You don't always have to optimize for the right answer right away. Just asking someone who's worked with/on the codebase will often give you a jump start.
Presumably the code base didn't just have a single author (who is also no longer around). Git blame is amazing for not only tracking down who did what, but also seeing how the code base evolved.
Well, It is not Lucene alone, there are many tools in java written around Lucene such as ElasticSearch/Solr/Elassandra and so on, so no language or runtime can replace everything. Eventually something might catch-up. That is why it is not language alone! It is developer, runtime, ecosystem and problem domain, brainshare.
Most of the tier-1 cities has direct international or national airways connectivity.
Tier-3 cities may not even have a single factory, it is hub for 100s villages, has decent bus-connectivity to nearest tier-2 city.