Dehra beckons
Amarinder Sandhu

Doon on a Sunday
by David Keeling. Rupa.
Pages 174. Rs 95.

David Keeling takes you on a whirlwind trip to Doon Valley, introducing all his friends on the way. The reader gets to meet the fauji families, Bobby Cash, Ruskin Bond, the Skinners, Nayantara Sehgal and many more. There is a myriad of characters—Maali who is also a "firelighter par excellence" though he lights a fire only to a take a puff of his beedi, Miss Maali who potters about the garden and cans the fruit, the defatiguable Jeeves (named after the P.G. Woodhouse character) and the girls Friday, Sunday and Monday.

The reader gets the feel of Uttaranchal’s capital and neighboring Mussourie and feels like joining the writer on his ventures to Landour Bazaar and antique shops, where he can watch "workers laboriously drilling fake worm holes in the woodwork and applying coats of vanish before beating and authenticating aging process with chains". The more adventurous of readers may also want to accompany Keeling to an eerie cemetery with the purpose of meeting a few ghosts!

The author adds a spark when he relates anecdotes that keep the reader at his wits end. There are amusing incidents like when a drunken British ambassador asked a ruby robed, elegantly-clad figure for a waltz, only to be turned down, because the figure was the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima, or when Billy Billimoria got arrested while showing the Panchen Lama the use of a kukri and was exonerated on the intervention of the Dalai Lama.

Living in the lap of nature, the writer enjoys the bounties of mother earth, picnics, parties and Indian Military Academy passing outs. Dehradoon and Mussourie are the mecca of schools, and Keeling takes the readers along with him to Doon School’s founders and his visit to Welham Girls, Woodstock, and St. George’s.

With him you get to enjoy the unexpected experience of being shaved in candlelight and that also without a nick!

Doon on a Sunday offers you a witty and sagacious first-hand tour of Dehra. It given you details of the endless traffic and unending lines of tourists visiting the valley. You will see locked cottages, which are rarely visited, and concrete structures built by some unscrupulous contractor. The writer also gives you a peep into the excellent services of a telephone exchange whose pre-recorded message in a lovely feminine voice declares your number as perpetually nonexistent.

Lovers of Bacchus like my father may want to join the gin and tonic and Old Monk-loving Keeling on his visits to the snake temple and snake village. The writer has an eye for detail as he pens the attempts of the Public Works Department to recarpet the roads and the careless attitude of the beedi-smoking PWD employee, unmindful of the tar and diesel in the vicinity.

The reader also meets amiable, frolicky Freddie—the writer’s golden Labrador. Freddie is very fond of chasing monkeys. Ensuring that his master consumes his orange juice, the pooch makes a feast of the jam toasts lying near by. Freddie decorates the writer’s Pringle with his own golden hair and in his dog and leg activity leaves his master with a fractured kneecap.

The writer has a unique style, with his articles interlaced with song and rhyme making the book interesting. I really enjoyed these lines:

"Age is a time when your bones start to creak

When the stairs are making you weak

When the girl in the bus will offer up her seat

And sits, cross-legged demurely showing her feet."

The book is made spicier with such more verses. Written with an excellent sense of humour and a wit to match, the book is enjoyable and equally entertaining.

The articles are kept short to make the book a pleasurable read. You will savour the scents and tastes of Doon sitting in your easy chair, with a gin and tonic.

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