By Yasmin Rahul Bakshi
Going Back to the Mussoorie I Once Knew –
Seven years later, the mountains were still there. Much of the Mussoorie I carried within me had quietly moved on.
Going back to Mussoorie after seven years stirred emotions I had not quite expected. After all this was home. The little hill station where I grew up and where almost every bend in the road held a story.
Seven years did not seem very long until I returned.
The mountains stood exactly where I had left them. The winding roads were unmistakable and the cool mountain air still carried that familiar scent. Some places settle so deeply within you that you do not realise how much of them you carry until you find yourself there again.
Yet as I moved around I sensed how much had changed.
I grew up in a Mussoorie where almost everybody knew everybody else. Faces had names. Names belonged to families and families came with stories. You knew who lived where. News of a wedding, an illness or a new baby somehow travelled across the hills before any formal announcement could.
In happier times people celebrated with you. During difficult days they simply arrived. Someone brought food. Someone sat beside you. Someone asked what needed to be done.
For a hill station that could become bitterly cold there was an extraordinary warmth amongst its people.
And we went everywhere on foot.
To school. To the market. To meet friends. Sometimes there was no particular reason at all. Walking was simply part of life. We knew the shortcuts and the little paths between houses. Quite often a ten minute journey took half an hour because you met so many people along the way.
Perhaps that was how we really came to know Mussoorie.
We did not explore it through maps. We explored it with our feet.
Returning after all these years made the contrast striking. The roads now seemed overwhelmed by cars, bikes and scooters squeezing through spaces never designed for this volume of traffic. The sound of engines followed me along stretches where I remembered footsteps and conversations.
There is something about discovering a hill station on foot that a vehicle can never give you. You notice the trees and old houses. You recognise a doorway you had forgotten. You pause simply because the view asks you to.
Then there were the establishments that formed the backdrop of our lives.
Cambridge Book Depot. Chic Chocolate. Jackson’s. Kashmir Corner. Whispering Windows. Amitash. My Shop. Hammers. UP Cottage and Village Industries. The heritage building of Railway out agency. The Bengali Sweet Shop. Casa Mia. Rialto Cinema and several others.
For someone visiting today these may simply be names.
For us they were landmarks.
You entered stores where the people behind the counter knew your family and sometimes your parents and grandparents too. Nobody checked ratings before deciding where to eat and there was no search for an “Instagrammable” corner.
We already knew where we wanted to go.
This time I found myself instinctively searching for those familiar signboards. Many were gone. Long standing establishments had made way for newer brands and names that could just as easily belong to Delhi, Mumbai or another large city.
Of course towns evolve. Businesses close and generations move on. Mussoorie has always welcomed visitors and tourism has always been part of its life. What I missed was its individuality. Those little things that could belong only to Mussoorie.
I missed the faces too.
Earlier I could barely walk a few yards without recognising somebody. Now I could cover long stretches surrounded by strangers.
Then someone recognised me.
That sudden smile. A moment of uncertainty followed by my name and the inevitable question about where I had been all these years.
For those few minutes the distance of seven years disappeared.
I belonged again.
That afternoon I went towards Landour and Char Dukan. Once you climbed towards Sisters Bazaar the bustle below gradually faded. The road became quieter and the air sharper. Deodars took over and there was never any great agenda attached to going there.
You went because you felt like going. Char Dukan did not need to be called a “destination”.
Today Sisters Bazaar and Char Dukan draw far larger crowds. Cars and two wheelers negotiate the narrow roads while phones are constantly held up for photographs and videos. Social media has introduced people to beautiful corners they might otherwise never have discovered. It has also turned once quiet places into must-visit spots.
Sometimes I wonder whether every beautiful place needs to be discovered by everyone.
Amid all this I found myself at Anil Café at Char Dukan – a favourite haunt of Sachin Tendulkar too.
I ordered their bun-omelette and ginger-lemon tea.
Nothing fancy. Nothing elaborate. Just the sort of food that feels right in the hills.
There is something about eating a hot bun omelette in the cold that is difficult to explain. Perhaps it is the aroma rising from the pan or the softness of the bun against the piping hot eggs.
Or perhaps it has very little to do with the food itself.
I took the first bite and smiled.
A flavour can take you somewhere before your mind has worked out where it is going. Winter mornings return. Aimless outings come back. So do conversations about absolutely nothing and afternoons when nobody was in a hurry to leave.
That bun omelette tasted of far more than eggs and bread.
It tasted of growing up. It tasted of belonging.
Perhaps that is why certain dishes stay with us. Rarely because they are complicated and seldom because they are grand. They matter because somewhere along the way they became attached to people and moments we loved.
Growing up we never had to discover Char Dukan. It was already part of our lives. Nobody photographed a bun omelette from four angles before taking a bite.
We ate it hot because it tasted best that way.
Life really was that uncomplicated.
Maybe that was what I had been missing. Not merely an earlier Mussoorie but the simplicity of the life we had lived there. We had fewer choices and fewer conveniences yet somehow we had more time.
Time to stop when we bumped into somebody. Time to browse through books without intending to buy one. Time to sit over an omelette and tea. Time to wander along the Mall for no reason whatsoever.
I do not expect Mussoorie to remain frozen in the years of my childhood. No place can and perhaps no place should.
But I hope it never loses the little things that give it character.
Not every independent shop needs to make way for a familiar brand. Not every silent lane needs to become an attraction and not every beautiful corner needs to appear on a reel.
Some places deserve to remain a little ordinary because years later it is often those ordinary things we miss the most.
Coming back down from Landour I realised that pieces of the Mussoorie I remembered were still there.
In someone recognising me after all these years. In an old establishment that had survived. In the scent of damp earth and deodar when the mist rolled in. In the sharp mountain air against my face and on roads my feet still seemed to remember.
And yes in a hot bun omelette at Anil Café.
Perhaps that is what returning after a long absence does. You arrive looking for streets, shops and people exactly as you remember them. Instead you discover that home does not live only in buildings or signboards.
Sometimes it is someone calling you by your name after seven years. Someone asking about your family as though you had met only yesterday. Or sitting at Char Dukan and taking a bite of something that carries you straight back to another time.
For a few precious moments the years in between disappear.
And you are home again.
Yasmin Rahul Bakshi is an accomplished senior consultant Chef and a food historian. A widely travelled Army wife from the Mussoorie hills with exposure to international cuisines & preserving recipes with the medium of food photography and digital content creation in the form of stories.
