Your writer types are to blame!’ Bhagwati Saklani, a shopkeeper, growls accusingly: ‘Your writing brings in these tourists.’ Could one fault Fanny Parks? In 1838 she wrote: ‘The beautiful rhododendrons are forest trees, not shrubs, as you have them in England.’
Soon after, along came Mauger Fitzhugh Monk, a teacher at our first school, the Mussoorie Seminary. Writing letters home in 1840, he gives us a record of our teenage years. Climbing over the railings of the Masonic Lodge I meet the writers of the earliest guides. Their names are on the Roll of Worshipful Masters: John Northam (1870), F. Bodycot (1900) and F. Wilson (1936).
Of course there’s the maverick John Lang, who arrived before the Great Uprising, but don’t stretch your imagination believe that his essays published in Charles Dickens’ Household Words brought in shiploads from Britain. A hundred years later Kedar Pandey aka Mahapandit Rahul Sanskritayan, came to Herne Cliff in Happy Valley and compiled the first Hindi-Tibetan Dictionary. Fifty six of his books are housed in the Mussoorie Library rubbing shoulders with others who lived here like of Satyaketu Vidyalankar, Dr. Hari Dutt Bhatt, Bill Aitken, Hugh and Colleen Gantzer, Sudhir Thapliyal, Stephen Alter and others.
Of course our wordsmiths cannot be faulted for this, plunge downhill. In the 1960s the hill economy took a nose dive, even as in desperation, old homes were cannibalised for tin and timber. Almost overnight Dunsverick and Gutherie Lodge; Baroda House; Holly Mount; Wolfsburn and Cosy Nook disappeared. With the upheavals in the Punjab, our hills became a parking lot for black money. Gullies, nullahs or waterways were sold, filled up to be built upon. Elegant homes were levelled to making way for hotels: Kenneth Lodge turned into Mahajan Villa; wisteria-wrapped Catherine Villa to Jas Apartments; Fairlawn Palace to pin-cushioned Kamal Towers; tin-roofed Heaven’s Club to a characterless concrete Shipra; brick-clad Madelsa House to a neither-here-nor-there Nunnery; Rock Cliffe to Avalon Resorts; and laid back Sylverton Hotel surprised everyone by giving birth to triplets.
With liberalisation – the genie was out of the lamp – as a three-car-one-scooter hill station soon had two cars in every yard. Perhaps they are the New Age’s misguided missiles, designed not only to transport but as a population control measure as well.
The other day, we set out – Abha (my long-suffering companion) and I to walk the razor’s edge. ‘Please could you count the number of roadside eateries?’ I pleaded.
‘Enough!’ A minute later, she gave up, with: ‘I’ve stopped counting after a hundred!’
Hundreds of shacks offer sustenance to our visitors. On offer are chow-mein, bhel-puri, chaat, pau-bhaji, boiled eggs, candy floss, softy, momos and steamed corn-on-the-cob.
‘Where do you get the water from?’
I ask a Bhuttawala. Without a word, he points to an old rusty drum plunked inside the nearby public toilet. I guess ask a dumb question and get a dumb answer. My advice? Stick to roasted corn.
