S.Kalidas' Archive

Naldehra Nostalgia: A Tale of Two Cities

By S. Kalidas

Places and people mix in mysterious ways. Sometimes they combine to make history. At others, their encounter serves to subvert it. As Pakistani and Indian teams, their families and friends gathered at the greens of the Naldehra Golf Course near Shimla in Himachal Pradesh last month, excitement and bonhomie were tinged with just the right measure of nostalgia and remorse. Here we were, like two sets of errant children of the British Raj, encountering our past at Shimla, the erstwhile Summer Capital of the undivided Empire. Heightening the emotional pitch was the fact that the Pakistani team was from Lahore, a city known to be the cultural capital of north India till the partition. It was for so many of us, re-living the memories of our parents and grandparents half a century after independence.

We were staying at the Chalets Naldehra, some 300 metres from the golf course and 21 Kilometres from Shimla city. Before the bonfire and cocktails the first evening, formal speeches were made. Lt Gen Muhammad Tariq, President of the Pakistan Golf Federation, raised a toast to the peace process and people‑to‑people contact saying: “We have the same history, heritage, culture and languages although we may live in two different countries today. Every step taken by you in this path of friendship shall be reciprocated more than equally by us.” Someone recalled that exactly on this date (July 3) Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto met a few miles down the road at the Wild Flower Hall to sign the Shimla Accord in 1972. “But unlike 1971 when I was swinging a gun, this time round the irons we are holding are golf clubs,” smiled Tariq. The golf tournament is the idea of KC Anand, a Shimla businessman who migrated here from Lahore: “Like me there are several people who settled in Shimla after migrating from Lahore. And there are many in Lahore today whose families had lived in Shimla before partition. So I thought it would be nice to arrange a golf tournament here and later a return match in Lahore so that we may meet as friends and also get to see our mutual homelands again.”

Shimla and Lahore. One was a centre of imperial power. The other­‑- immortalised by the legends of Anarkali^* and Ranjit Singh^*— a crucible of education, arts and culture. Half of Lahore today is mujahir (as migrants from India are called in Pakistan). Half of Shimla now comprises Punjabi refugees (as migrants from Western Punjab were called in India). When the two meet in the hindsight of history, the wisdom of civilisation tends to nullify —at least in the verdant landscape of mutual imaginations— the mad fury of fanatical politics. Almost each one of us had our own tale of the two cities; quite distant from the real world that had changed so radically.

^{*Anarkali was a legendary16th century courtesan who was a lover of Prince Salim (later Emperor Jegangir) who was put to death by Akbar the Great (1542 –1605).}

^{*The Sikh Warrior King Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) made a Sikh empire comprising Punjab, Kashnir and Afghanistan with Lahore as his Capital.}

As the music group engaged for the party belted out old favourites from another era —Summer Wine, Jamaica Farewell— and wine made the full moon mellow, I met Sadia and Mehmud, a young golfer couple from Pakistan. She is a charming radiologist and he runs his own business in plastics. Sadia’s family, like mine, used to spend six months each year in Shimla. Now, the Ancient Mariner^* in me prompts me to share my own tale of Lahore and Shimla with them. As it is a poignant one, perhaps it will bear repetition here too.

^{*The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98}

Rao Sahib Jagadisa Iyer, my grandfather, came to Shimla as a civil servant from Madras in the first decade of the 20th century. My father, his eighth child, was born here in 1928. Just before World War II, my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Parvati (Papu to family) joined the family.  A young widow, aunt Papu, had just returned from England after finishing her Masters in Education from Leeds. She soon found a job at Lady Maclaren’s College in Lahore and was dispatched there with my father’s elder sister for company. Among her many students in Lahore was Kamini Kaushal the film actress and a certain Miss Zohra. The latter became a close friend and aunt Papu came to depend on her for practically everything.

When the pre-partition Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Lahore, Zohra looked after aunt Papu. After partition was announced, the day aunt Papu went to retrieve her jewellery from her locker, the bank manager was murdered in front of her eyes. She left her locker keys with Zohra and somehow managed to reach my grandmother’s home at Shimla. A few months later, she was transferred to a college in Amritsar where she stayed at the women’s hostel. One night, some months after Partition, she was woken up by the night watchman and informed that there was a man at the gate to see her. She went out fearfully, for the times were such, wondering who it could be. Imagine her surprise when she saw faithful Zohra’s brother standing there with a casket under his shawl. The young man had risked his life to cross the border at night with her jewels to return them to her!

Sadia and Mehmud are moved by my story. We drank a toast again at Naldehra to Zohra and her brother —whose name did not reach me down the generations even if his deed got enshrined in our family’s annals.

As a reserved, reasoning Tamil, aunt Papu always found the passionate Punjabis --both Hindu and Muslim--a bit too robust and hyper. “They never look before they leap,” she would say. Yet, she must have loved them for she never returned to Madras since her return from England in 1939. After Partition she lived in Shimla as Principal of the Women's Training College. Even after retirement she continued to stay alone in Shimla till her eventual death aged 92. All those years she continued to miss Lahore and lament the fall of the British Empire.

The next day, while the men went off to play golf and the ladies to stroll the Mall (the main promenade in Shimla, once restricted to Whites Only) in Shimla, I decided to do my native Himachali number with an Italian doctor/photographer friend. We drove down to visit an apple orchard that my father had owned in the valley of Kotkhai some two hours drive away.  While Shimla is so overrun by tourists, I have always wondered why Himachal does not diversify more into rural tourism or agro-tourism as the Europeans call it. By any standards, Himachal is a prosperous state. There is no dearth of electricity and the roads are extensive and well maintained.  Although even after more than a decade since it was started the 11-kilometre stretch of kuchcha road to Purag (our village) from Gumma on the Himachal Tibet highway is still unmetalled. But now there are three daily buses, full electrification and both landline and mobile phone connectivity. Besides, Himachali culture is rich, diverse and colourful. If only someone would help remodel some of the old palaces and farm houses in interior Himachal and turn them into comfortable guest houses there is a lot of scope for angling, river rafting, visiting rural fairs, ancient temples and monasteries… the list could be endless. Recently, Pragpur in Kangra has been developed as one such hub. Though in that case perhaps the initiative lay more with the dynamic owners of the Judge’s Court hotel, which is now a heritage resort.

The orchard that my father owned, neglected by its new owners, is in a dire state. But the rest of the village seems to be flourishing. From the road I spy an old comrade in arms nimbly negotiating the hillside. “Kerkha chaala Mangtu pandata, khar duporo pagada (Where are you heading in the mid-day sun, Mangtu Pandit, with your turban on your head)?” I call out, borrowing the line from a popular folk song of the Mahasu region. Mangtu, our old mali (gardener), is amazed by my unannounced appearance. He looks good after all these years and has built himself a comfortable home of bricks and cement. His old stone hut with sloping slate roof is taken over by a younger brother. His new sitting room has white plastic chairs and a television set inside a locked glass cabinet. “There is no cable here,” he tells me, “we have to make do with Doordarshan.” His third and newest wife offers us tea and Mangtu wants us to stay the night with them. But I have promises to keep…

I climb the steep hill to meet headmaster Ram Dayal, who knows all about orcharding and was a mentor to me. He too is now living in a new reinforced concrete house. “The old house is beyond repair,” he complained, referring to the magnificent three storey stone and wood house that his forefathers had built in the heart of the village. Unable to maintain or remodel it, he is just waiting for it to crumble and whither away. Though given the sheer solidity of the old structure and the high quality workmanship of its builders it will be a long time before it falls apart.

I ask him about the apple crop and he is pessimistic. “It has not rained in two months I fear the worst,” he bemoans pointing to the trees where the apple size is still the size of lemons. They need water to fatten with juice. While he organises tea and freshly picked pears for us, we walk up to the village temple. It used to be a beautifully carved old wooden edifice dedicated to Shiva and Nag devta. In its slate-lined courtyard every March the annual mela (fair) is held. It is still beautiful but cement and aluminium are fast replacing carved wood and stones in virtually all Himachali buildings. My Italian friend is aghast at the architectural vandalism. “Is this the price of progress?” I wonder.

If we were bemoaning the architectural vandalism in the countryside, the venue for the last banquet for the Pakistani and Indian teams at an upwardly mobile Shimla hotel that evening, was an eye opener. During the Raj and till well into my youth, there used to be a seasonal nullah (brook) called the Combermere waterfall on the Mall.  By its side used to be a tiny, quaint red and green post office called the Combermere Post Office. The two together made for a sight pretty as a picture-postcard. Today the Combermere Brook does not exist. Multi-storied concrete buildings have snaked up its course right from the lowest level of the Cart Road at the bottom of the Shimla hill. One is a hotel replete with private lifts, lounges and banquet hall--the venue of our Last Supper.

The view from the hotel's cantilevered veranda is impressive. Across the valley one can see all the levels of the main Shimla ridge with the lights of the Mall, the Middle Bazaar, Lower bazaar and Cart Road all tiered up one over the other. Also across the valley lies the British built Cecil Hotel from where M.S. Oberoi first started out as an hotelier in the 1930s. The Cecil too, is built over many tiers up the hillside. But the difference in scale, temperament and civic responsibility between the Cecil and the folly that passes for a hotel at Combermere is a yawning chasm of sensibilities. My reverie is broken by a melodious voice singing a sad old Hindi film song: “loot kar mera jahan, chhup gaye ho tum kahan (having destroyed my world, where have you disappeared).” It is Gazala, the wife of a Lahori Banker singing with tears in her eyes. There were lumps in many a throat. We are a sentimental sub-continent. And yes, each of us has his or her own tale of the two cities. Hopefully, from now on, we'll be listening to each other more often.