By Lt Gen AK Bhatt (Retd)
Retiring from the Indian Army after a satisfying and adventurous service of 39 plus 4 years, I had to decide where to settle down. Well, my only obvious choice was Mussoorie, my hometown, where my family has stayed for more than 75 years. Service in the Army blesses you with an abundance of well-wishers. They are your extended family and reliable friends, all of whom felt that this was not the best choice. The reasons given by those who dissuaded me and suggested other choices like Dehradun or some heartless towns like Delhi, etc., were the practical considerations, such as non-availability of medical facilities, the extreme cold and the location of my house in Mussoorie itself. The house is not on a road head but requires a small, steep mountain walk, which is unsuitable in old age. Whatever the strong logical arguments against settling down at Mussoorie, for me it has been my only known home, my roots, my heart, and the place that connects me to my parents, my childhood, and my family.
Apart from all these emotions, what swung my decision in favour of my little town was its famous writers. What better place to stay than one where you may chance upon one of the “wizards of words” daily while taking your stroll. Mussoorie, fortunately, is blessed to have a whole bunch of them. Amongst the many great writers of Mussoorie or those who have adopted this town as their home, there is no doubt that the most loved and popular would be and is Mr Ruskin Bond. In my reckoning, if there is any other writer who has mesmerised one and all by his wonderful writings, it is Bill Aitken.
As a senior schoolboy, I first read Bill Atkins’ early writings; he initially wrote columns in magazines and some newspapers. I remember an article on Shankaracharya, his travels, and his establishment of the Dharam Sthals at Badrinath and other places. What I remember about the writeup was Bill’s incisive deduction that the distance and travel could not have been done by one man but was the legacy carried out by a number of them.
Bill came to India in the sixties and settled in Mussoorie as the personal secretary and companion of the Maharani of Jind. My first formal meeting with Bill was in 1998 when my 10-year-old elder daughter and I had tea with him at Oakless. The meeting was possible thanks to my cousin and friend Neelamber Badoni, a mountain traveller and real lover of the hills. Lt General RK Jasbir Singh of the Jind family was one of the subjects of our many conversations thereafter. The General, a war hero, who had been the Commandant of NDA when I was a cadet, was admired by us equally.
Each book of Bill’s has been full of enchanting descriptions of his observations of nature and human beings in his adopted country. I owe a lot to him for knowing and loving the Himalayas, especially the Garhwal hills, a little more. Through his detailed and exotic descriptions, one could feel the beauty of the lovely Bugyals (high altitude meadows) and his heavenly trudges on the challenging treks he undertook. Amongst many books written by Bill, my favourite is the ‘Nanda Devi Affair’. This spiritual travelogue is full of descriptions of the beauty of Uttarakhand and his multiple efforts to climb to the base of this great mountain from various directions. His love for the mountains, combined with his spiritual connection to Nanda Devi, weaves an outstanding story to be read, savoured and felt. In his own words – neither a book about Himalayan climbing nor a treatise on hill theology but a diary of mountain relish. As rightly said, ‘For any mountain lover, this is a book whose excitement would only be second to actually standing within the Nanda Devi Sanctuary and personally experiencing what he writes about in this book’.
All his ten-plus books are great writings but two books, which are my favourites and need mention, are the “Seven Sacred Rivers” and “Travel by the lesser lines”. The first one takes you through a journey along these beautiful Rivers of India that are spread from North to South. In TS Eliot’s words, ‘I do not know much about gods but I think that the river / Is a strong brown god” does come out truly in Bill’s first travelogue. As he says, “In all my travels I let the rivers guide, for my interests were neither scientific nor consistent.” As said by one of the reviewers, “This relaxed humility, this desire to let his life flow and merge with India’s waters, makes the book an unusually sensitive travel journal.”
The second interesting book is about travels on the “Chhoti Line.” It describes Bill’s journey from one end of the country to the other on the metre gauge, ‘the lesser railways’ in India, which connects many unknown towns in the middle of nowhere. As rightly said, there is much in India that doesn’t work, but the Indian Railways are like the miracles that keep up the dwindling faith of the faithful.
When queried about his favourite book, he always maintained that “for a writer each book is a result of his love and labour, and like one’s children, all are equally loved”. Though I do remember that, in one of my meetings with him, he gifted me ‘Footloose in the Himalayas’. Being his first hardcover publication, it was, maybe, closer to his heart.
In my last meeting with him, Bill gifted me the Hindi translation of his book “Aitken ka Himalaya”. What a thoughtful initiative. My thanks to the publishers, as this book would reach out to a larger audience in India, especially to the people of the Hills, whom he loved.
One lesser-known fact about Bill is a small memorial he made near the old temple on the top of “Benong Hill”, ahead of Cloud’s End in Mussoorie. The small plaque there simply reads “to the brave women of the Hills’ – his salutations to the women of the hills, the real ‘devis’ of the mountains.
Bye, bye Bill, you have enriched the Himalayas with your excellent pen, full of keen observation, spirituality and love for adventure and, most importantly, for your forthrightness and frankness to speak the truth on behalf of all in Mussoorie who have loved this town and these Hills. Au Revoir to this great citizen, whom we will miss a lot. I still look forward to seeing your silhouette, Bill, on some rainy, misty day, happily walking on the Kipling Trail, striding from Barlowganj to Bala-Hissar. Walking not to the tunes of Auld Lang Syne but the latest Garhwali folk song.
