By Ganesh Saili
Last week, walking up the ramp of the Mall, the combined aroma of tandoori-chicken, burnt cordite, and smoking clutch-plates came together sending a rotten stink that assaulted the senses. Not exactly a great way to start one’s day.
Huffing and puffing up the ramp of the Mall, a visitor sidles up to me to ask if I live here.
‘Yes! I do!’ say I, much in the manner of a reluctant bridegroom.
‘Are there always so many tourists here?’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘It gets worse on weekends,’ I tell him in the hope he will move on. But he hangs around asking: ‘Know a place where I can start a Korean restaurant?’
Pic courtesy: Girish Sharma
Yes! Kimchi seems to be all we need. It’s the missing link in a place ready to burst at the seams.
‘Where can I escape to?’ I wonder grumpily in this sea of invaders.
‘It’s like Delhi’s Chawri Bazaar!’ exclaims Ankita Misra after her son, returning to school last month, took five hours to traverse a stretch that should have been covered at most in an hour.
In Library last year, a stretch of road caved in under a truck that flipped over killing the driver. A hue and cry ensued. Though a year later, nothing has been done.
‘Are they waiting for the town drunk to fall?’ asks Beeru Kaintura, a restaurateur.
Then there is the road that connects Happy Valley with the Waverley Convent – called the Harnam Singh Road.
Harnam Singh was a businessman who bred horses for his illustrious clientele like the Nawab of Rampur. He lived in great style; he had a monogrammed rickshaw that was pulled by liveried rickshaw-pullers. He had considerable clout that saw him nominated to the Mussoorie Municipal Board. Sucking up to him, some of our City Fathers decided to rename a road in his honour while he was still around.
Pic courtesy: Tulika Sungh Roy
Tasked with the job, the contractor passed the tracing paper with the name, and gave it to his mason. The fellow had to simply cut the cement plaster. It was a simple job that, predictably, they got backwards and ended up with a mirror image.
Sardar Harnam Singh was not amused.
‘Idiots!’ screamed the old man. ‘Duffers can’t get anything right?’
Next time they got it so right that the name has stuck to this day. Three attempts have been made to rename it after the Sahitya Academy Award winning author Rahul Sankritayan – who lived here once upon a time. Unsuccessful – the old name persists.
Today, we are surrounded by a fiddle of contractors who are reputed to be able to build a hotel overnight. The rooms are so tiny, you have to boil one egg at a time; or the walls so thin that you can hear people changing their minds. Given the absence of governance, we have hotels without declared tariffs; taxis without meters and menus without prices.
Our neglected Roadside Act is followed only in violation and our narrow lanes get narrower to end up being boxed in by rows of rickety structures. Has old age so afflicted the Mussoorie Dehra Development Authority that they cannot keep up with all the illegal constructions that are springing up everywhere? When the next earthquake strikes (we’re in Seismic Zone 5, after all) the loudest cries for relief will come from those whose homes, houses or hotels have been built without any permission.
And why am I so hot under the collar? I live here – this is my home. As I thread my way between parked cars, I find that no matter which way I turn, there is no dearth of suggestions:
‘Ganesh! Go to the National Green Tribunal!’
‘File a Public Interest Litigation!’
‘Ban private vehicles and use shuttles!’
‘A ropeway will sort this out!’
Instead, I turn to my friend of old, the wise Sudhakar Misra, who, now in retirement, lives in Dehradun. He has always had a solution whenever I have hit a wall. Though this time he too is foxed, and says: ‘What can you do when the fence eats up the field?’
I guess a cranky old parrot can only sing a sad song.
(Ganesh Saili born and home-grown in the hills belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition world-wide.)
