By: Ganesh Saili
Those of us who are destined to pan the sands of history find soon enough that there are no shortcuts or amateur guesswork in this business. This itch to clear up origins unearthed the story of a pretty fourteen-year-old teenager who won a Miss Mussoorie beauty pageant at the Charleville Hotel in 1952. Drawn by her meteoric success, other hotels launched their own beauty pageants with names like Miss Mussoorie, Miss Summer Queen, Miss May Queen, and Miss June Queen, and when they ran out of names, there was always Miss Jungle Queen!
The library’s Whispering Windows’ low ceilings and darkened interiors were ideal for a rendezvous. As the lights dimmed, you listened to the soulful music of Thunderbird, Ashwani Kumar, or the jukebox belting out Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walking, Brian Hyland’s Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, or Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again.
Laxmi Pandit.
By the 1990s, it had ground to a halt. I heard the owner of Whispering Windows complain: ‘Those darn louts – they trashed my place!’
When I met D. P. Singh the morning after the night of the afore-mentioned trashing, he was aggrieved that it was the locals who had ripped out the low-slung lights over the tables and smashed flower pots on the steps leading to the grand ballroom to register their protest at not getting free entry. These scenes of wanton destruction were repeated in other places. At Hakman’s Grand Hotel, they trashed those lovely beechwood chairs with backs of steam-bent wood, which had been brought so lovingly from England a hundred years ago.
Sadly, it marked the end of our beauty contests.
Our hill station’s tango with Bollywood began in the 1950s, when actor Prem Nath and his wife, the sultry Bina Roy, bought a cottage on Oak Road facing the lights of the Doon Valley.
In the 1960s, the pretty Mona Singha, better known as Kalpana Kartik, met Dev Anand. Together they made Taxi Driver, House No. 44, Nau Doh Gyarah, and Baazi. Having put their two children, Sunil and Devina, into school, they bought the nursing barracks in Sisters Bazar. Her brother, Captain Singha, IAS, became commissioner Garhwal; in turn, his son Karan Singha, IPS, retired as DGP Tamil Nadu. He is presently Chairman of Allen Memorial School. When Dev Anand passed away in 2011; they had been married for 64 years. She is now 93.
In the 1980s, Victor Banerjee came to shoot in Lekh Tandon’s biopic Dusri Dulhan, starring opposite Sharmila Tagore and Shabana Azmi. The film caused no tsunami, but the wash left Victor and Maya Banerjee behind. They too put their girls into a school here and dropped anchor at the Parsonage.
Already anchored here was Tom Alter, Landour-born, Woodstock-schooled. His cousin Stephen Alter, an internationally acclaimed author of twenty books, still resides here. Perhaps, in comparison, our latest arrivals: Vishal and Rekha Bharadwaj are freshers, gingerly learning the ropes, at their home in Ivy Cottage, in Mohalla Ruskin Bond.
Halfway along the Mall, the music carried on in the Hakman’s Grand Hotel, where Pat Blake and his ensemble of twelve held shows, and, on occasion, Rudy Cotton played his saxophone.
On a summer night in the late 1980s, I was witness to our last beauty contest, where the ballroom overflowed with freeloaders as, to the sound of drumbeats, descended Luscious Lola, a cabaret artist from Calcutta, now a mere shadow of what she was in her extreme youth. A collective gasp issued as she flicked a flimsy stole over a grey head in the front row making him blush – enough to light up a corner of the ballroom.
The real star of the evening was the gifted Goanese pianist, who masterfully tickled the ivories on that queen of musical instruments. It was made in Stuttgart in the nineteenth century and carried here by the sturdy hill folk from Rajpur at the base of the hill. While in Germany, during the First War, stand-up pianos were ripped apart for their wood to shore up trenches on the battlefield, many of the pianos that were brought here have survived.
Ganesh Saili, born and homegrown 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.
