By: Dr. Sanchita Ghatak, Associate Editor-ICN
Lucknow the “City of Nawabs”(City of Noble men) is known for its Tehzeeb(etiquettes and mannerism) and “Pehley Aap”(first you) Culture.
But sadly the new trends in fashion and metro culture is gradually waning this out. This is consecutively bringing in a rather roughness amongst the youngster, which was considered to be not so classy attitude a few decades back.
The haughtiness of the people I see these days while travelling up and down every day to my workplace always forces me to pause a while and take myself two decades past when there was no metro coming up or no malls in the city. Fiats and Fords have now been replaced by Audis and BMWs.
The only place to hangout near Nishatganj was Prem Bazaar, despondently now almost in a dilapidated state. The high-street shops of Hazratganj then were compared pompously with Connaught Place in Delhi. But these days it’s Cinepolis or Fun Republic or just Phoenix.
A very vague thought just runs in mind everyday while I return back to my home after an extremely busy and hectic schedule of the day that the pandemonium of the terrifying traffic jams can be solved by going back to our roots of Lucknowi culture of “After you Sir”.
The poor traffic controllers at the crossings are seen hopping from one corner to other just to stop that man who is in an austere urgency. Crossing the red glowing rod signal of the police at the crossing. A big fat SUV will always show its might against a poor little Maruti hatchback driver by overtaking from the wrong side as if yelling loudly- “Stupid Pehley Mai”( first me).
I wish and feel that if only we go back to those days where even the noblemen said “After you sir” and a small “Aadab” (salute) with a subtle smile will make miserable life of the poor traffic controller a little easy.
Extermination the greenery seen on the roads and then making the drive tracks as wide as possible will never solve the traffic problem. Metros Work well where distance matter like in Mumbai and NCR. Can we not really not be Clean Lucknow- Green Lucknow and of course Cool Lucknow as well.
We are right now inviting the evil radiations from The Sun God and I feel a day will soon come when will be seen Teaching and reading to the generations to come about Rainy Season and Dashahari mangoes like we read about Mohenjodaro and Archaeopteryx.
