Freedom struggle comes alive
Lucknow’s night sky was all lit up at the Residency early this week when at least 500 drones, glittering with lights of different hues, portraying the historical events from the First War of Independence in 1857 to Independence in 1947. Residency is a testament of Lucknow’s colonial history.
Drones took off from the ground in synchronized manner and moved across the sky creating visuals of visionaries like Mangal Pandey, Rani Lakshmibai, Subhas Chandra Bose; and incidents including Chauri Chaura and Kakori train action. The mega show was a part of the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebrations.
City’s architectural gems come alive in new book
Newly-released ‘Lucknow: Ode To A City’ authored by DR P C Sarkar is an answer to curious queries about the city of nawabs by going down the bylanes of its prosperous history.
The book was launched recently at a function organised by the non-profit Lucknow Expressions Society. Dr Sarkar, a PhD in organic chemistry and working as principal scientist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), is an authority on the history of Awadh.
During the book launch, Dr Sarkar said, “The book is more of a tribute to the lost heritage of Lucknow, its palaces, architectural marvels which no longer exist. It is about the people, who had contributed to uniqueness of Nawabi and colonial Lucknow.” The book was launched at a function organised at the Kaifi Azmi Academy.
Christmas festivities pervade Lucknow
Lucknow is all decked up for Christmas to soak braving the December chill. Churches are all wearing a festive look.
While the Christian community will soak in the spirit of Yuletide like any other year, commoners too look forward to renew the spirit with lesser Covid curbs this time around. However, a new surge in Covid cases and Omicron fears may hold revellers back.
Night curfew will be clamped from Saturday night and authorities have advised against lowering the guard. Celebrations at public places have been called off to avoid mass gatherings. Besides, some churches have restricted midnight mass.
Social media feat for Uttar Pradesh Police
Having scored over two million followers on Twitter, the Uttar Pradesh police is quite in pace with social media revolution making it the second most followed handle in the country after the Mumbai police.
It took off with uploading video bytes of district Superintendents of Police/Inspector Generals and Additional Director General zones on social media and graduated to a level of having uploaded 20,000 video bytes since January 1, 2020.
In its Twitter journey in the last five years, Uttar Pradesh Police handle has racked up 498 million impressions, 1.59 million retweets and 5.9 million likes, adding 1.7 million
new followers.
Namita Bajpai
Our correspondent in Uttar Pradesh namita.bajpai@newindianexpress.com