By Ganesh Saili
Barely had his ashes cooled when the partition was smashed in the house where William Mackay Aitken, fondly known as Bill Aitken or ‘Bill Sa’ab!’, had spent fifty-three years of his life. After all, property is so prized in the station nowadays that legal niceties are easily forgotten.
My youngest daughter, Tania, a media fiend, broke the sad news of his passing. My thoughts gravitated to the day when I first met him. We were gathered for a friend’s birthday, back when birthdays were no big deal. Just a few friends, gathered for a piece of cake, chips and chai.
‘Wouldn’t some music be nice?’ suggested Rajmata Prithvi Bir Kaur of Jind. Off went Bill up Palpitation Hill in Bala Hisar to Oakless Cottage to fetch his guitar.
He returned with his big black guitar case, set it down gingerly and one at a time, opened the clasps, as we looked on. Except for a few sheets of music, the box was empty.
Out of breath, he laughed, ‘I’m still achin’ all over!’ His laughter was infectious, and soon had us giggling too. Come to think of it – it’s the laughter that saw him through the years.
Last year a special lunch was laid out for Bill’s birthday on the 9th of April at St Bernard’s Cottage, near Waverley Convent, home to Rani Indu Bala and her sister Sachi of Jind. As always, the table creaked with food, topped off with finger-licking fig dessert.
In 1969, Bill had arrived at the gates of Oakless from Mirtola Ashram in Almora, where Ashishta, his Guru used to call him: ‘Our Master-baker!’
‘I looked after the bakery at the ashram!’ he said.
One day, his Guru sent him off to help Prithwi of Jind to sort out her legal affairs. It marked the beginning of his life at Oakless.
Recently, Freddie, his Apso, passed away. Bill was most upset.
‘Wanting to have his name on the fresh cement, he fell off the stool he was perched on!’
Rani Indu Bala arranged to have him moved to a private hospital in Dehra, where he breathed his last.
I wonder if in his dreams he was astride his old Jawa in Ladakh? Accompanying him on that legendary trip were author Stephen Alter and photographer Gurmeet Thukral.
A Jawa motorcycle has no stepney, so Bill resorted to good old Indian jugaad.
‘I replaced the leg-guard with a spare wheel!’ he reminisced. The bumpy road loosened the bolts, and the wheel slipped clear off the bike and rolled straight into the waters of the gushing Indus River.
‘Without a valid visa, in plain sight, it floated down the river and across the border into Pakistan!’ he joked.
Given the dearth of good reading material, he perforce had to read my column in the local Garhwal Post newspaper. As was his wont, he rang me on reading the piece where I had mentioned that the AQI was once so good during the epidemic days that Imperial Minars of Delhi were reportedly visible from Mussoorie.
‘Ganesh, I now understand how Frederick Wilson could have seen the Himalayan ranges from Ambala!’ he said.
A bit of us goes away when the authors we read pass on. Bon voyage! Bill Sa’ab, beyond your books like Seven Sacred Rivers, Footloose in the Himalaya and The Nanda Devi Affair. Urged by Prithwi, he did write a book on Sathya Sai Baba, but the charmed inner circle found a few sentences critical of the Godman, and they nixed the book. To the end of his days, Bill couldn’t understand why.
As an honorary Garhwali, his writings reveal a love for the Himalayas, especially the Garhwal-Kumaon region. His devotion to Goddess Nanda Devi (a manifestation of the goddess Parvati) was that of a devotee’s utterly complete surrender. I met him on his return from the ITBP Camp in Auli. Armed with a primitive Click II camera, he brought back an image of his favourite peak under moonlight that could easily match images taken by fancy SLRS. That picture made it to the cover of his book, The Nanda Devi Affair.
Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages. His work has found recognition worldwide.
