My India Trip with Masha: Lucknow, Nawabs and Mayawati

Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, is virtually unknown in the West. Yet it is a city of remarkable 18th- and 19th-century architectural monuments the likes of which are rarely seen in this country--the Shia Islam-practicing nawabs of the city have left a legacy of dramatic mosques, a palace holding a maze of arches and passageways to waylay the enemy, sweeping entrance arches, and succulent kebabs.

It is also the headquarters of the ambitious and thoroughly corrupt state chief minister, Mayawati, who has poured millions into a park honoring her Dalit (untouchable)-based party, whose symbol is the elephant, and herself--her sculpture portrays a stocky, dowdy figure clutching a handbag.

And Lucknow is likewise the site of many a moss-grown English church and, more eerily, half-destroyed and bullet-stricken British Residency, which underwent the Siege of Lucknow during the Sepoy Mutiny (known here as the First War of Independence) in 1857.

This conflicting, multi-sided heritage is embodied in the whimsical structure that is Lucknow's 19th-century, noble-lineaged boys' school, La Martinique, built by the amateur French architect Claude Martin to combine any and all artistic influence in a glorious mishmash of flying buttresses, cupolas, and gargoyles (second photo from the bottom) and some pseudo-Indian, mosque dome-like elements.

And there, finally were we, Masha and us two, also Westerners donning an Indian guise at a wedding of Masha's friend--or rather, her friend's brother whom she herself had never met before. Having virtually crashed a wedding of a stranger twice removed (a la Obama's sari-clad party crashers), Misha and I were warmly welcomed, fed, and seen off with a gift of the city's trademark chikan (embroidered gauzy pastel-colored cloth). That too, is India.