Where several centuries coexist

THIS is the season of weddings, and now that we are retired, it is possible to travel out of town to attend them. Just a few days back, we went to Allahabad for one. Quite apart from the prospect of meeting cousins, aunts and uncles flung all over the country and globe, Allahabad has always held a special place in my heart. Perhaps this is because it was my alma mater and the final years of my schooling as well as my university days were spent there. Of course, not many friends of those days are around in the city anymore. Nevertheless, thanks to the WhatsApp groups I am a part of, I was able to meet several lost faces.

For the first time, we flew to Allahabad that now boasts of a spanking new airport. As I looked down from the plane, the vast spread of the famous Indo-Gangetic plains lay beneath us: the true heartland of North India and the site of many ancient settlements. The drive into town took us through what was, in my youth, a dusty cluster of semi-rural terrain. Little seemed to have changed here. Despite the shiny new buildings and shops and the terrifying traffic of autos, cars, tempos, bullock carts and stray dogs, people still lounged on plastic chairs (not khatiyas, I noticed), chewing their tobacco like the cows chewing cud near them. Man and animal still live in close harmony, and somehow that was comforting to know. This is difficult to express but it was as if several centuries still coexist in provincial India. There is the urgent throb of the present century but the mellow rhythms of a timeless existence are hard to miss.

Something has happened to provincial and mofussil India in these intervening decades. So while the town — now Prayagraj — is virtually unrecognisable and has acquired a new topography, traces of the old Allahabad still lurk in hidden corners and boulevards. Our hotel, with a beautiful garden bursting with a riot of spring flowers, was an old one that has been given a makeover. Yet, while the bathrooms and rooms are like that of any modern hotel, there are no lifts and one still has to climb staircases with old wooden banisters. One day, when free of the wedding, I persuaded a local cousin to take us on a tour of the town. After all, we were in this holy pilgrim town in the month of Magh when the faithful come in droves for a dip (snan) in the Sangam, and it was Maghi Purnima, a very important snan. My cousin groaned at the prospect, and as it happened, we were unable to go anywhere near the Sangam because of the traffic restrictions and crowds.

However, we did manage to visit my old university campus, a splendid example of Indo-Saracenic architecture. It was crumbling when I last visited it some 15 years ago, but now, under the present government’s determined bid to restore the old glory of Uttar Pradesh, the local INTACH chapter has helped to clean and renovate the stunning stained windows and soaring towers and turrets that once gave it the moniker of Oxford of the East. What has vanished are the old landmarks of the bookshops and students’ restaurants, and in their place are stalls selling self-help books and cheap kunjis. The students are here now to clear an entrance exam and lounge idly until it’s time to go to their coaching classes. How times have changed! I saw no one playing tennis in the grand tennis courts and remembered with nostalgia how we would all go to see the Davis Cup matches held there in a long-ago time.

Our next stop was Swaraj Bhawan and the Anand Bhawan complex, an oasis of graciousness preserved meticulously by the Congress party and the Gandhi family. A museum on the ground floor of Anand Bhawan has Pandit Nehru’s room and Motilal Nehru’s bedroom, private study and sitting room. Perhaps, it is because I still remember the Nehru years with pride, and the day his ashes were brought for immersion into the Sangam, I was transported to an India that now lives only in our memories. The new visitors are happier to take selfies and are attached to their mobiles in a way that appears almost vulgar in this setting. The old gracious bungalows, once homes of eminent families, are dark, dank ruins fronted by overgrown and uncared-for gardens. Many have been torn down to make way for new apartment buildings that could be either in Noida or Ghaziabad.

Once, Civil Lines was where the elite went for an evening stroll, shopping or to watch a movie. The only old cinema hall left is Palace Cinema, once owned by Feroze Gandhi’s family, and only there as a building now. I was too heartbroken to see this new urban mess of branded stores, malls and multiplexes to ask. Yet, I also realise that it is futile to live in the past when we ourselves have abandoned our old towns and cities. In the aspirational world that defines a new India, the demand for modernity (whatever that means now) erases all memories of a gentle, slow-moving past. This is not just the story of Allahabad but of so many old historic towns.

I understand now why the Buddha took sanyas.