An Evening in Lucknow

Coming back from Lucknow felt like waking from a sher you didn’t realise you were inside.
The kind of evening that lingers longer than logic.

We started from Delhi at sunrise, the road unfolding like a memory trying to remember itself. Nine hours of a highway so smooth, it felt like the past had been rolled flat so the present could glide over it.

And then we entered Lakshmanpuri.

That's what it was once called. The city of Lakshman. Before it became Lucknow. Before the Nawabs. Before the rebellion. Before 1857 turned its silence into a scream that still echoes in the Residency ruins.
History here isn’t in museums. It’s in the pauses between conversations. In arches that lean a little more than they should. In walls that heard British boots and still haven’t forgiven them.

We were only there for a few hours. But Lucknow doesn’t work by the hour.
It works by texture.

There’s something in the air - scented with marigold and coal, light with mehendi and something more unnameable. A softness that doesn’t ask to be noticed, but once you do, it’s everywhere.

Gomti flows quietly through the city, as if carrying its grace downstream.
And beside her sits the Riverfront of Gomati Nagar, a strange kind of perfection. Clean, calm, green. A reminder that cities can still choose to breathe.

We went to Sharma ji ki Chai near Hazratganj.
Ate the bun samosa - crisp, soaked with makkhan so generous it felt like apology from life.
Then at Jain, I tried their tikki - spiced, proud, unapologetically deep-fried.
Finally, assorted all that with Kesar Kulfi outside. Cold, quiet, wise. Like it knew this wasn’t your first heartbreak.

Lucknow serves food the way a daadi serves stories. Slowly. Repeatedly. With secrets in the masala.

We made it to Awadh-e-Sham just before the sky changed colour.
It wasn’t sunset but theatre.
There are places where dusk happens.
And then there’s Lucknow, where dusk performs.
Lights flickered over minarets, the skyline turned sherbet-orange, and for a second, the present knelt before the past.

Everything here carries grace like it was stitched into the city’s fabric.
From the way the chai is poured, to how strangers say "aap pehle."
From rickshaw-pullers who remember Begum Hazrat Mahal, to traffic that moves like a sher being recited - halting, patient, heavy with meaning.

This city doesn’t sell itself. It offers itself.

In a world built on urgency, Lucknow stays deliberate.
Where Delhi sharpens you, Bombay seduces you, Lucknow humbles you.

You arrive expecting a city.
You leave carrying a nazm.

And somewhere between the Sharma bun-samosa and the soft silence of the Riverfront, the road trip becomes less about escape and more about return.

Because something in you remembers this tehzeeb, even if you’ve never been taught it.
Something in you bows. Smiles. Feels full.

One evening. That’s all it took.
But Lucknow doesn’t count in evenings.
It counts in aftertastes.