Strange Men Strange Places Read online

  A few days later the family, with other refugees, were making their way to Calcutta to stay with friends or relatives. It was a slow, tedious journey, with many interruptions, for the roads and railway lines had been badly damaged and passengers had often to be transported in trolleys. Grandfather was rather struck at the stoicism displayed by an assistant engineer. At one station a telegram was handed to the engineer informing him that his bungalow had been destroyed. "Beastly nuisance," he observed with an aggrieved air. "I've seen it cave in during a storm, but this is the first time it has played me such a trick on account of an earthquake."

  The family got to Calcutta to find the inhabitants of the capital in a panic; for they too had felt the quake and were expecting it to recur. The damage in Calcutta was slight compared to the devastation elsewhere, but nerves were on edge, and people slept in the open or in carriages. Cracks and fissures had appeared in a number of old buildings, and Grandfather was among the many who were worried at the proposal to fire a salute of sixty guns on Jubilee Day (the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria); they felt the gunfire would bring down a number of shaky buildings. Obviously Grandfather did not wish to be caught in his bath a second time. However, Queen Victoria was not to be deprived of her salute. The guns were duly fired, and Calcutta remained standing.

  KIPLING'S SIMLA

  VERY MARCH, when the rhododendrons stain the slopes crimson with their blooms, a sturdy litde steam engine goes huffing and puffing through the 103 tunnels between Kalka and Simla.

  This is probably the most picturesque and romantic way of approaching the hill station although the journey by road is much quicker. But quite recently I went to Simla by a little-used route, the road from Dehra Dun via Nahan and Solan, it takes one first through the sub-tropical Siwaliks, and then after Nahan into the foothills and some beautiful and extensive pine forests, before joining the main highway near Solan. By bus it is a tedious ten-hour journey, but by car it is a picturesque ride, and there is very little traffic to contend with. . . .

  But those train journeys stand out in the memory — the litde restaurant at Barog, just before the train reaches Dharampur, where the roads for Sanawar and Kasauli branch off; and the gorge at Tara Devi, opening out to give the weary traveller the splendid and uplifting panorama of the city of Simla straddling the side of the mountain.

  In Rudyard Kipling's time (that is, in the 1870s and 80s), travellers spent the night at Kalka and then covered the 60-odd hill miles by tonga, a rugged and exhausting journey. It was especially hard on invalids who had travelled long distances to recuperate in the cool clear air of the mountains.

  In his story "The Other Man" (Plain Tales From the Hills; 1890), Kipling describes the unhappy results of the tonga-ride on one such visitor:

  "Sitting on the back seat, very square and firm, with one hand on the awning stanchion and the wet pouring off his hat and moustache, was the Other Man — dead. The sixty-mile uphill jolt had been too much for his valve, I suppose. The tonga-driver said, 'This Sahib died two stages out of Solan. Therefore, I tied him with a rope, lest he should fall out by the way, and so we came to Simla. Will the Sahib give me bakshish? "It', pointing to the Other Man, 'should have given one rupee'."

  Today's visitor to Simla need have no qualms about the journey by road, which is swift and painless (provided you drive carefully), but the coolies at the Simla bus-stand will be found to be as adamant as Kipling's tonga-driver in claiming their bakshish.

  Simla is worth a visit at any time of the year, even during the monsoon. The monsoon season is one of the most beautiful times of the year in the Himalayas, with the mist trailing up the valleys, and the hill slopes, a lush green, thick with ferns and wild flowers. The call of the kastura, or whistling-thrush, can be heard in every glen, while the barbet cries insistently from the tree tops.

  Not far from Christ Church is the corner where a great fictional character, Lurgan Sahib, had his shop — Lurgan being the curio-dealer who took the young Kim in hand and trained him as a spy. He was based on a real-life character, who had his shop here. Kipling wrote Kim a few years after he had left India. His nostalgia for India, and in particular for the hills, come through in his description of Kim's arrival in Simla in the company of the Afghan horse-dealer, Mahbub Ali.

  'A fair land — a most beautiful land is this of Hind — and the land of the Five Rivers is fairer than all,' Kim half-chanted. 'Into it I will go again. . . . Once gone, who shall find me? Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of Simla? Allah! What a city!' "

  They lead their horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazaar — "the crowded rabbit-warren that climbs up from the valley to the Town Hall at an angle of forty-five!" And then together they set off "through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises of a city below the hillside and the breath of a cool wind in deodar-crowned Jakko, shouldering the stars."

  Shouldering the stars! That is how I always think of Simla — standing on the Ridge and looking up through the clear air into the vault of the heavens, where the stars seem so much nearer. . . . And they are reflected below, in the myriad lights of the shops and houses.

  For those who want a bit of history, Simla carne into being at the end of the Anglo-Gurkha War (1814-16), when most of the surrounding district — captured by the Gurkhas during their invasion — was restored to various States; but the land on which Simla stands was retained by the British — "for services rendered!" Lieutenant Rose built the first house, a thatched wooden cottage, in 1819. His successor, Lieutenant Kennedy, in 1822 built a permanent house, which survived until it was destroyed in a fire a couple of years ago. In 1827 Lord Amherst spent several months at Kennedy House and from then on Simla grew in favour with the British. Its early history can be read in more detail in Sir Edward Buck's Simla Past and Present, copies of which sometimes turn up in secondhand bookshops.

  From 1865 until the Second World War, Simla was the summer capital of the Government of India. Later it served as the capital of East Punjab pending the construction of Chandigarh, and today of course it is the capital of Himachal Pradesh.

  It is not, however, as a capital city that Simla attracts the visitor but as a place of lovely winding walks, magnificent views, and romantic links with the past. Compared with some of our hillsta-tions, it is well looked after; the streets are clean and uncluttered, the old Georgian-style buildings still stand. And the trees are more in evidence than at other hill resorts.

  Simla has a special place in my affections. It was there that I went to school, and it was there that my father and I spent our happiest times together.

  We stayed on Elysium Hill; took long walks to Kasumpti and around Jakko Hill; sipped milk-shakes at Davico's; saw plays at the Gaiety Theatre (happily still in existence); fed the monkeys at the temple on Jakko; picnicked in Chota Simla. All this during the short summer break when my father (on leave from the Air Force) came up to see me. He told me stories of phantom-rickshaws and enchanted forests and planted in me the seeds of my writing career. I was only ten when he died. But he had already passed on to me his love for the hills. And even after I had finished school and grown to manhood, I was to return to the hills again and again — to Simla and Mussoorie, Himachal and Garhwal — because once the mountains are in your blood, there is no escape.

  Simla beckons. I must return. And, like Kim, I will take the last bend near Summer Hill and look up and exclaim: "Ah! What a city!"

  "Romance brought up the nine-fifteen," wrote Kipling and there is still romance to be found on trains and at lonely stations. Small wayside stations have always fascinated me. Manned sometimes by just one or two men, and often situated in the middle of a damp sub-tropical forest, or clinging to the mountainside on the way to Simla or Darjeeling these little stations are, for me, outposts of romance, lonely symbols of the spirit that led a certain kind of pioneer to lay tracks into the remote corners of the earth.

  Recently I was at such a wayside stop, on a line that went through the Terai forests near the foothills
of the Himalayas. At about ten at night, the khilasi, or station watchman, lit his kerosene lamp and started walking up the track into the jungle. He was a Gujar, and his true vocation was the keeping of buffaloes, but the breaking up of his tribe had led him into this strange new occupation.

  "Where are you going?" I asked.

  "To see if the tunnel is clear," he said. "The Mail train comes in twenty minutes."

  So I went with him, a furlong or two along the tracks, through a deep cutting which led to the tunnel. Every night, the khilasi walked through the dark tunnel, and then stood outside to wave his lamp to the oncoming train as a signal that the track was clear. If the engine driver did not see the lamp, he stopped the train. It always slowed down near the cutting.

  Having inspected the tunnel, we stood outside, waiting for the train. It seemed a long time coming. There was no moon, and the dense forest seemed to be trying to crowd us into the narrow cutting. The sounds of the forest came to us on the night wind — the belling of a sambhar, the cry of a fox, told us that perhaps a tiger or a leopard was on the prowl. There were strange nocturnal bird and insect sounds; and then silence.

  The khilasi stood outside the tunnel, trimming his lamp, listening to the faint sounds of the jungle — sounds which only he, a Gujar who had grown up on the fringe of the forest, could identify and understand. Something made him stand very still for a few moments, peering into the darkness, and I could sense that everything was not as if. should be.

  "There is something in the tunnel," he said.

  I could hear nothing at first; but then there came a regular sawing sound, just like the sound of someone sawing through the branch of a tree.

  "Baghera!" whispered the khilasi. He had said enough to enable me to recognise the sound — that of a leopard trying to find its mate.

  I thought how fortunate we were that it had not been there when we walked through the tunnel. A leopard is unpredictable. But so is a khilasi.

  "The train will be coming soon," he whispered urgently. "We must drive the animal out of the tunnel, or it will be killed."

  He must have sensed my astonishment, because he said, "Do not worry, Sahib. I know this leopard well. We have seen each other many times. He has a weakness for stray dogs and goats, but he will not harm us."

  He gave me his small hand-axe to hold, and, raising his lamp high, started walking into the tunnel, shouting at the top of his voice to try and scare away the animal. I followed close behind him.

  We had gone about twenty yards into the tunnel when the light from the khilasi's lamp fell on the leopard, who was crouching between the tracks, only about fifteen feet from us.

  He was not a big leopard, but he was lithe and sinewy. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he went down on his belly, tail twitching, and I felt sure he was going to spring.

  The khilasi and I both shouted together. Our voices rang and echoed through the tunnel. And the frightened leopard, uncertain of how many human beings were in there with him, turned swiftly and disappeared into the darkness.

  As we returned to the tunnel entrance, the rails began to hum and we knew the train was coming.

  I put my hand to one of the rails and felt its tremor. And then the engine came round the bend, hissing at us, scattering sparks into the darkness, defying the jungle as it roared through the steep sides of the cutting. It charged straight at the tunnel, and into it, thundering past us like some beautiful dragon from my childhood dreams. And when it had gone the silence returned, and the forest breathed again. Only the rails still trembled with the passing of the train.

  As they tremble now to the passing of my own train, rushing through the night with its complement of precious humans, while somewhere at a lonely cutting in the foothills, a small thin man, who must always remain a firefly to these travelling thousands, lights up the darkness for steam engines and panthers.

  And yet, for the khilasi himself, the incident I have recalled was not an adventure; it was a duty, a job of work, an everyday

  incident.

  For me, all are significant: the lighted compartment, with its farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, clerks and occasional pick-pockets; and the lonely wayside stop, with its uncorrupted lamplighter

  Romance still rides the nine-fifteen.

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