Lucknow Nama

One the best book on Lucknow . Great research work must have been done before reduce to write this book. Brief but almost complete information about monuments and contemporary history. Writer deserve applause for factual depiction of events of history.

The media could not be loaded. This book not only has history and incidents from the nawabi times but also the ancient vedic history of Awadh/Ayodhya all its monuments and temple.

Good but includes facts only

This is the best book in hindi to know the nawabi city lucknow

I am not so good at Hindi. But, on the face of it, it looks like a good book.

This is the 2nd book of Shri Yogesh Praveen ji that I have read. Prior to this, I had read one of this earlier works, Aapka Lucknow, and had loved it immensely. I have also seen many of his interviews and was floored at his typical simple Luckhnavi style of speaking that I have grown up hearing around me.At the outset, let me state, that I am from Lucknow, and my work is also based in my city.I picked up Lucknow Naama as my year end (2021) holiday read; however I found many parts of this book very different from how his writing style was in Aapka Lucknow.Lucknow Naama contains an exhaustive account of all monuments of Lucknow. It starts with historic temples in the city and slowly graduates to monuments built by Nawab dynasty of Awadh. Somehow here is where the book started going downhill for me.Being a Luckhnavi, I have grown up hearing and using a colloquial version of Urdu that is unique to the city, and that was the beauty of Yogesh ji’s book Aapka Lucknow; but from more than halfway, the author used extremely poetic and dressed up Urdu, which was becoming an impediment in the narrative of history that the book could have offered, much like how Bollywood films have songs that break the pace of the story and narrative in the film.Now don’t get me wrong, I feel the dressed up Urdu is good for poems and is added to create more drama in a narrative; however, the account of monuments of Lucknow and their backstories is History, not Fiction, and here the language became an unnecessary garnishing that was trying to take focus away from the main sequence of events.It seemed as if the author wanted to soften the debauchery practised by Nawabs, who made maximum pleasures palaces and kothis/dyodhis (palatial homes) for their innumerable wives, some of them as young as 12 year old.The most notable (and nauseating) account is that of Nawab NaseerUdDin Haidar’s Rs.14 lacs worth of marriage (1830s) to an extremely young girl who was his minister’s niece and came from a very average household. She had the wedding she could not even dream of, got gifts fit for a Goddess, only to be discarded 5 days later by her husband, who lost interest in her. The said begum fell into anonymity. This whole episode is flowered with most ornamental Urdu, which I could not understand is purposefully satirical, or an attempt to soften the gravity of the situation.Similarly, the account of a pleasure garden called, Pasand Bagh is nauseating to say the least. The garden held an annual fair of women who were called “maalin” (gardeners) in name only. In reality they were lovely young girls, exhibited to the Nawabs, standing on flower beds, wearing same colour clothes as the flowers blooming in the respective patches they were standing upon. Some of them later “got the honour” of becoming one of the many begums!!Had this been the story of one or two begums, I would have dismissed it, but here it seems almost each monument is linked to a sick game of debauchery of collecting wives/conquests and then discarding them off. I am sorry but beautiful words did not hide the depravity of the stories for me.Having grown up in the hangover of Nawabs as the paramours of culture of my city, it was extremely disconcerting and disappointing for me.Even apart from this, being a historical record, the book lacks a bibliography of where the stories have been referenced from. I can understand some dramatic liberties that the author might take, but complete absence of bibliography makes it more of an opinion piece than historical research.I even appreciate that not all stories are recorded, and many are carry forward tales told by elders (and this is a valid argument), but must they be told with so much of melodrama in each line? Maybe it works beautifully for some, it did not work for me at all.I may even dare to suggest that this might not be Yogesh ji’s writing, as the style is opposite of what I have read in Aapka Lucknow or seen in his interviews. He never venerated Nawabs unnecessarily, and in fact was vocally against court historians who in his opinion over venerated their masters.I can only assume that since this book is not mentioned in his repertoire of work, and came late in his career, it could have been compiled by his students etc.which he possibly did not check.History is a repository of - facts, travelogues, numismatic records, contemporary era historians, architecture, some carried forward stories - except for the last two, all of these were absent to quite an extent in the book.Read it only if you wish to have an exhaustive list of monuments of Lucknow, where the job to chronicle has been commendable; or read it, if you like that Bollywood old World version of “history” that has birthed films like Taj Mahal, Mere Mehboob, Bahu Begum, Mughal E Azam etc.I will read more of Yogesh ji’s works to figure his true writing pattern, to ascertain if this book was at all written by him or just has his name on it.