A bygone era came alive in the Capital last week when letters written during the colonial era from and to Lucknow revealed life in the regal city from the 1850’s to the present times. Right from the uprising to the subsequent rebuilding of Lucknow, the plague of the 1903 to 1936 floods, the freedom movement and the pain of Partition the audience got a heart-rending glimpse of what shaped the city over those 100 years at an event hosted by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Lucknow in Letters: Endeavours, Achievements and Tragedies.
Where some of the letters were about the glimpses of how the city had gone down a terrible change, transformation in the political scenario and about the Partition, others were missives shared between cousins and family remembering the old times, how they used to spend the mango season and how they never thought that soon there would be a Partition in the country and they’d be living separately in two different nations.
"My body may be in Pakistan but my soul is in India," read a letter from a friend in Pakistan to another living in Lucknow. Letters written by British officers and their visitors to the city in the late 19th and early 20th century, letters recording the sacrifices made in the struggle for Independence, letters about memories of separation and longing of families torn apart by the Partition, of the determined struggle by the oppressed and marginalised groups as they struggled to lead a life of dignity in an independent India, letters about everyday life, of childhood pranks, marriage proposals and food, these letters weave a tapestry of what it meant to live in the city, what the local people experienced of life in the city.
The multilingual reading of the letters, sourced from family archives and published material, recorded memories of everyday life in the city as well as events in history and interesting intersections of personal and political nature. Several letters were those written by social and political reformers like Mahatma Gandhi and Motilal Nehru. These letters were accompanied by rare manuscripts, original letters and pictures of those who wrote them. The dramatised reading of the letters, collected from private sources and museum, newspaper reports and essays was presented by Saman Habib, a senior scientist at the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, and and Sanjay Muttoo, who currently teaches in the Department of Journalism at Kamla Nehru College, Delhi University.
“The idea to initiate the letter reading struck me while exchanging mails with cousins in Pakistan, who we had never met. Gradually, we caught hold of letters between the older generation which further led to discovery of letters of partition era and beyond,” Commenting on the letters, Habib said. "We collected these letters from various sources like old newspapers, essays, family members in Lahore and many other places. We slightly modified some letters and put them together into a story and provided themes. It took around 5-6 months to collect these letters from various sources."
The four-hour-long reading session brought alive the situation that prevailed in the country at that time and how people faced it; how Britishers disrupted the Indian economy; and how the country&’s rich and valuable resources were exploited. There was hardly any aspect of the Indian economy that was not touched by the British and this was shown by some of the letters written by Britishers to their relatives sharing how they had succeeded in exploiting India. The first letter that started the reading session was on the Chauni revolt that occurred in Lucknow, said Habib. “Some of these letters are also traced from Pakistan and the exchange was very emotional and interesting as some of them were written by people in Pakistan to friends and family members in India,” she added. “Some of the letters are also funny as they share moments of childhood. Many people helped out in collecting these letters."