Today when I think of it, growing up in Lucknow in the 1980s and 1990s was a very different trip. I know our previous generation officially holds the right of being called the “trippy generation”, but we too had our share of fun, though not as much as them. The reason our fun was limited was because theirs was not. They overdid it, with drugs, sex, more sex, more drugs, alcohol.... So obviously the prohibition came cracking down on us for no fault of ours. As a result, I grew up subjected to a lot of NOs—no to TV, no to cinema, no to long hair, no to non-veg, no to cricket, and obviously, no to talking to girls, which is why a lot of us went to an all boys’ school. In fact there was an ever-ready no to anything that could be remotely associated with fun and enjoyment. So the obvious question was, what were we to do? Pat came the reply: “study”, along with a flying shoe that missed us by inches if we were lucky.
So we opened our books and sat staring at the words. To while away the time, we modified all the pictures in our textbooks. Alexander was made to wear a stupid-looking skirt. We gave Akbar a woman's body beneath his torso. Kanishka’s statue had only a body and no head, so the entire school ran riot turning him into anything from Donald Duck to Mr Spock to Fido-Dido.
One day I played badminton with a girl in a nearby park. Heads popped up from every household. Matters worsened when the game started and I said, “Love all”. Gosh, the entire neighbourhood thought I would elope with her. Word reached my father and I never again in my life played mixed doubles in any sport.
Like most Lucknowites, I too grew up on a staple diet of Hindi cinema and Awadhi food, despite both being strictly prohibited. One might think it was middle-class morality, but in my case it had the added masala of strict vegetarianism honed by daily aarti rituals.
Thankfully for me, my father had long given up on me pursuing an ambitious career like engineering or medicine. Being a strict believer of the theory that “a good film should have a great promo", my 10th standard mark sheet had made it evident to everyone that these run-of-the-mill careers weren't for me.
All set to join the armed forces, my plans were completely foiled by Hindi cinema as they launched one blockbuster after another, just around the time I was supposed to be preparing for those exams. One door closes and another opens; mine opened into Lucknow University, which was a stone's throw away from Dastarkhwan—an entire street dedicated to Awadhi food. And so my tryst with it began upon my graduation. All my school friends had left to join either medical or engineering colleges, and thankfully I got a better set of friends who loved food, stories, poetry and lots of laughter.
One such story was around Shivratri. On this day in Lucknow, even the most hardcore non-vegetarians abstained from non-veg. But I was a rebel looking for a cause, and here was one. I immediately took a trip into the future, visited my advertising days and read what John Hegarty—a sort of God of advertising— had written somewhere: “When the world zigs... zag”. The visual was that of a black sheep walking in the opposite direction to a sea of white ones. That’s when I felt this strong urge to eat kababs. I was that black sheep, wanting to break the shackles of vegetarianism.
But here was when the stupid Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb surfaced. Apparently, the non-veg joints of Lucknow, most of which were owned by muslims, were all shut because of Shivratri. I wore the same expression on my face as Amitabh Bachchan in the film Amar Akbar Anthony, just when the song 'My name is Anthony Gonzalves' begins. What the hell! All non-veg joints shut just because a certain bunch of people are abstaining.
My graduation began with a bang, almost literally. Just two days after an introduction party, I was standing in the college corridor with another classmate holding a gun to my temple. The reason? I was talking to the girls. So I asked him if there was any particular girl he did not want me to talk with, to which he replied: “All”. Because he was not clear which girl he liked or which one would end up liking him. Till that happened I would just need to lay off. But this prohibition did not last long as this gun-toting classmate of mine chose the wrong girl who was liked by a much bigger gun-toting senior, and he was beaten black and blue in front of a big crowd. But I admire his sense of pride; he was not seen in college for the rest of the year.
As if the universe was waiting to celebrate this victory over evil by a bigger evil, the university hosted the youth festival. Just my kind of thing—with music, street theatre, dumb charades, and just about every other possible extracurricular activity one can think of, like a group of men thrashing one guy over a girl who did not even know it was for her. It is under these pressuring circumstances that I thought I too would take my chance of approaching a girl on that fateful day in February. And guess what happened? Oh forget it, you all know what happens now. And no, she was not the same girl with whom I played badminton. Guess I had paid the price of playing mixed singles.
Ramendrra Vasishth is a writer who works in the Hindi film industry