Stories
An arched blue wooden door in a warm wall
Kaiserbagh, Lucknow

Behind the Blue Door

A haveli that has been in one family for six generations, and the woman who keeps it.

Zoya Siddiqui

Lucknow, slowly · Part 2 of 4 · 1 min

stories-wine.vercel.app/s/the-blue-door

Select any words to leave a note beside them.

The door was painted blue in 1971, the year her husband came home from the war. Nobody has repainted it since; they only oil the hinges.

Inside, the courtyard holds a neem tree older than the house. She tells me the house was built around the tree, not the other way round, and I believe her.

She does not want her name used. ‘The house is the story,’ she says. ‘I just live in it.’

LUCKNOW9 OCT

An example book, made to show how Stories reads.

Culture and CraftLucknowHeritageArchitecture

Zoya Siddiqui

Photographer. I walk old cities slowly and write down what the people who live there tell me.

Open the book

In the margin

  • Arjun Mehta 1h

    The neem tree line got me. My grandmother's house had the same door, same blue.

  • Meera Rathore 3h

    That light on the latch. Did you go back in the evening too?

  • Kabir Sethi Yesterday

    Printing this one for the wall.