Walking the walk..

Its been quite some time since my last post. Several ideas were flying in my mind all through this month about the next post but somehow the inertia to start writing was quite high. I attribute this to a variety of reasons ranging from our summer placements, really crazy second term, some interesting developments in my life :-), holidays etc.. A big hats off to all those writers, now that I came to know how difficult it is to put pen on paper, especially when you don't have anything to write.

The third term started with a crazy winter. Temperatures dipped to as low as 0 degrees, for the first time in the last ten years. The only positive side is that it became a nice reason for sleeping 8 to 10 hours a day. The classes are less crazier as compared to last term, with some really good Profs. This is the fests season for all types of colleges around the country. IIM L's Manfest ended yesterday, after 3 rocking days. There were some good performances by Pain of salvation, Salim Sulaiman etc. I remember the days when we called Telugu music director Chakri to perform during our college fest.. :-)

With a plethora of events lined up in various events, we put on our thinking cap and set on a journey of multiple events, one after other. Manfest's Marksmen is one of them, where we had to design a few strategies for the Lucknow heritage walk. To tell the truth, this was the first time I heard of the thing called Heritage walk. However, the concept seemed really interesting and the competition challenging. So we set out to walk the walk on 16th Jan. Please excuse my exaggeration, the Lucknow heritage walk covers the old city of Lucknow, walk through the little twining gullies of Lucknow, ancient buildings, shires, some famous monuments in 2-3 hours time. The walk started last May and was considered a success by almost all of the organizers.

Our journey started on a little difficult note as getting up at 6.30AM on a cold winter night is a really big task. However, we reached the starting point "Tila Wali Masjid" at 8AM. We weren't aware that the magic of the old city is going to take us on a ride that morning. The Masjid though not huge, was really beautiful. And the interesting fact was that it was used as a hospital by the British, during the 1857 revolt. The guide was able to speak considerably good English, and hence we were able to understand most of the things.

Then was the Bara Imambara, one of Asia's biggest halls without pillars. We were surprised to know that it was built to create employment during the famine. And my teammate Naresh, famous as "Jallu", was quick to grasp that it is the concept of fiscal expansion done by the Governments of countries during recession. Then came the chowk area, as told by the guide, was the shopping mall of Lucknow around 200 years back. The gully started from Gol darwaza the roughly 2-3 meter wide road was in between closely packed houses. Interestingly every house had big balconies, which we were told were used by dancers. There were many other interesting places like French colony, places which hosted Mahatma Gandhi, Places of Emperor Akbar times, Nepali haveli etc. The Nawabi splendor, Indo – Iranian , Mughal, Persian architectures were a visual treat.

The most striking thing was the food. We had gajar ka halva which was pure black in color. The interesting thing was the guy who was selling told that it is made from black carrot and no color was added. We had nahari-Kulchas for breakfast, which is the delicacy of Lucknow. The kulcha was the best kulcha I had till date. It literally melted in my mouth. Nahari is beef. I never had beef till then, but felt it was good. Then was Makhan. A soft ice cream sort of dish made from milk. It was the dessert for the day and completed our invasion on food. Overall, the walk was a wonderful experience and especially with no publicity or visibility on the internet, we never expected it to be so good. We were told that the old city has the power to tickle all the five senses of the body and we really did feel so.

Today we see heritage walks almost in any city. When we talked to the designer of the Lucknow and heritage walks, we were told that the main objective of the heritage walk was to spread the awareness about the city to its own people thus improving the pride, responsibility etc. Even we felt that Heritage walks are the best ways to know about your city. Do walk the walk.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------