The Labyrinth in Lucknow

While Benares, where the author has been for the last month, is a resoundingly Hindoo city, Lucknow, further to the north, is the premiere city of Shia Mahometans in India. The author journeyed there over the New Year. It was once the capital of the great fiefdom of the Nawab of Ood and has a distinctive culture celebrated for its fine manners and genteel ambience. Today, of course, it is a sprawling Indian mess but much of the old city, marked by various medieval gates, is still intact. In particular, the central mosques and the great centre of Shi'ite learning - the Imambara (theological college) - is especially well-preserved and an inspiring complex of architecture that is quite different to that of the (Sunni) Moghuls. The Nawabs of Ood were cultured and benevolent, if indulgent, men and embarked upon vast building projects, reputedly as a means of providing work for their hungry citizens during lean times. 

View from the roof of the Imambara

The truly unique feature of the Imambara (the big one, not the smaller complex further down the road, also called 'Imambara'), and reason enough to visit there, is in the ceiling of its main hall. The architect, Khifayatullah, has seen fit to build an elborate labyrinth (more correctly, it's a maze) into the upper levels of the building, supposedly to thwart would-be intruders. It is said that only he and the Nawab knew the path through it. Today it is open to the public, and the author spent several hours of a warm winter afternoon - New Year's Day - stumbling around in the tangle of halls and corridors and stairways that constitute the 'Bhul Bhulaiya' as it is known. 

During the daytime it is not impossibly difficult to navigate, since one can follow the light and keep taking paths back to the outside of the building, but during the night it would be diabolical. Many corridors lead to dead ends, but others lead to precipitous drops. As it is, the author found himself completely lost within a few turns and on several occasions had to return to the roof of the building to re-orient himself. As a labyrinth it is certainly effective and mysterious, even if on Friday afternoons - after the communal prayer, which is when the author was there - it is crowded with groups of teenagers squealing and giggling at the thrill of being lost. 

The following are some of the author's pictures of the labyrinth and should give readers a sense of the structure. There are, they say, some 500 doorways in the complex. The labyrinth works by offering stairwells up or down at strategic places. If you take the stairs up when you should have taken them down, you're lost.