Ever heard of the old Chuck Norris-esqe joke about Rajnikanth painting the Red Fort red with his spit? Well, travel to Kanpur and you'll realise that's quite possible.
The start was indicative enough. I took a train from Mumbai to Kanpur, and every 10 minutes there'd be someone screaming brands of pan masala, hawking tobacco. Every 10 minutes. It was hard enough for this damned memory device to not remember all the names. I'm not gonna recite them here though.
As it turned out, I was on the banks of river Ganga on the first day of the year, and not only did it confirm that tobacco is commonplace here, considering that there were red spit marks on the bank's wet silt as well, but also that the Ganga is really filthy. _Kanpur teri Ganga maili_. But that didn't stop that guy from nearly skinny dipping into thigh high waters. Or from common people buying containers and filling up. I guess rotting food, flowers, and paper are just the norm.
Some visibility still persists in this dense fog. My Kanpuriya host tells me frequent visits by the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, has improved the roads a lot; also persistent are the people's erratic error-prone driving habits. Also, courtesy of the Yogi, was a renewed and beautiful Nana Sahib's fort and an uprising of 1857 memorial. I might as well thrown in the numismatic and philately museum it, depicting the history of Kanpur, and the evolution of currency and stamps of India and the world.
But the most amusing thing was this sign we found in the premises of the fort.
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| Respecc. Always. Courtesy, Respect Women AC Restaurant |
Cawnpore might have evolved to Kanpur, but the town and the inhabitants still remains the same. The old town feels are strong with this one.