Lucknow ki Paanch Raaten !

This was the book that I read while on my way to Lucknow on vacations. It is a travelogue-memoirs by famous urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri. I bought it at the book festival last year and gave up on it due to the very difficult urdu. I don't regret that decision because there could not have been a better time to read it.

This reminds me to mention one of the reasons why most of the books I have bought since having come to Bangalore remain unread. As it happens when I bought those books, I was in a particular mood, in a mood to read. When you are in such a mood, anything goes, anything that is good and interesting. But things have changed over the months and living with the new twists and turns of life, I really could not muster courage to just pick up a book and read it. I was afraid that it might somehow destroy or alter the mood I have. Its like right now the story of my life is being written and I don't want to get busy with other stories. It was only out of sheer boredom of making a making a 40 hours journey and the fact that I had promised myself to finish it before I come back to Bangalore, that I read CiTR on my way back. It didn't make a lot of damage though people said it had the potential.

Anyway, as I mentioned on my other blog, this was a journey of a lifetime for me. I was in a very strange mood while starting it, a little happy, a little afraid, a little uncertain, lots of things. And I was obviously missing Lucknow (this was my longest stint outside Lucknow and away from my family in last 13-14 years). And guess what !! I started reading this book. It was absolute bliss to say the least. It was like living through the five nights in Lucknow that Ali describes from his life. His life, his struggle, his friends, his muflisi, his love interests and all this interpersed with some beautiful shaayri !! It just made the experience magical. Due to the tough urdu, I could hardly understand around 70-75% of the text but when heart speaks, there is little use for anything else.

The later part of the book describes some of the characters that he met on various travels through his life and they also make a very good read. The book fills you with a sense of romaanch (I am running out of the words in english) and just makes you feel so miserable at times when you realize that we are just wasting our time doing these mundane things while there is so much to experience out there. But as somebody said, life is what happens to you when you are planning for it.

For everybody from Lucknow, this is the book you want to read when you are chugging back to Lucknow next time. Charbagh would have never looked so beautiful before :)