Jhansi is my hometown, though not the place where I was born. I was born in Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, a mere 70 miles away. Jhansi is in Uttar Pradesh and has seen tremendous development in the last 50 years.

Cobbled paths and one-lane roads
Lots of houses with red tiles
Jhansi was with small abodes —
Fields of green for many miles.

All that is gone, crowds have come,
And yet all feel so lonesome.

There’ll be more of Jhansi in poetry on some other pages…right now there are a few other interesting facts for you:

a little history
It is said that ‘Bundelkhund is the heart of India’ — and Jhansi, if I may point out, is the heart of Bundelkhund which is a region of Uttar Pradesh.
Jhansi was known as Balwant Nagar in olden times. But because this town seemed like Jhain (pigmentation. maybe because of its rocky terrain) from Orcha (a temple town nearby) — it came to be called Jhain…which later evolved into Jhansi.
Just 16 miles away in village BaGhat, the famous Guru Dronacharya (remember Mahabharata?) was born. That made Jhansi enter the historical chronicles of that era. Later, the Rani of Jhansi (LaxmiBai) & her explosive struggle against the British gave Jhansi a permanent place in modern history books.

on Rani Laxmibai
Sir Hugh Rose wrote: “She was the best and the bravest of them all.” The Rani is known to Indians through these immortal lines written by the poetess Subhadra Kumari Chauhan:
Bundele harbolon ke muh hamne suni kahani thi
Khoob lari mardani, weh to Jhansi wali rani thi
Interestingly, the house where I spent my childhood and my college days is right in front & below the face of Jhansi fort from where the Rani bravely fought the British forces in 1857. I remember, as a kid, I loved climbing the rocky and unkempt steep slope that led to the base of the straight wall of the fort. Even our double-storeyed house looked like a toy from that height. But we’ll talk of these adventures somewhere else, some other time.

the famous from Jhansi
Guru Dronacharya from ‘MahaBharat’
Rani laxmibai — ruler
Vrindaban Lal Verma — novelist
Kailash Awasthi — poet
Harbhajan Singh ‘Fatichar’ — poet
Ashok Chaturvedi — poet
Tribhuvan Nath Trivedi — poet
Major Dhyanchand — hockey player
Ashok Kumar — hockey player
Prof. Bhagwan Das Mahaur — poet
Dr Siyaram Sharan Sharma — writer
N A Ansari — films
Passey family — business
Suri family — business
Vishwanath Sharma — politics

language profile
Bundelkhundi is spoken in Jhansi. This is one of the five major sub-dialects of Hindi: Avadhi, Pingal or Brijbhasa, Dingal, Bundelkhundi, and Khari Boli.

some more facts
>> Railway came to Jhansi in 1885-87 under Indian Midland Railway.
>> The Jhansi railway platform is the 3rd longest in India.
>> Jhansi is in the SW corner of UP & lies between 25°11′ N to 25°57′ N latitude and 78°10′ E to 79°25′ E longitude.
>> The 5 tehsils under Jhansi are: Jhansi, Moth, Garotha, Man, Lalitpur, Mehroni.
>> The major rivers in the district: Betwa, Ghasan, Jamini, Pahuj.

where to go
Besides a fort (built in 1610 AD), there are a lot of parks with a history (18+) and more than 30 ancient temples. A couple of mahals have been converted into museums. One can still see old buildings as they existed in the last century.
The modern additions include a university of its own, an engineering college, a medical college, and a sprawling cantonment, and now a lot of starred hotels!
Of all the picture halls/cinemas, the most interesting is KRISHNA in Sadar Bazar as it is on the first floor…and it belongs to us!