By: Ganesh Saili
This piece does not require a disclaimer for the simple reason that all the dramatis personae have moved on to the happy hunting grounds. That is, except for the scribbler, they are all gone.
‘He’s got strontium in his veins! Steel in the liver, a nuclear reactor for a heart, and a diabolical brain that is always up to no good!’ whispered one local to the other about Anand Prakash.
In the 1940s, after boarding up shop and home in Landour, the family moved for the winter into a rented house in the relatively warmer climes of Rajpur. A petty dispute over the tethering of buffalo in the grounds outside the ground floor spun hopelessly out of control. When the cordite fumes lifted, two people were dead.
Arrested, the district court sentenced him to death, which was upheld by the high court. A mercy petition to the Privy Council was turned down. Release came when death row prisoners were granted general amnesty in 1947.
Pic courtesy: Bruce Skillicorn.
Few know that there is a store that still carries his name. He seemed larger than life, weighing in at 150 kilos, built like a World Wrestling Federation contestant. Swash-buckling through life, he was like a character who comes crashing through the roof. Once, while he was in his eighties, I saw him sit down for breakfast, working his way through a grilled chicken, washed down with a shot or two of vodka.
‘Alcohol? So early in the morning?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘Is there a fixed time for drinking?’ he retorted, leaving me stumped.
Then one day, the news filtered in that his son had passed away in the Punjab. Arriving to offer condolences, we waited while he worked his way through a serving bowl of porridge, saying: ‘The living must carry on!’
Pic courtesy: Author’s Collection.
He had worked his way through life, past the Biblical three score and ten, with abandon. ‘You owe so much money!’ his anxious brother Indra Prakash said to him one day: ‘How can you sleep?’
He just shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Let my creditors lose their sleep. They need to pray for my long life. If I drop dead, their money would be lost!’
He was not only a larger-than-life character, but he was also incorrigible to boot; at one of the wedding celebrations, he was seated next to an old lady. As old ladies are wont to do, she could not resist commenting on his large belly: ‘If that stomach were on a woman, I’d think she was pregnant.’
Anand smirked slyly: ‘It was, and she is!’
I recall that he once started a Hilltop Café at Char Dukan in the 1960s. Not a cup of coffee was sold despite Nandi donning a flashy maroon suit with a pale cream tie. Unfazed by the failed venture, he merely smiled. ‘Always keep going!’ he said, by way of explanation,
Living by Barnum & Barnum’s quip: ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’, he would walk past a ruin with a newcomer in tow, exclaiming: ‘There – that’s my cottage!’
Of course it wasn’t his – not by a mile! The last occupant, Mr Hartley, was in such a tearing hurry to go home, what with Indian Independence around the corner, that he had packed his bags, upped and left.
The cottage was a ruinous hulk; except for desperate lovers seeking privacy in an overcrowded hill station, no one would go near it.
‘Remember! A house must have three things: ‘Location! Location! Location!’
Who would argue with that? It had a pleasing backdrop with a prospect of snow-topped peaks. He successfully ‘sold’ the property several times, leaving the hapless buyer to face the legal nightmare.
When I last saw him, he sat drinking his favourite whisky with a bunch of teenagers.
‘I am going to build my own shopping Mall in Roorkee,‘ he said with the enthusiasm of a kid playing with Legos.
It was my turn to sigh. Even in his eighties, he was full of plans for his new Mall. But it was not meant to be. A few days later, news came that he had passed away in his sleep.
Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. As the author of two dozen books, some of which have been translated into twenty languages, his work has gained renown worldwide.
