I was a student at Bronx Science for two years, where I wrote for The Science Survey. Since last year, I have been attending UWC Mahindra, a school in India. It is one of 18 boarding schools in the United World Colleges network, which unites students from over 150 countries. The piece below is inspired by my time in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
Only with focus can I distinguish the metal and debris under my feet from the rusting metal hanging from the ceiling or the brown walls. Years have completely transformed the building: in some rooms, only remnants of a structure remain, loose metal window frames are indistinguishable from the rest of the wall; it is all brown, the brown of dust and dirt.
On the second floor, my friend Amartya walked to (what used to be) a door. Now, it is a gap in the wall, which lets light run on the hallway floor. Amartya twisted a little around the wooden frame. Maybe he tested its hinges. There were three floating squares, once a part of a door that is now gone. He stuck his head through one square missing glass. It was the perfect photo, and I took the bait.
But his posing wasn’t just the product of a digital age. The building, which used to be a palace for Nawabs, is now a playground: each risky edge is the perfect width for headstands, each small terrace is the perfect parkour challenge, and each metal railing is a pull-up bar.
I felt complete freedom in that building. I felt like a creator of the building. Every new object that I encountered was mine to invent.
The Chhatar Manzil palace wouldn’t exist without earnest creators. For Asaf-ud-Daulah, the palace was an empty canvas, and he filled every inch with European opulence – carpets, silk curtains, and mirrors of every shape and size, and chandeliers.
When I first saw the palace, I was struck by its arches. The arches resembled many lotuses and vines. The stone vines stuck to each petal’s outline closely, and once your eye catches that vine, the vine sticks. Your eye follows that line, tripping into its indents and falling into every branch and straining itself at the top, twisting into a crown. The crown of stone leaves was more green with moss than the pale pinky-cream color of stone. The trap is enchanting. When I tear my eyes out of the vine’s trap, I quickly fall into another, and I’m racing through a tangle of stone vines.
Major General Claude Martin planted those stone lotuses and vines, not just at the Chhatar Manzil but all across Lucknow. Lucknow had just been named the capital of the Awadh kingdom and was at its zenith under Asaf-ud-Daula’s reign. In the early seventeenth century, the decline of a great kingdom sent artists flocking east, to Lucknow. Asaf-ud-Daula welcomed Martin to fill Lucknow with buildings that you would usually find in Lyon. The mix of Mughal architecture and European decadence created a maximalist style unique to the Nawabs, a mix that sometimes felt more similar to European architecture than architecture from the Mughal or Timurdian period. As a general rule, the later in the Nawab’s era, the more maximalist the architecture.
Ironically, the European influence that brought Lucknow’s architecture distinction also led to its downfall. The East India Company was tempted by Awadh, as “the garden, granary, and queen-province of India.”
The last Nawab Wajid Ali Shah took over as the Awadh kingdom was on the decline. The East India Company forced the Nawabs to pay for the EIC army’s presence, demanded loans from the Nawabs, and signed a treaty with them which annexed much of the Awadh kingdom.
In 1857, the Chhatar Manzil was a stronghold for Indian revolutionaries. Afterwards, parts were destroyed when the British won, and it was never a palace again. All across Lucknow, British officials destroyed many sites related to the Indian struggle for self-rule. Chhatar Manzil was converted into a private club for British officers, and now it’s left, unpreserved.
The mesh screens on the windows were torn, and long clumps of wires hung loosely on the walls . Every glass window was missing glass. Some holes are perfect squares, and others are abstract gaps. Dirt spawned anywhere, with no rhyme or reason. One wall seemed pristine, entirely pale cream, while the top of the wall was darkly colored with dirt.
The greatest savior of the structure was the plants who had settled in every hole and on every surface, figurative artists who wandered into an abandoned building and decided, ‘this is my project.’ Bushes and shrubs sprouted all along the bottom of the building, like icing around the base of a cake. Leaves had little bursts of creativity wherever they liked, tracing loops and spirals around pipes and window frames. Every windowsill was shaded with baby vines. Pretty bushes lured us out onto the building’s terraces, which were patches of stone, stacked one on top of another, but faltering in their craft – one layer often eroded in certain spots, revealing the layer below it, a different color of brown or gray. Some layers were covered thickly in moss and twigs, so you could not see the stone underneath.
When I came across a staircase wall vandalized with drawings, lines, and initials from past explorers, I didn’t have my usual reaction. I didn’t feel repulsed by the lack of respect that people have for historical monuments — cecause this was a different type of place. It was changing. I felt connected to the people who etched their names in the plaster. When I pressed my palm to the wall, I understood that we felt and wanted the same thing: we were creators who wanted to share a piece of history.
Every windowsill was shaded with baby vines. Pretty bushes lured us out onto the building’s terraces, which were patches of stone, stacked one on top of another, but faltering in their craft – one layer often eroded in certain spots, revealing the layer below it, a different color of brown or gray.