By: Ganesh Saili
Chants of Tibetan Buddhism resound in Happy Valley and prayer flags flutter in the breeze on Dalai Hill post the events of 1962. It was not always so. At least not when the author Rahul Sanskritayan used to live here. If you were to walk down the road connecting Happy Valley with the Waverley Convent and you asked a local the name of the road, he would just stare at you, shake his head, and move on. Although the road has been renamed thrice, we somehow insist on calling it the Harnam Singh Road (so named after a businessman who sold horses to the Nawab of Rampur.)
I stroll along the Mall and stop at the Cambridge Book Depot where Sunil Arora, the owner, smiles at me.
‘Do you have anything by Rahul Sanskritayan?’ I ask, adding: ‘He was the hill station’s first Padma Bhushan?’
Helpful to a fault, for once Sunil looks puzzled. Obviously, no one has asked him that question in a very long time.
‘Try Chandakiran & Sons!’ he suggests.
‘But that’s a stationery shop!’ I protest.
Yet he proves to be right. That is where I find redemption as Anil Goel, the ever-helpful owner, promises to get the books. They are now proudly displayed in the Local Author’s Section of the Mussoorie Library.
There is hardly anyone in the hill station who remembers the colossus who once sauntered along these hills. Kedar Pandey, aka Rahul Sanskritayan, was fluent in thirty languages, which earned him the moniker of Mahapandit. I still remember the warmth of my father’s hand as he took me, then a ten year old, on a long walk that took us past the grand Charleville Hotel, where after the gate the road seemed to plunge into Happy Valley. On a spur just there stands Herne Cliff – a picture book cottage – that the author had rented. A huge Himalayan mastiff lounged on the veranda; it ignored us as we tiptoed past and knocked on the door.
Dangling from the sitting room’s wooden ceiling were a dozen wire hooks, of the type used in those days by shopkeepers for impaling pieces of bills and sundry pieces of paper for accounts to be done at close of day. As we sat down, a thought struck him; he scribbled it on a piece of paper and pushed it through a wire. Task accomplished, a smile lit up his face saying: ‘Forgive me! A Tibetan word had been eluding me. When it came, I did not want to lose it!’
Possessed by wanderlust, he travelled for forty-five years of his life on journeys that included crossing the border four times to the Roof of the World disguised as a Tibetan monk, spinning a prayer wheel and chanting ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ (The Jewel is in The Lotus). On these walkabouts, he witnessed the amazing survival skills of the tribals living in these remote border outposts, surviving by trading in borax, tea, salt, and wool. It was a tough existence, yet they always tried to do good, a fact that often passed unnoticed by others. For them, what really mattered was the very act of doing good; it was never about trying to impress others. Rahul helped some of them living in Landour to get shops earmarked in Delhi. To this day, you will find these shops lined up on Janpath.
From his Tibetan travels came precious thankas, scrolls of Pali and Sanskrit manuscripts that originally belonged to the libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda Universities; they had been taken away for safe-keeping by Tibetan monks fleeing persecution during the twelfth and subsequent centuries. Some say he brought twenty-two mule loads of these rarities from Tibet to India. Someday, somehow, if perchance you find yourself in Patna, go see them on display at the museum, in the special section that has been named in his honour.
Rahul left an imprint of his times in his many books. He single-handedly redefined travel writing in Hindi. Among his numerous tomes, you will discover that no fewer than fifty-six of them were written during his eight-year stay in the hills of Mussoorie.
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.
