MUZAFFAR ALI interviewed at his home in Kaiserbagh, Lucknow, on 26 March 1997 noted film director, bohemian, long-hair bearded, leather waistcoat; scion of a talaqdar family, and steeped in Lucknowi culture; magnificent family haveli in Kaiserbagh, well kept, with b + w photos of his father on the wall; has made filmes about Lucknow - presebtly making a film about partition and Lucknow, a love story about a girl whose family is intent on going to Pakistan and a boy (loosely modelled on his father) who insists on staying; also organises qawwali festivals; ancestral village in Samaroh; from a Shia taluqdar family 208 - Lucknowi culture began its decline from 1857; after that 'Urdu was no linked to any kind of econ development' - lang of econ devt was and remains English 231 - 'the focus of Urdu was really Delhi and Lucknow ... and there ... I wd say it was a lang of integration ... and it had a v v beautiful dimension of aesthetics, the poetry in Urdu, the ghazal', with influence of Persian imagery 246 - 'after the partn, H replacd U in a v big way, cos India began to look for a lang of identity, a kind of a lang which was difft from Urdu; the whole process of Ind'tion was to weed out the Persian influence from the lang, and to create a more Indian version of H'stani; this was a deliberate effort on the lang front, esp after 47' 260 - 'it was more the creation of a lang of Indian identity, and U became an obvious victim of that; I think this process started even before partn, which really created an alienation among the people who spoke Urdu ... that's what the form of Pak a lot of impetus and strength' 278 - 'I think it's saddening cos it's the lang of the heart, it's the lang of the soul, and so much beauty is there in the lang that its imposs to replace, so my lamentation is more on the aesthetic side, and also it's a lang of spirituality ... that it's very sad to see this lang go down' 288 - but silver lining in that film indu has adopted Urdu as a lang of romance - and narrowing of cultural borders 300 - 'I'd say [U] was weakened more by the att than by the act of partn cos people who came from Pak were all U-knowing people, the entire Punjabi popn that came from Pak ... and the people who went from here, they didn't go to a naturally U-sp area, they went to an U-knowing area but not an U-sp area, so the loss was in a way more there, cos the U of Pak is v difft from the U of Lucknow' 320 - 'Ms are and were v much part of N I society, you cannot imagine n I soc without Ms having a part in it ... they were resp for creating craft ... so many other aspects of society' 343 - Ms now marginalised politically but v strong in making or breaking of a govt sitn, and learnt to co-exist with other comms; 'there is some semblance of integration in