A Town Called Dehra Read online

But Ranis, like washerwomen, are mortal; and when a long-standing and neglected disease at last took its toll, robbing her at once of all her beauty, she no longer struggled against it, but allowed it to poison and consume her once magnificent body. It would be wrong to say that Hassan was heart-broken when she died. He was not a deeply emotional or sensitive person. Though he could attract the sympathy of others, he had difficulty in producing any of his own. His was a kindly but not compassionate nature.

  He had served the Rani well, and what he was most aware of now was that he was without a job and without any money. The Raja had his own personal amusements and did not want a wrestler who was beginning to sag a little about the waist.

  Times had changed. Hassan’s father was dead, and there was no longer a living to be had from making kites; so Hassan returned to doing what he had always done: wrestling. But there was no money to be made at the akhara. It was only in the professional arena that a decent living could be made. And so, when a travelling circus of professionals—a Negro, a Russian, a Cockney-Chinese and a giant Sikh—came to town and offered a hundred rupees and a contract to the challenger who could stay five minutes in the ring with any one of them, Hassan took up the challenge.

  He was pitted against the Russian, a bear of a man, who wore a black mask across his eyes; and in two minutes Hassan’s Dehra supporters saw their hero slung about the ring, kicked in the head and groin, and finally flung unceremoniously through the ropes.

  After this humiliation, Hassan did not venture into competitive bouts again. I saw him sometimes at the akhara, where he made a few rupees giving lessons to children. He had a paunch, and folds were beginning to accumulate beneath his chin. I was no longer a small boy, but he always had a smile and a hearty back-slap reserved for me.

  I remember seeing him a few days before I went abroad. He was moving heavily about the akhara; he had lost the lightning swiftness that had once made him invincible. Yes, I told myself.

  The garlands wither on your brow;

  Then boast no more your mighty deeds . . .

  That had been over three years ago. And for Hassan to have been reduced to begging was indeed a sad reflection of both the passing of time and the changing times. Fifty years ago a popular local wrestler would never have been allowed to fall into a state of poverty and neglect. He would have been fed by his old friends and stories would have been told of his legendary prowess. He would not have been forgotten. But those were more leisurely times, when the individual had his place in society, when a man was praised for his past achievement and his failures were tolerated and forgiven. But life had since become fast and cruel and unreflective, and people were too busy counting their gains to bother about the idols of their youth.

  It was a few days after my last encounter with Hassan that I found a small crowd gathered at the side of the road, not far from the clock tower. They were staring impassively at something in the drain, at the same time keeping a discreet distance. Joining the group, I saw that the object of their disinterested curiosity was a corpse, its head hidden under a culvert, legs protruding into the open drain. It looked as though the man had crawled into the drain to die, and had done so with his head in the culvert so the world would not witness his last unavailing struggle.

  When the municipal workers came in their van, and lifted the body out of the gutter, a cloud of flies and bluebottles rose from the corpse with an angry buzz of protest. The face was muddy, but I recognized the beggar who was Hassan.

  In a way, it was a consolation to know that he had been forgotten, that no one present could recognize the remains of the man who had once looked like a young god. I did not come forward to identify the body. Perhaps I saved Hassan from one final humiliation.

  Looking for the Dehra I Knew

  Landour Days:

  Notes from My Journal

  Spent a week in Dehra, at the old White House Hotel. Dehra is a bit seedy now, but familiar corners bring back memories of childhood and boyhood days. Dear old Dehra: I may stop loving you, but I won’t stop loving the loved you.

  SUSWA RIVER

  When I look down from the heights of Landour to the broad valley of the Doon far below, I can see the little Suswa river, silver in the setting sun, meandering through the fields and forests on its way to its confluence with the mighty Ganga.

  The Suswa is a river I knew well as a boy, but it has been many years since I swam in its quiet pools or slept in the shade of the tall spreading trees growing on its banks. Now I see it from my window, far away, dreamlike, and I keep promising myself that I will visit it again, to touch its waters, cool and clear, and feel its rounded pebbles beneath my feet.

  It’s a little river, flowing down from the ancient Siwaliks (which are older than the Himalayas, according to some geologists), running the length of the valley until, with its sister river the Song, it slips into the Ganga just above the holy city of Haridwar. I could wade across it (except during the monsoons, when it was in spate) and the water seldom rose above the waist except in sheltered pools, where it was chin-deep and where I swam gently through shoals of small fish.

  There is a little-known legend about the Suswa and its origins, which I have always treasured. It tells us that the Hindu sage, Kasyapa, once gave a great feast to which all the gods were invited. Now Indra, the god of rain, while on his way to the entertainment, happened to meet 60,000 balkhils (pygmies) of the Brahmin caste, who were trying in vain to cross a cow’s footprint filled with water, to them a vast lake.

  The god could not restrain his laughter and scoffed at them. The indignant priests, determined to have their revenge, at once set to work creating a second Indra, who should supplant the reigning god. This could only be done by means of penance and mortification, in which they persevered, until the sweat flowing from their tiny bodies made the river known as the ‘Suswa’, or ‘flowing waters’.

  Indra, alarmed at the effect of these religious exercises, sought the intercession of Brahma, the Creator, through whose good offices he was able to keep his position as the rain god.

  I saw no pygmies or fairies near the Suswa, but once, lying full length on its grassy verge, I looked up to see, on the opposite bank, a magnificent tiger drinking at the water’s edge. It was only some sixty feet away, and I lay very still and watched it until it too raised its head, sniffed the wind (which fortunately blew towards me) and then walked regally downstream and out of sight.

  I do not remember feeling afraid. As children we do not have a fear of wild animals unless it is inculcated in us. And animals are quick to sense fear in a human. But I am unable to test my reactions as an adult for, alas, there are no longer any tigers in the forests near the Suswa.

  Still, I must go down to that river again, to its gently flowing waters but only after the monsoons, when Indra the rain god has reasserted himself.

  In Search of a

  Winter Garden

  If someone were to ask me to choose between writing an essay on the Taj Mahal or on the last rose of summer, I’d take the rose—even if it was down to its last petal. Beautiful, cold, white marble leaves me—well, just a little cold.

  Roses are warm and fragrant, and almost every flower I know, wild or cultivated, has its own unique quality, whether it be subtle fragrance or arresting colour or loveliness of design. Unfortunately, winter has come to the Himalayas, and the hillsides are now brown and dry, the only colour being that of the red sorrel growing from the limestone rocks. Even my small garden looks rather forlorn, with the year’s last dark-eyed nasturtium looking every bit like the Lone Ranger surveying the surrounding wilderness from his saddle. The marigolds have dried in the sun, and tomorrow I will gather the seed. The beanstalk that grew rampant during the monsoon is now down to a few yellow leaves and empty bean pods.

  ‘This won’t do,’ I told myself the other day. ‘I must have flowers!’

  Prem, who had been down to the valley town of Dehra the previous week, had made me even more restless, because he had
spoken of masses of sweet peas in full bloom in the garden of one of the town’s public schools. Down in the plains, winter is the best time for gardens, and I remembered my grandmother’s house in Dehra, with its long rows of hollyhocks, neatly staked sweet peas, and beds ablaze with red salvia and antirrhinum. Neither Grandmother nor the house are there anymore, but surely there are other beautiful gardens, I mused, and maybe I could visit the school where Prem had seen the sweet peas. It was a long time since I had enjoyed their delicate fragrance.

  So I took the bus down the hill, and throughout the two-hour journey I dozed and dreamt of gardens—cottage gardens in the English countryside, tropical gardens in Florida, Mughal gardens in Kashmir, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!—What had they really been like, I wondered.

  And then we were in Dehra, and I got down from the bus and walked down the dusty, busy road to the school Prem had told me about.

  It was encircled by a high wall, and, tiptoeing, I could see playing fields and extensive school buildings and, in the far distance, a dollop of colour that may have been a garden. Prem’s eyesight was obviously better than mine!

  I made my way to a wrought-iron gate that would have done justice to a medieval fortress, and found it chained and locked. On the other side stood a tough-looking guard, with a rifle.

  ‘May I enter?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Today is holiday. No school today.’

  ‘I don’t want to attend classes. I want to see sweet peas.’

  ‘Kitchen is on the other side of the ground.’

  ‘Not green peas. Sweet peas. I’m looking for the garden.’

  ‘I am guard here.’

  ‘Garden.’

  ‘No garden, only guard.’

  I tried telling him that I was an old boy of the school and that I was visiting the town after a long interval. This was true up to a point, because I had once been admitted to this very school, and after one day’s attendance had insisted on going back to my old school. The guard was unimpressed. And perhaps it was poetic justice that the gates were barred to me now.

  Disconsolate, I strolled down the main road, past a garage, a cinema, and a row of eating houses and teashops. Behind the shops there seemed to be a park of sorts, but you couldn’t see much of it from the road because of the buildings, the press of people, and the passing trucks and buses. But I found the entrance, unbarred this time, and struggled through patches of overgrown shrubbery until, like Alice after finding the golden key to the little door in the wall, I looked upon a lovely little garden.

  There were no sweet peas, and the small fountain was dry. But around it, filling a large circular bed, were masses of bright yellow California poppies.

  They stood out like sunshine after rain, and my heart leapt as Wordsworth’s must have, when he saw his daffodils. I found myself oblivious to the sounds of the bazaar and the road, just as the people outside seemed oblivious to this little garden. It was as though it had been waiting here all this time, waiting for me to come by and discover it.

  I am fortunate. Something like this is always happening to me. As Grandmother often said, ‘When one door closes, another door opens.’ And while one gate had been closed upon the sweet peas, another had opened on California poppies.

  Lily of the Valley

  While on the subject of older women who charmed or fascinated me, I cannot forget Lillian, or Lily as we called her, who was some twelve years my senior. Her mother was a friend of my grandmother’s, and Lily had grown up in Dehradun. She was a pretty, fun-loving girl who, at the age of eighteen, accepted a proposal of marriage from a British soldier who was stationed in Dehra during World War II. I was invited to be a page-boy at the wedding, my reward being a large slice of wedding-cake and my duty to fling endless supplies of confetti on the wedding guests— something I did with great gusto, being only six at the time.

  She was given a wonderful wedding cake, tier upon tier of icing, spangled with all sorts of colourful sugary appendages, and within the edifice an assortment of raisins and dried fruits embedded in a scrumptious base. I can still wax poetic about such creations!

  As a page-boy I was given an extra large helping, and as a result I was as enthusiastic as anyone in giving Lily and her pink-cheeked soldier boy an enthusiastic send-off.

  I am writing about Lily not because I had a crush on her, but because I was to encounter her at various periods of her life and mine, and on each occasion she was married to a different person. In the course of a turbulent life Lily went through five husbands. I admired her for the resilience, tenacity, and optimism—for she went through life in the hope that she would one day find the perfect man, partner and lover and everything else, and of course there is no such thing, man being a very imperfect creation.

  Eleven years after attending Lily’s marriage in Dehra, I was in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, where I met her again. The soldier boy had vanished, leaving her with a small son. She was now married to a green-grocer, who had given her two strapping daughters. Unfortunately the green-grocer could not live up to Lily’s high standards of husbandry, and soon began hitting the bottle. If he was too inebriated she would lock him out of the house. On one occasion he climbed up a drain pipe to attempt an entry through a second-floor window. She pushed him out, and he landed in some hydrangea bushes and had to be hospitalized. I did not see much of her during this period, but got all the inside information from her aunt, who was fond of me and often had me over for meals.

  After my return to India, I heard (from the same aunt) that Lily had divorced the green-grocer and left the children with the aunt. She had then proceeded to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where she had married a wealthy white farmer who had two grown sons from his marriage, the first wife having succumbed to yellow fever. Lily remained in Rhodesia for three or four years, surviving all forms of fever, but finally grew bored with the lonely farm life, and left the land and her husband in order to return to India for a short spell.

  This was when I met her again, shortly after her fourth marriage to a former big-game hunter who had now, in his early sixties, taken up fishing. Lily could not get excited about fishing, but while dear Frank was away on his fishing trips she entertained quite lavishly at the old family home, and as an old family friend I was invited to these junkets. Lily would occasionally drop in at my place for a gin and tonic and to talk about old times in Dehra. We joined a few picnic parties—those were the days when picnics were still in vogue—and had some great times, for she was a fun-loving person who seemed to have fallen into the bad habit of marrying individuals whose temperaments were totally opposed to hers.

  Finally, tiring of the quiet hill station life, she told Frank he could spend the rest of his life fishing and took off for America, where she worked as a private nurse, married one of her patients, a wealthy man who lived in a large estate in New Orleans who was swept away in his wheel-chair when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. Hurricane Lily inherited his fortune.

  This brief sketch does not do justice to Lily. She deserves an epic novel to herself. And it would have to include her family history, which is equally fascinating. Her grandfather, a British civil servant stationed in old Madras, with a wife and children in England, fell in love with a fourteen-year old Muslim girl and insisted on marrying her. As a result, he had to give up his job and leave Madras. The couple settled in Dehradun, where they started a family of their own. They had two sons and two daughters, and each of the children was given a house in Dehra and Mussoorie, for their father had an independent income. I never saw him, because he died before I was born, but I saw his widow when she was an old woman in her late seventies—a tiny little lady with dark smouldering eyes, who must have cursed them to bewitch the Englishman who had thrown up career, family, and social standing in order to marry her.

  The Dilaram Bazaar

  Only yesterday I received a phone call from a Dehradun journalist, asking me if I knew who ‘Dilaram’ was, that is, the person from whom the bazaar got its name. I
had to admit that I had no idea; but it was Dilaram Bazaar when I was a boy, and it’s Dilaram Bazaar today, and I hope the authorities are not contemplating another name-change. As it is not an English name, they will probably leave it alone.

  The Dilaram Bazaar that I knew as a boy was just a small cluster of shops at the end of the Old Survey Road, where it joins the Rajpur Road. It has now been obscured by a massive shopping mall, but the name remains and some of the old shops and buildings survive just where the canal used to go underground. The entire Eastern canal has now been covered over; presumably it is still there, flowing underground; but it was a familiar landmark once, running the entire length of the Eastern Canal Road. There was a shady spot, just where it emerged at the commencement of the Old Survey Road, and here there were clusters of maidenhair fern growing from its banks. I would sometimes collect the ferns and take them home, but they wouldn’t grow anywhere else. One of my aunts fell into the canal while trying to gather ferns. The current was quite strong and she was swept downstream for quite a distance before the dhobis rescued her. Another person who fell into the canal was the writer Nergis Dalal, who was trying to save her small dog from drowning. That was some thirty years ago. At the time of writing, Nergis is in her late eighties, but she hasn’t forgotten the experience. A very determined lady, she saved her dog!

  The Dilaram Bazaar was just a five-minute walk from Granny’s house, and a couple of minutes on my bicycle. It was known for its bakeries, mostly Muslim-owned, and I was only too happy to go down the road to order bread, biscuits and pastries for the home. I had even made friends with one of the boys at the bakery, giving him occasional English lessons in exchange for the extra patty or pastry. This resulted in the following poem which I wrote when I was older:

  My best friend