Mussorie: The Ageing Hill Queen

The ageing hill queen called Mussoorie
Punam Sidhu

ACCOMPANYING my husband on a mid-service training course, we drive into the town on a sunny October afternoon. The filth accumulated on the narrow winding roads is appalling. The stench of uncollected garbage and defecation, noxious. By evening, however, the chill sets in and we witness a spectacular sunset, with the fiery ball of the sun dipping into tall deodars and pines in the Garhwal mountains. The lights come on and by night, the city, she is still the Queen.

The darkness cloaks the wrinkles of pollution, and neglect. The warts of urban decay are precipitated by the pressures of the tourists who take the population of approximately 30,000 (91 census) to 2,50,000 in a season. Mansoorie, is named after the Mansur shrub (Coriana nepalensis) growing on the hillsides. Captain Young established this former British retreat in 1827.

The protagonist in Gurcharan Das’s “A Fine Family” refers to going to the Mall “to eat the air”. The Mall as a focal point of social interaction is common to all the hill-stations developed by the British. Mussorie’s Mall Road, situated 6950 feet above sea level, starts from the Library Point, past the Gurudwara Sahib Trust and Lakshmi Narain temple, down cobbled streets past porticoed shops to Kulri and the Landour Clock Tower at the other end of the bazaar. You can take a mule or a rickshaw until the old train station or wade through mule droppings on foot to the other end of the bazaar. Rudyard Kipling, Nobel prize winner, has portrayed ‘the Great Ramp of Mussoorie’ in his book “Kim”.

Mussorie in the 40s was quite the playground for the Talukdars of Awadh and other Indian Princes. Shimla being out of bounds for them, the funseekers sought out this lovely ridge town known for its active social whirl. No one was allowed on the Mall without a tie. A Regimental band played from the bandstand regaling the strollers savouring their favourite tipple. There were two popular hotels, the Savoy and Hackmans. Sukhbir Grewal told me about Hackmans having a Froth Drinkers Club. The gentlemen gathered to drink beer, at 11 each day and blow the froth. The one who blew it furthest, was declared the champion for the day and got a free beer. Hackmans has gone to seed and the Savoy, the hauntingly beautiful Heritage Hotel is barely surviving, brooding mistily, in the shade of the oldest and tallest Deodhars in all of Mussoorie.

But if heritage is what you want then, its all there at the Savoy. As you drive up, stables line the drive. The courtyard is surrounded by large urns and a filigreed boundary wall. At the reception desk, photographs of Nandu Johar, the Savoy’s owner, and his father with Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, The King of Nepal, Ethiopian Emperor Haille Selassie, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama occupy pride of place. Inside the hotel there are several wings furnished with Edwardian antiques, billiards tables, panelled walls, stuffed game trophies, carved balustrades and fine wooden floors. The ballroom is an architectural marvel. A large hall, with a balcony running right around it, it is hung with taper lit chandeliers. In 1907, the tapers were replaced with electricity. The Savoy orchestra played every night and the ballroom was full of waltzing couples.

Each bedroom has its own bathtub and dressing room. Lowell Thomas who visited Mussoorie in 1926 writes about the Savoy separation-bell. This was rung before dawn, “….so that the pious may say their prayers and the impious get back to their own beds”.

The Savoy Writers’ Bar was witness to a writers workshop in 2001, where they compiled a festchrift for Ruskin Bond, Mussoorie’s adopted son. He lives just beyond Landour, in his “room on the roof”, “Ivy Cottage”. He can be spotted at book stores signing autographs for visitors. The Writers Bar is dedicated to the authors who have an association with the Savoy. Rudyard Kipling (Kim), Phillip Mason, Commissioner of Garhwal who wrote under the pseudonym Woodruff, Lowell Thomas (India:Land of the Black Pagoda),John Lang (Botany bay) and John Masters (Bhawani Junction), Charles Allen (“Plain Tales from the Raj), Pearl S Buck (Good Earth) and Peter Hopkirk (In search of Kim) have all visited this watering hole. Ruskin Bond is a regular visitor and you can join him for a drink with Nandu Jauhar at the Writers Bar just after 6 PM.

The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Administration is located at Mussoorie in the old Charleville Hotel. It was formerly advertised as “the only hotel that was patronised by Her Majesty the Queen Mary” who visited Mussorie in 1906 when she was the Princess of Wales.

Mussoorie today is truly a mini-India. There is Kashmiri, Rajasthani, Saharanpuri and Benarasi handicrafts, Tibetans and the locals with their mobile woollen rehri markets. There’s also a large Punjabi trading population. Most like Sardar Harbhajan Singh of Nirankari Cottage Industries, emigrated from Pakistan after partition. His shop has over 600 Ganesha statues under one roof. Further down the road in Landour Bazaar, his brother stocks porcelain antiques and a collection of water colours exquisite in detail.

I experience a sense of déjà vu as we walk down the steep, winding, cobbled roads, of Landour past the porticoed shops with their lacey iron grills, wooden beams and sloping roofs. The tall lamp-posts cast shadows and there is a chill in the air. If I shut out the smells I could be in the United Kingdom.

If antiques are your destination head for Irfan Ahmed’s Ancient Palace at London house or Irshad Ahmed and Son’s shop in Hill Queen Centre, Kulri or Sabri’s at 11 Landour Cantt. Furniture, paintings, crockery, books, chandeliers and lamps, the list of memorabillia they stock is endless.

There’s food of every sort as well. Punjabi, Udipi, Tibetan momos or fast food, there’s a restaurant at every 10 yards to cater to appetites sharpened by the exertion and salubrious weather. We met Anil Kapur, a St Stephens alumnus, who runs the newly renovated Mussoorie Tavern and Brentwoods Sanctuary on Kempty road. His young son has just returned with a degree in hotel management and is responsible for the spanking new kitchen. The food is sumptuous and the chairs moved over after 10 to make place for the wooden dancing floor. The Manager, Mr Ashok Mahendroo, plays on the guitar and sings holding you in thrall to the tunes of a time gone by. “Once upon a time there was a tavern,……. where we used to raise a glass or two……. .”.

The cottages and buildings beautiful in their Elizabethan architecture are patchworked with new materials without respect for the antiquity or the heritage of the original construction. Only some like the State Bank of India , housed in what was earlier The Imperial Bank are carefully restored and maintained. Jim Corbett’s father was married in St Pauls Church, Landour, and served as Postmaster in Mussoorie. The stained glass windows of St Pauls backlit with Mussoorie’s setting sun are one of my lasting memories of Landour. That, and Conkers on the Chestnut trees and roasted chestnuts being sold by pavement hawkers. The magic of Mussoorie endures.