Naeem Ahmed, 58, stands on a stool arranging books. He focusses unusually hard on a task he has been doing for decades, something muscle memory would have carried him through.Naeem rented a 120-or-so-square-foot space five months ago, at Lucknow’s bustling Nakhas Chauraha, to relocate his bookshop, Danish Mahal, from Aminabad. At Nakhas Chauraha, crowds, traffic, and noise overwhelm the senses, and his bookstore stands cheek by jowl with plastic buckets and synthetic suits. Aminabad was where Urdu lovers from across the city gathered, and the air was once filled with spices and the shops with chikankari embroidery.“I am not able to generate a profit, but I want to keep my family’s love alive. The only option was shifting here,” says Naeem, adding that the rent is far lower here. Danish Mahal has been synonymous with Urdu literature and language in Lucknow, and for over 85 years was a refuge for poets, scholars, writers, and intellectuals. The bookstore moved to its new location in December 2025, but has operational since 1939.“From the beginning our bookshop was located in Aminabad. Urdu lovers from across the city would gather to buy books and discuss them over cups of tea, but rising book costs and decreasing profit forced us to close there,” says Naeem, who graduated in Urdu Literature from Lucknow University.Urdu is Uttar Pradesh’s second official language, but even from the 2001 Census to the 2011 count, the number of Urdu speakers who selected it as their mother tongue dropped from 12.1 million to 10.9 million. Naeem and his son themselves converse in Hindi.Lucknow’s Avadhi traditions, built from the 18th century onwards, with the fracturing of the Mughal empire, is defined by tehzeeb, roughly translating to a culture based on the arts and refinement. ‘Pehle aap (you first),’ often parodied in movies, is the philosophy of humility embedded within everyday Urdu conversation.Across Lucknow now, advertising in Urdu is absent, and public messaging is mostly in Hindi. The paint of the few murals with Urdu lettering are peeling. Lucknow residents say that in a post-Babri Masjid Uttar Pradesh, a narrative is being built of Urdu being associated with Muslim conquerors from a distant land.Also read:Once the language of masses, Urdu is dying a slow death