Another Lucknow passes by

 

Another Lucknow passes by,

But no, not the green one you may know,

That, despite the hot baking summer’s breath

Has grown for years by the Gomti’s flow

No, not the one where the winter mists

Weaves dreams despite the shivering cold,

Where the tales resonate for aeons and on

And yet, those that never grow old

 

This one is a younger born, laced in ores of gold

In red earth and dust, far away from home

Uncovered only when you decide one day

There’s so much left to vagrant roam

Differences now can there be more?

One, a drop of life, beyond the mountains Blue

The other throbs with a sea of hearts

A memory of all that once was true

 

Somewhere between, walks an author lone

Who can flip from one book to the other,

He who waits to read those broken lines

That others won’t even stop to bother

There’s more in his bookshelf, he smiles –

A Malabar here, a Coromandel there

All bookmarked with the leaves of fall -

Pages left behind with love and care…

 

29 April, 2022

 

On a warm long weekend, I was travelling to the town of Parkes near Orange, far beyond the Blue Mountains. Imagine my surprise, awe and wonder when I pass by a town by the name of Lucknow. It is so small, it flips by in seconds and I have to turn around to capture what I had seen. Just a fragment town that once grew with the gold rush in the 19th century, it still had a link to the town that gave me a lot years back – this Lucknow was named apparently by a book-keeper who had survived the siege at the Residency in the original Lucknow in 1857, and who had come here later as the gold rush brought in seekers from all over the world, creating the namesake...

History seems to have left a lot behind, just like Malabar near Bondi, named after a ship made in the Konkan Coast, or Tasmania’s Howrah, named after Calcutta’s twin by a gentleman who had similarly moved from one to the other. 

So much for warm memories, as they say, seek and you shall find…