Memories of a Bygone Age (contd.)

Due to certain reasons, I could not update my Blog for almost a year. My friends say the missed the Blog and, to say the truth, I did too. I promise to be more regular in future. Here is more about my early memories .....

Kandaghat, Shimla and Chail ....

Kandaghat was a small village in those days. For that matter, it is still a small hamlet, located about 30 km short of Shimla on the Kalka-Shimla highway. It had gained importance as the summer retreat of the Maharajas of Patiala, who built a palace (Chail View) and located some courts there. That is how a small community of lawyers and advocates (including my grandfather) set up base in this small village. Later, when the erstwhile Maharaja was banned from entering Shimla due to some misdemeanour that annoyed the Governor-General, the summer capital was shifted to Chail. Incidentally, it was from the Maharaja of Patiala, as well as the Rana of Keonthal, that the British had obtained in 1830, through exchange, part of the area in which Shimla was later located. Till the early seventies the only lights in the village were at the railway station and in the bazaar. Our house, in the outskirts was lighted only by hurricane lanterns. As we sat in the open in the late evenings, under the canopy of stars, which appeared much closer to earth here than at Kanpur or Delhi, stories would start about shikar – tall stories obviously. What true shikari can avoid boasting? Talk would soon turn to the increasing number of leopards and hyenas in the hills. Sure enough, whenever a torch beam was directed towards the edges of the small clearing we sat in, we could see eyes shining like small lamps. “There,” said an uncle, “now do you believe me?” I never came to know whether the eyes belonged to leopards, hyenas or just jackals, but the sight was enough to chill us. It is no coincidence that every summer we would lose one or two pet dogs, obviously carried away by leopards. That the cats meant no harm to humans was proven one morning when I found a pup, which had been snuggling by my side when I fell asleep, missing in the morning, with just a couple of blood drops staining the bed sheet to remind me of its presence the night before. The spotted cats still abound, and attacks on humans are reported every now and then but, more often than not, these occur mostly when humans inadvertently encroach upon their territory.

The high point of our summer vacations used to be visits to Chail and to Shimla. I remember boarding the bus to Shimla, with assorted cousins and aunts, immediately after breakfast and, after an arduous but exciting journey of two hours, disembarking at the old bus stand, near Thakur Hotel. From there we would slowly work our way through the crowded Ram Bazaar and Lower Bazaar towards the Mall. Once there, we children were shepherded to the Ladies Park (now Rani Jhansi Park), handed our lunch packets and severely warned not to move from the park while the adults took off for Jakhoo temple. Children were never taken along to Jakhoo on the excuse that the monkeys there were reported to often carry away little ones. I know now for sure that this was untrue, but who were we to question adults in those days? Regarding staying in the park – that was a rule made to be broken. Soon we were wandering along the Ridge, the Lakkar Bazaar and the Mall. A favourite spot was the wooden bridge spanning the ‘nullah’, at the point where the lift from the cart road today disgorges tourists, and where that hideous monstrosity – the Indoor Sports Stadium – has recently been built. What lay beyond the ‘Combermere Bridge’, as it was then called, I did not know, but no visit to Shimla was considered complete till one had walked on the bridge, and posted a letter at the quaint post office that bordered it. The bridge was dismantled and replaced with a concrete structure in 1973, but the Post Office still stands, lost below the towering sports complex and the Bridge View Hotel.

The annual visit to Chail was much more interesting. The summer capital of the Maharajas of Patiala, the small villages claim to fame was the world’s highest cricket ground, created by levelling the tallest peak of the place. Though it is reputed that the MCC once played a match here against a Patiala eleven, the ground is now part of the Military School. The chief attraction for us children was the bench of planks placed half way up a huge, gnarled oak tree bordering the ground. Many decades later I got a chance to go there again and, I am happy to say, the bench was still there and the school children were still clambering over it. As a forester, I also got a chance to carry out inspections in the forests around Chail. The dense oak forests spreading from Janedghat, a few kilometres from Chail, down to Junga and to Koti, on the Chail-Kufri Road, were a special attraction. One could spot red jungle fowl and sometimes kalij pheasants along the paths. Though there were reputed to be bears and leopards in the forests, I never saw any, except on one occasion.  We were carrying out enumerations in the forest. There were perhaps ten of us, spread out in single file along the contour, about 10 meters from each other, moving gradually uphill, surveying the trees and saplings as we went along. Suddenly there were shouts and crackling of bushes, and out of the bushes shot Ram Singh, a rather well built Deputy Ranger, going as fast as his legs could carry him. He was about 50 meters from me and, by the time I moved away from the bushes, all I could see was his well filled trouser bottoms disappearing behind some trees. Wondering what had happened, I walked towards the spot where I had seen him last. The other staff also collected, and reported that Ram Singh had shouted something about a Bhalu before he rushed off. We beat the bushes and shouted and clapped, but no animal emerged. We called to Ram Singh, but he was also nowhere to be found. Since it was getting towards evening, I decided to call it a day and the entire party began making for the road above us. Suddenly there was a loud ‘Hufff’’ and a huge black bear jumped down from the low branch of an oak hardly a few meters from me, and made off towards the nearby nullah. Soon we also saw Ram Singh sitting at a wayside tea shop, wearing pyjamas and drying his trousers by the fire. That was the one and only time I saw a bear in the wild. Leopards I have seen many a time on the roads at night, but never in close proximity. Suffice to say that wild animals will react only when suddenly disturbed or with their young. 

to be continued .....