Through India and Burmah with pen and brush

by A. Hugh Fisher

I had an anna converted into cowries without any lapse on the part of the changer from his accustomed gravity, but it was one of the few occasions on which Tambusami was thoroughly amused. I insisted forthwith on seeking what I could purchase with the shells, and a little further along the bazaar I bought for eighteen of them (the equivalent of a fourth part of a farthing) some salt, some spice, some tamarind and a portion of cooked grain-flour called pakori.

The Lucknow Races might have been on Epsom Downs for any evidence thereof in the Chauk that afternoon. A woman with a burka—a Mohammedan begging-woman in a white garment that covered her from feet to crown of head, having two round holes cut for seeing through—relieved us of the balance of our shells; and the police inspector, who accompanied me, drew my attention to a house of more pretentious decoration than its neighbours. Within, he declared, lived a Paluria or dancing-girl, who made 1000 rupees a month; and the fancy came to me out of that mesh of contrasts, where sun and shadow were so closely interwoven on the loom of life that warp and web seemed to become each other's fibre,—what if the unknown woman hidden beneath the ample folds of that snowy burka were, after all, a disguised Paluria of yesterday, accepting alms in white oblivion?

Such women of light hours often, I was told, at Lucknow are those who have lived with some Mohammedan in the curious temporary connection called Mulaa, which is a local practice instituted, as far as I could learn, to permit the addition of more wives without indefinite responsibility, the connection being terminable at the will of either party. The women of this class have often a considerable band of retainers, and the professional singing-lady who entertains strangers usually provides fiddlers, drummers and manjira or cymbal-players, who all receive a portion of her fee.

In a side alley leading off the Chauk there is a factory of otto of roses. Lucknow is famous for its perfumes—and one distilled from jasmine is highly popular, as well as an oil from roots of the Khaskas grass.

Lucknow, apart from the native quarters of the town, is a place of wide roads well laid out (after the destruction for military purposes of many houses at the time of the Mutiny), parks, gardens and other open spaces. I made a toilsome round of the chief show buildings, the jejune palaces, the mosques and the ungainly meretricious tombs. There was the Great Imambarah, built under Asaf-ud-daulah, whose tomb it is, as a relief-work in the Chatisa Famine of 1784 (for there were famines in India before the present administration). The interest here is a mechanical one, in the successful construction of an enormous roof in coarse concrete without ribs, beams, pillars, abutment, framework or support of any kind, except from the four surrounding walls. Rather over 160 feet long by 50 wide and 49 feet high, this vast apartment houses the canopied tomb which stands a little oddly, as it is placed with its axis in the direction of Mecca, to which the sides of the hall are not parallel. Near to it stands a huge tinsel Tasia carried annually through the streets at the time of Moharam.

The walls of the Imambara are very thick indeed, with innumerable passages and stairways in them which lead to a veritable maze on the roof level, and it is from some of these passages that the little "loges" or tiny box-like balconies high up in the walls are reached, from which purdah ladies could look down on function or ceremony, as English women from the ladies' gallery in the House of Commons.

I saw the handsome three-domed mosque of the Jama Masjid, with blue and purple decoration painted in line on walls and ceilings, except on the ceiling of its middle porch which was coloured in green. From the platform of the Jama Masjid I could see the ornate Husainabad Imambara, another tomb built in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, by the same king as the great mosque itself, as a burial-place for himself and his mother. A red-brick modern clock-tower showed some distance beyond the tallest of its gilded cupolas. The Husainabad Imambara, built almost entirely of painted stucco, is gaudy and vulgar in decoration and feeble in design. Its great hall contains some tons weight of glass chandeliers and common German ornaments. An enclosed court with paved walks and flower-beds contains a long rectangular piece of water, on which a barge with life-size figures of a man and a horse upon it is pushed up and down by one of the attendants. Coloured glass balls hang from arches of bent ironwork, and the railings along the flower-beds are all fitted with sockets for lights, while the stucco faces of the building are furnished with a multitude of small hooks for the same purpose. The stucco itself is of a peculiarly bright quality, and illuminated at night by thousands of fairy-lights, these buildings have evoked much admiration; but so also have the plaster decorations of Cremorne, Vauxhall or Ranelagh, the white palaces of Shepherd's Bush and the cafés chantants of the Champs Elysees; and, after all, it was race-week, and since Lucknow had its "Grand Prix" if only these far from venerable mausoleums could be turned into an "Ambassadeurs" or a "Jardin de Paris," they might cease to be troublesome!

A less offensive building is the Kerbela of Dianatud Doulah, of old red sandstone, rosy in the sunlight, surmounted by another gilded cupola, but marred horribly by a new porch roofed with corrugated iron. The Kasmain also, a copy of a sacred place in Baghdad, had much beauty in the coloration of its arabesque patterns of pale celadon greens, buffs, reds and smoky greys.

Seeking a little rest in the cool basement of the Lucknow Museum I came upon a lovely piece of sculpture, the very sight of which was as refreshing as a plashing fountain in a waste of sand. It was apparently the upper portion of an octagonal pillar, and was found amongst the ruins of Asaykhera, a small village in Etawah, on the right bank of the Jumna. Eight dancing-girls move in a circle slowly and rhythmically, and although their feet are supported by brackets their attitudes are full of easy movement. They wear jewelled bangles and anklets and a string of jewels encircles each of their necks, passing between and round the breasts to fall in front of the otherwise undraped thighs. The heads of the figures are broken, but their loss seems hardly felt in the delightful movement of the group. I found a luxurious sense of calm and quietude in contemplating this sculpture and for the time forgot the Imambaras and the noisy chaffering of the Chauk Bazaar. I think Cellini would have liked it; he must have enjoyed the carving even if he had deemed the group too homogeneous; certainly Lorenzo would have admired it.

But the strong spirit that holds the English visitor to Lucknow is certainly not the sensuous magic of æsthetic charm. "It is the due admixture of romance and reality," said Sir Henry Lawrence, "that best carries a man through life,"—and the heroic days of the Mutiny have left at Lucknow memories so compact of both that the stranger can but heed them and drink in the tale with ever-growing eagerness.