MONUMENTAL MURMURS

Hidden tales of some of the most iconic buildings in Lucknow

- PUJA AWASTHI

Monument, memorial, mausoleum or landmark—no building is ever just that.

From the depth of their foundations to the sweep of their canopies, buildings are dialogues embracing geographical and human spaces. They tell tales; some forgotten, some readily remembered.

And many, like Lucknow’s Husainabad Clock Tower—India’s tallest mechanical clock tower—add to the script of some of the most important stories of the present. In January 2020, this tower became the backdrop to protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Standing at a height of around 220ft, it is referred to as the country’s Big Ben—a tenuous connect at best. It has a mix of various styles that influenced its architect Richard Roskell Bayne during his travels through Cordoba, Spain, and Marrakech, Morocco. (The Big Ben is in the Gothic Revival style).

In 2010, two Lucknow residents— Capt Paritosh Chauhan, who is serving in the merchant navy, and Akhilesh Agarwal, a mechanical engineer—volunteered to get the long dead clock running again. They discovered that the original movement was gone; the bronze and gunmetal used in its six-foot long and three-foot-wide clockwork was stolen. There were no original drawings and manuals to help. The best guide was the bench on which the clock rested, with holes for where the shafts of the movement had gone in.

Chauhan and Agarwal describe it as the “DNA of the clock”, from which they had to piece together a dinosaur-like being.