By GANESH SAILI
Dismay is what amateur historians feel when they realise they have plonked the cart in front of the horse. I too almost fell into the same trap while remembering Robert.
‘Remember, it’s Robert! Learn to roll it as they do in French! No! Definitely not that flat English Robert as folks here began to call him!’ forewarns Moni Ghai, retired owner of the Kwality chain of restaurants, now settled in Rajpur.
When Robert first came to the hill station, he brought with him a troupe of cabaret artists whom he billed as ‘Robert and His Danish Beauties’ to perform at the Hakman’s Hotel. With Mr Hakman’s passing away, his widow, ran the place with a whip in hand and her Great Dane ‘Cleo’ beside her. Robert became her new Manager.
One day he caught a glimpse of the beautiful teenaged Penny Anthony, the niece of Mr. K. F. McGowan, the then Principal of the Railway School (1948 and 1949). Smitten, he fell head over heels in love with her. ‘He would lounge about the Oak Grove gate waiting for her,’ the late Lilian Skinner confided. ‘He pursued her to the Halfway House, wooed and courted her till she married him.’
She had a rare skin condition which made her very sensitive to sunlight. It was a condition that worsened with age, and in later years she would go out only at night or use an umbrella to protect herself against the ultraviolet from the sun.
‘He was a true entrepreneur and organized our first Autumn Festival, after seeing the Celebration of the Seasons in Kashmir on his honeymoon,’ recalls senior author Hugh Gantzer.
But to get back to Moni Ghai, who remembers him: ‘Larger than life, Robert was a large hearted person! They broke the original mould. They don’t make that model any more. Ganesh! Imagine us, fresh out of college, my friend Ramesh Khanna and I, we were on our way to join Cornell University. We checked into the Mont Jollie hotel and suddenly happened to bump into Robert. As luck would have it, he too was staying there and helping my uncle setup Gaylord, an Indian restaurant, in Essen, Germany.
‘As young lads, for the first time outside the known whirl of Bombay-Calcutta–Delhi-Madras circuit, we had dreamt of painting Paris. Ufff! Now we were stuck with this man – he knew our families from Mussoorie.’
He chortles, adding: ‘Out flew our plans of devilry, swept aside by a witch’s broom!’
At that point Robert said: ‘Moni! Tonight you boys are having dinner at the Moulin Rouge. See you there at 7 o’clock.’
‘Of course Robert was a life member of the Moulin Rouge and had reserved the best table for us. Afterwards a trolley rolled up next to us. On it was a huge chocolate cake saying: ‘Happy twenty-first birthday Moni’. Candles lit, I cut the cake and the restaurant burst into happy-birthday-to-you. It was washed down with many liberal pourings of premium champagne!
‘For the life of me, as I sit talking to you, I have no memory of what was served for dinner. It is all a blur of can-can dancers, music and Robert’s booming voice. What sneaks back upon me is that sweet lingering taste of Mumm Cordon Rouge. It has always been my favourite champagne.’
What became of the couple? Together they reincarnated as dance teachers – our equivalent of Fred Astaire and Ginger Roberts, movie-stars of yesteryears. And taught people to dance the night away with beguine, fox-trot, jive and tap dancing that set the dance floor afire.
As a Jewish-Austrian, the Great War for Robert meant evading German occupation by moving from Salzburg, Austria to Paris while they turned his home into a holiday home for the stormtroopers of the SS, who did what they could not be seen doing elsewhere.
‘Twas the massive post-war reparations to blame for his heart failure in court. And Penny returned to Mussoorie – for it was the only home she had ever known. And as they say, true love stories have no endings.
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.
