Shimla on a page
Some of the finest town histories have been written on this summer capital
Raaja Bhasin

The connection with literature, fiction, history and Shimla has always been strong – even if much of the writing was done away from the hill. Perhaps the best known connection is that with Rudyard Kipling who drew inspiration from the town and its residents long after he had left

From a distance, apart from Christ Church on the Ridge and the statue of Hanuman ji on the towering hill of Jakho, the one thing that stands out in Shimla is the mass of corrugated iron roofing; some painted and some not. It was these metal sheets that provided the title for noted Hindi writer, Nirmal Verma’s Lal Teen ki Chhat – The Red Tin Roof which is set in the town. The story is a remarkable evocation of Shimla and there is a complex interplay of the changing seasons and nature’s nuances while the town’s residents become the human characters in the plot. Meanwhile, pioneer of the Nai Kahani (New School) of writing in Hindi, Mohan Rakesh had a take on his colleagues, the masters in their academic gowns at Bishop Cotton School; he compared them to bats. Litterateur, Krishna Sobti has added her lines to this corpus.

In 1893, Rabindranath Tagore had come to stay with his bother, Satyendranath (famous as the first Indian to join the ICS) at Woodfield in western Shimla. Picture riddles are some of what Rabindranath Tagore drew from his time in Shimla. These apart, he also wrote some letters and eight poems while staying in Woodfield; the poems were published in the periodical Sonar Tari. Some lines believed to have come from Shimla are:

The General Post Office and the St Andrews Church. Sketch by Billy Malhans

The mysterious ‘Lurgan Sahib’ in Kim came from the real-life enigma, A.M. Jacob who lived at Belvedere – now the site of the Auckland Boys School and after whom the ‘Jacob Diamond’ is named. Apart from the smoke and mirrors that Jacob and his fictitious counterpart tossed around, Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills, Under the Deodars and several Departmental Ditties are set in and around the town.

M.M. Kaye is best known for the two sweeping epic-style novels, Shadow of the Moon and The Far Pavilions – the latter is sometimes compared with Gone With the Wind. It was the publication of this book that made her virtually a household name in the English-speaking world and it went on to sell millions of copies and was made into a popular television serial. The three-volume set of her autobiography is not as well known but the first two, The Sun in the Morning and Golden Afternoon have Shimla as much of their setting. These recapture vignettes of a bygone era – plays at the ADC, eating in the Lower Bazaar or walking all the miles out to Mahasu as a child. She was born at the Central Hotel which stood just off today’s High Court and at various times, she lived at Rookville, Chillingham and Stoke Place. In Shimla, Mollie Kaye has left behind a little footprint in the shape of a plaque in Christ Church in her father, Cecil Kaye’s memory. If these were just a few of the many who took Shimla to the world with their writing, there were others who made the town a character, the way Barbara Cleverly has used the town for the setting of a detective novel, Ragtime in Simla. A far older book (of which a reprint is now available), is the hilarious one with a similar title, Simla in Ragtime where the anonymous author, ‘Doz’ spares nothing and no one in the Shimla of 1913. The last few years have also seen a slew of works with titles pulled out of the town’s corners — something of ‘Scandal Point’ or something of the bazaar.

These apart, Shimla has had some of the finest town histories written on it. Over a century ago, Edward Buck was practically commanded by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon to author what was to become a detailed chronicle of the one-time "Summer capital" of India. Years later, the scholar Pamela Kanwar did a superb job with highlighting the interface between the town’s European residents and the Indian population. Another one has been authored by the writer of this piece. A compact one has been authored by Vipin Puby titled Simla Then and Now. In addition, there are a couple of coffee-table books on the town – one of which has been produced by Himachal’s department of tourism. In these pictorial ones, perhaps the best is the somewhat hard to come by is one by Par Barr and Ray Desmond, Simla: A hill station in British India.

To end, it somehow seems appropriate to mention that Idries Shah the authority on Sufism and author of the humorous Mulla Nasruddin stories was born in Shimla.

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