The Joy of Anonymity

The Joy of Anonymity

This is about a Street down Memory lane. Here is the first part of my article, 'The Joy of Anonymity.' I was born and brought up in Lucknow, a small town or a city, as the same was referred to in sixties and seventies. Today it is classified as an A class city with Metro service running across the city and has become the nerve center of national politics. In early seventies when I was growing up in this town, life used to be slow placed and walking on the roads alone while going and coming from school used to be an enjoyable activity. Especially if one had to pass through the most fashionable high street of Lucknow called Hazratganj. We were lucky to stay at a house at Narhi, which was close to Hazratganj and while going and coming from school I had to pass through the majestic street of Hazratganj and especially its narrowest lane called the lover’s lane. I never saw any ‘lovers’ there but the narrow lane had few interesting shops. A lot of youngsters, male and female, used to loiter around those shops and browse at the magazines and the old books that were on display. One of these shops used to sell curios and old postal stamps. Collecting postal stamps of different countries used to be a hobby of the youngsters of my generation. In order to buy these stamps, I used to walk up and down from my home to my school - a distance of about 3 kilometers. This walk was not only an exploration of life around (it passed through narrow by-lanes and cinema theatres like Mayfair and Besant) but also helped me save the ‘bus fare’, which was used to buy these stamps. Some times I saved enough to buy a magazine called Junior Statesman or JS as it was called by the trendy lot of my generation. Reading and contributing small articles in JS made me feel that I was more stylish and more modern than the rest of my friends. Besides carrying news and articles focused on youth affairs, JS used to carry a cartoon with a caption ‘ Love is…’ wherein a teenaged boy and girl were depicted coyly exchanging cupid glances with blurbs like…’Love is. …Using the same bus stop as hers.’ I started making my own version of the cartoon by imitating the figures of the boy and girl and inventing my own blurbs. For quite some time, I used to write my name as ‘Omi ‘, wherein O was configured as the face of the boy depicted in the cartoon.