A few days ago, I was in conversation with a friend. We were speaking casually, laughing about nothing in particular, when, without thinking- I addressed her as ‘Aap’ while responding to something she said. A habit I have suffered since childhood.
Her reaction was immediate, almost theatrical. She looked at me with disbelief and asked, “Saubhagya, no one my age has ever addressed me as ‘Aap’. It sounds so boring… so formal. Why do you say it?”
I wanted to answer her. Truly, I did. But I did not want to sound like a sermon disguised as nostalgia. So instead, I smiled.
Yet behind that smile, something stirred.
Isn’t this what I, as a Lucknowite-
As a quiet inheritor of its grace-
Am expected to do?
To let respect flow naturally into affection,
To choose gentleness over urgency,
To speak not merely to be heard, but to be felt?
Lucknow was never just a city. It was a temperament.
Once, this land taught India how to speak without hurting, how to disagree without disrespecting, how to host without humiliating, and how to live without rushing. It was a place where language was dipped in honey, where cuisine was slow-cooked like memory, where architecture did not scream power but whispered elegance. The city of the Nawabs was not built on haste- it was built on Tehzeeb.
Here, food was never just food.
It was Dastarkhwan.
It was conversation served alongside kebabs, patience kneaded into dough, culture simmered overnight. From Tunday’s Galawati kebabs that melted like old poetry, to Sheermal, Nihari, and Biryani that carried the weight of centuries- Lucknow fed both the body and the soul.
Here, hospitality was not a service industry, it was instinct.
A guest was not entertained; a guest was honoured.
Here, language was not merely spoken, it was adorned. Urdu and Hindi danced together, producing a dialect so gentle that even reprimands sounded like blessings. A city where “pehle aap” was not politeness- it was philosophy.
And history?
Lucknow did not sit quietly in India’s past. It bled. It resisted. It remembered.
The Revolt of 1857 carved this city into the consciousness of the nation. Begum Hazrat Mahal did not merely defy the British, she redefined courage. The ruins of the Residency still stand, not as tourist attractions, but as scars, silent witnesses to a city that chose dignity over submission.
But cities, like people, are not immortal in their purity.
Today, Lucknow is changing.
Or perhaps- forgetting.
Glass buildings rise where courtyards once breathed. Cafés imitate Delhi, nightlife borrows Mumbai’s impatience, corporate ambition echoes Bangalore’s speed. None of this is wrong. Progress, after all, is necessary. But somewhere along the way, evolution has begun to look suspiciously like erasure.
The language is getting shorter.
The patience thinner.
The voices louder.
“Aap” is now seen as outdated.
Silence is awkward.
Courtesy is confused with weakness.
We are learning to speak faster, but say less.
We are learning to consume more, but savour less.
We are becoming urban-
But are we still Lucknowi?
What worries me is not westernisation- it is amnesia.
A forgetting of why this city was once different.
Why it once mattered not just economically, but emotionally.
Even thought has begun to harden. Where Lucknow once allowed contradiction to coexist politely, radical certainty now replaces dialogue. Opinions are louder than understanding. Identity is defended aggressively, rather than lived gracefully.
And yet-
I refuse to write this as an obituary.
Because Lucknow is not dead.
It is only quiet.
It lives in old homes where elders still correct your tone gently.
It lives in bookstores where conversations last longer than transactions.
It lives in the way a shopkeeper still says, “Koi baat nahi,”and means it.
It lives in the restraint that refuses to vanish completely.
Lucknow is not asking us to reject modernity.
It is asking us to carry our past without embarrassment.
To move forward without trampling what made us human.
This city does not need louder roads or brighter malls.
It needs remembrance.
It needs people who say “Aap” without irony.
People who understand that grace is not slow- it is deliberate.
And so, if this piece sounds like mourning, let it also be a promise.
A promise that Lucknow will not merely survive as a location on a map,
But endure as a way of being.
A city that teaches India, and its own children- that elegance is not obsolete, that respect is not boring, and that culture is not something to outgrow.
I do not write this in farewell.
I write this in faith.
Because I am proud to belong to a city that once taught the world how to live beautifully.
And prouder still to believe- it can do so again.
I write this love letter, in loving memory of Lucknow.
And in living responsibility of those like you and me, who still call it home. And even if you don’t, “Muskuraiye Janab, aap Lucknow mein hain..”