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Vashi2Panvel.Com: Navi Mumbai: October 7: The Church of St John-in-the-Wilderness in the hill station of Nainital, lives up to its moniker. It is still a wilderness, but one that comes from neglect and disuse. Services have ceased. When you open the doors, vagrant rays of light show up hundreds of resident bats. The gorgeous stained glass windows with depictions of Mary Magdalene, Saint John and Christ bearing the cross, lie broken by visitors dying for a peek into the closed portals. But the church is at peace. A peace so tangible that it at once becomes a steadying influence that soothes and heals.

Does it come from knowing that for a century and more the Church has stood steadfast in its piety as human affairs play themselves out, only to be forgotten as the Church bears the cross of yet another death, another birth? One does not know. But it could bind you, if as a couple, you are lovers of history to a people who have since left this land and gone home to Britain.

In post-colonial India, when Independence Day is just another holiday, why is it that we still feel a kinship with the relics of the Raj? We seek them out with as much dedication as a prize pig hunting out truffles. And much like the pig we get lucky. I discovered Mary Jane Corbett’s grave in Nainital. Overgrown with small purple wildflowers and lichen, it lies untended and unloved. Yet when she died in 1924, her only son Jim Corbett (the hunter turned conservationist) held a service that was the largest in Nainital for well over a decade. It gave me a quiet thrill to read the inscription “… from her loving son Jim” in that glorious copperplate, now only to be found on old gravestones. I know I felt sad for a man I never knew.

It is also a lingering sadness for an era, which was so heavy with romance. For me old cemeteries aren’t an ugly dump of stones and bones with the souls of the dead weighed down by bulky gravestones. Against the backdrop of the snow-clad Nanda Devi, they are as beautiful as a lullaby.
As much as the Raj brought with it the hateful Salt Tax, grinding penury, man-made famines and the disfigurement of colonial rule, it also gave us a system of governance, a code of law, institutes of learning, the railways, tea and patriotism. And the legacy of hill stations.

To escape the brutish heat of the plains, the British trekked to the foothills of the Himalayas and there, ‘discovered’ places where the weather cooled the perspiring brow and the apples were just as peachy as home. Weeping willows were planted around the Naini lake in Naintal to make it look more English. In nearby Ranikhet, they built cottages with trellised roofs and grew wood roses that curled around the wicket gates that opened to the cobbled stone pathways. The roses still bloom and the chimneys still smoke. And they reinforce our image of British countryside: woods, rabbits scampering in the green grass, hot scones fresh from the oven and a village with a belfry. This is the Enid Blyton - Beatrix Potter territory, we’ve all dashed around in as children. I loved picking wild strawberries in Mukteshwar, not for the delight of popping them into my mouth (they were nasty and sour), but because the Famous Five did so.

All across the country’s northern belt are places that live in a time warp. For me they are as exotic as the Kumbh Mela is to foreigners. In Darjeeling, you can still sip a cup of delicately flavoured tea that rings your wafer thin bone china cup with a golden rim to the accompaniment of tiny cucumber sandwiches brought by a white-gloved ‘byarah’. The 110–year-old steam engine still makes the circuitous route round Batasia Loop in Darjeeling.

Aah! Yet I’ve always wondered if the Raj could ever get nauseating? I found out in Munnar. The High Range Club in Munnar, doesn’t allow women into the men-only bar, a tradition since its inception in the late 19th century. The club secretary is still white. Locals are treated with a thinly veiled disdain and are not allowed membership. In the La Martiniere school in Lucknow, school boys still pay homage to students who lost their lives in the First War of Independence in 1857. The boys defended the British Residency against the ‘mutineers’.
Nostalgia, yes. Sniveling, no.

The Kumaonis knew where to draw the line. In 1857, the chief need of British families holed up in Nainital was beer. There were many friendly Indians who gave refuge to families torn apart from the fury in the plains. Do we treat these Kumaonis as traitors? Look it at this way. In the 300 years of British rule, while the rest of the country changed from Hindustan to India, where every place with a suffix of `pur’ changed to a `pore’, the Kumaonis stuck to their semantics. I wonder how Kaladhungi, Naukuchiatal and Khurpatal felt on British tongues. Alien and daunting, I hope.


Survival Guide
All hill stations are overcrowded in summer as the number of visitors double. If possible, plan to beat the rush and avoid the peak season (mid April to mid July, mid September to the end of October and the Christmas week). Everything from accommodation to the price of restaurant menus is determined by the off-season, peak-season measure.

If travelling by road, it is important to note that the hill roads can be dangerous. Flat, straight stretches are extremely rare, roads are not lit and villagers frequently drive their animals along them or graze them by the road. Wherever possible, avoid night driving.

Must do/must see

Sample some nimbu mix. You wont get it anywhere in a hotel, but you would be really silly to come back without sampling it. The entire region grows a different kind of lime which grows almost to the size of a musambi and looks like one too – a brilliant yellowish orange. The pith is then taken out and a smattering of curd, a little, sugar, salt and some cut chillies add to it and mixed well. The taste is piquant, spicy and to die for. Ask at a small restaurant, to prepare some for you.

Buy candles at the mall in Nainital. There is so much variety and colour and shapes and sizes… They make great gifts.


Sadhana Datta