Sunday, August 13, 2000		Article

HAVE you heard of North Bank, below Kali Bari temple? If not, here is a surprise for you — it was here that Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling received public recognition as a writer.

With more than seventy books and collections to his credit, Kipling (1865-1936) started his career as a journalist at a very young age with Civil and Military Gazette Press, Lahore. His books — Plain Tales From The Hills, The Phantom Rickshaw and other Tales and Kim depict the 19th-century Simla . He stayed at the North Bank with Edward J. Buck, author of Simla: Past and Present, whenever he came to Simla. Interestingly, a part of this building, though in a dilapidated condition, still exits 115 years after its important guest stayed in it.

In 1883, immediately after his first visit to Simla as a contributor to Lahore’s Civil and Military Gazette, Kipling wrote to his aunt Edie, "...the month was a round of picnics, dances, theatricals and so on, and I flirted with the bottled up energy on my lips!"

When Kipling arrived at Simla, it had become the summer capital of British India from a forlorn hill station with a sanitarium. Simla was the favourite of young British men who came here to seek their fortunes and of married ladies, eager to escape their husbands and the heat of the plains. Pretty young gals also came in search of handsome dashing, young husbands.

In 1885, Rudyard’s father Lockwod on a visit to Simla along with his wife Alice remarked, "Simla is full of pretty girls and has a strong light brigade of sportive matrons of all ages. I never go near a dance, but I hear the nicest possible girls sit out in rows. " The Kipling family stayed at Tendrils, now a part of Cecil Estate.

Of all the characters, British or local, who passed from the real life Simla into the pages of Kipling’s books, the enigmatic A.M. Jacob and Mrs. Hauksbee are unforgettable.

Jacob, the inspiration for Lurgan Sahib in Kim, arrived in Simla in the 1870s and opened a business of gem-stones and rare curios. He was undoubtedly a clever conjuror and mesmerist. He was supposed to be a Russian spy, political agent, astrologer and magician. He could converse in many languages, including -Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Arabic and French. He could disappear in front of many people.

Many of the places that Kipling described in his books still exist in today’s Shimla, though in a different form. Annadale, The Club and Longwood Hotel, where Mrs Hauksbee lived, the Mashobra road where Tertium Quid met his doom, the Combermere bridge where phantom rickshaw

first accosted Jack Pansay, Jakhoo, the Sanjauli reservoir, Observatory Hill (at present, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies); Jutogh and Boileauganj — all remind one of the times of Kipling.

North Bank was owned by Edward J. Buck and Kipling was his honoured guest today the North Bank estate is more popularly known as the fingask area. There are two old buildings that hark back to the days of Buck and Kipling — the North Bank Lodge and the North Bank Building. The present owner of the North Bank Lodge, Rani Jayanti Devi of Koti estate, reminicising about the past said that her grand-father-in-law bought the entire North Bank Estate, measuring 26 bighas, which included the North Bank Building, the North Bank Lodge and other buildings from Edward J.Buck in late twenties or early thirties.

She said Buck stayed in the North Bank Lodge, his office was also there and Kipling used to stay with. Buck whenever he visited Simla. Buck had rented out the North Bank Building.

Rani Jayanti Devi said she was married into the royal family in 1939, and came to stay in the lodge in 1951. In 1988, she sold half the building, which is in a dilapidated condition, while the other half where she stays was renovated.

Asked whether she had any document to support the theory that Kipling actually stayed there, she said, "No. I have read about in books. But it is true that my in-laws bought this building from Buck and he actually stayed here only, therefore his friend Kipling must have stayed here too".

The owners of the North Bank Building are not very aware of its history and claim that whatever little they know is from books. Though some of them have been living in this building for the last 50 years, they bought some parts of it in 1980. Except for a small part, the building has been renovated.

According to Lord Birkenhead, biographer of the Nobel Laureate, Kipling found Simla an almost-inaccessible town, clinging to the mountains like a swallows nest amid peaks thick with furs and deodars. It was a wonderful refuge for men driven to the limit of their endurance by their labour in the baking inferno of the plains. To him it was a place of incessant entertainment, hunting, petty intrigues and eager gossip. And The Mall was like a street in an English resort. Furthermore there was polo at Annadale, a vast plateau scooped out of the hills and surrounded by deodars. There was Peltis, the cafe, where the residents of Shimla met.

"The ambience of the place might have been created to slake the appetite of a young writer hungry for material," writes Lord Birkenhead.