, Istanbul or Marseille, Lucknow needs the energy of hungry dreams to be born again. It needs to be recast in youthful imagination, sing a new song and dance to a new music.
Ours is not just an Avadhi hallucination that stumbles out of our uncles' and grandparents' unreliable memories of romance and beauty of days gone by. It's also an electric new city bursting with wild ideas, ambitious youth, untold stories, desperate lovers, and foolish dreamers. The future of our great city can be a brand new evolution of our syncretic past rather than a broken dollhouse stored in mothballs and old newspapers.
Battleground Allahabad University
It is a sad time for most young people in different parts of Uttar Pradesh (UP) who are unable to educate themselves, or to find decent employment. The Allahabad University campus is turned into a battleground.
A majority of students in the University come from economically depressed homes. Their families are barely able to buy rations to feed themselves. For these families paying fees to educate their children is an uphill task.
When the University authorities hiked up the fee, naturally the students protested. However, the protests turned violent as bikes were torched and cars were set on fire.
There is also news of shots being fired. Trouble was reported between students and security guards who refused to allow some students to enter the campus and forcefully stopped them at the gate.
A student leader who has been protesting against fee hikes at the university for months wanted to visit a bank on campus. The guard, however, did not let him enter. This led to the argument that sparked a clash, stone-throwing and firing.
The police have taken over the campus. The students are negotiating with the police while the University authorities are conspicuous by their absence.
According to media reports, UP's Additional Director General (ADG) Law and Order Prashant Kuma, the situation in the university is under control. The police are monitoring the situation and talks are on between the police administration and students.
Trouble started this year as the University announced a huge fee hike. The fees for undergraduate courses shot up from Rs 975 to Rs 3,900, while fees for post graduation courses went up from Rs 1,375 to Rs 4,651. The hostel accommodation that cost Rs 15,000 has been hiked up to Rs 45,000.
Students have been on hunger strike for more than two months since the hike was announced. They have carried out protest marches inside the campus and also demanded the removal of the reticent vice-chancellor.
However, the protests have yielded no action from the administration so far. Security guards and students at Allahabad University have accused each other of initiating violence on the campus.
Acting on another complaint, lodged by a student, police have filed an FIR against the security guards for the clash and arson. The security guards in their complaint alleged that Vivekanand Pathak, an ex-student, had come to the union gate last Monday. When security guard Prabhakar Singh refused to open the gate, Pathak slapped him, it is alleged.
According to the guard, after he was slapped, several students gathered at the gate and started abusing and pelting stones at the security guards and burned at least two motorcycles.
Pathak has accused the guards of attacking him with sticks. Pathak and student leader Ajay Samrat have raised slogans against the University administration.
Last month, the students had gheraoed Vice-Chancellor Sangeeta Srivastava as she had walked towards her car from her office.
In the absence of a lack of communication between students and the University administration will the youth ever be able to educate itself and to find employment?
The Superstar Allahabadi
Amitabh Bachchan is also known as the choraa Ganga kinarey wala, the boy from the banks of the River Ganges that confluences with the river Jamuna in Allahabad now called Prayagraj. Bachchan spent his childhood in Prayagraj and speaks the local dialect of the area in a charming accent.
However, it is a complaint against the superstar that he seldom airs his views against injustices like the hiking up of fees for the young who mostly belong to economically hard up homes.
That is why Bachchan was appreciated for at last saying that questions are raised today over the state of civil liberties and freedom of expression in the country.
Speaking at the opening day of the Kolkata International Film Festival, he said, "The 1952 Cinematograph Act set out the structure of censorship as it stands today upheld by the film certification board. But even now, ladies and gentlemen – and I am sure my colleagues on stage will agree – questions are being raised on civil liberties and freedom of expression."