Annadale is cooked up version of Annandale
Shriniwas Joshi
The vernacular papers write it as ‘Annadale’ and so the general public has also started calling it ‘Annadale’ although its real name is Annandale. I give the examples of great writers who have used the word Annandale. ‘Consequences’ is a short story by Rudyard Kipling, first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on December 9, 1886; and first in book form in the first Indian edition of “Plain Tales from the Hills” (1888). The story reveals the happenings and celebrations that used to be in the ground Annandale during the Raj: “There are garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are matters of private arrangements.” The ground was Annandale in 1886. Then the second “Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling came in the year 1895. There in a story “Cupid’s arrow” he mentions: “All Simla was invited. There were beautifully arranged tea-tables under the deodars at Annandale where the Grand Stand is now; and alone in its glory, winking in the sun, sat the diamond bracelet in a blue velvet case. Miss Brighton was anxious — almost too anxious to compete. On the appointed afternoon, all Simla rode down to Annandale to witness the Judgement of Paris turned upside down. ”So, it remained Annandale in 1895. Mulk Raj Anand’s novel “Coolie”, published in 1936, came in the beginning of the second quarter of the 20th century. In the novel, Anand, the protagonist, cares for a foreign lady Mrs Mainwaring who came to Shimla during the summers, he says, “the elder children being fixed in the boarding-school. It was summer, however, and she said that she could not bear the heat of the plains and be with him in Peshawar. So he rented a flat near Annandale at Simla for the season for her.” It shows that all great writers have used the word ‘Annandale’ and not ‘Annadale’. The authors writing on Simla or Shimla also use the word Annandale for the ground. “Simla — Past and Present” by Edward Buck in 1904, “Simla in Ragtime” in 1913 by DO Sullivan, commonly known as “Doz”, “Thacker’s Guide on Simla” published in 1924 or Pat Barr and Ray Desmond writing “Simla: A Hill Station in British India” in 1978, Pamela Kanwar, Raaja Bhasin, Vipin Pubby writing books on Simla or Shimla have used the word ‘Annandale’. John Wymer in dance music of the Victorian era Simla-Annandale Polka preferred the earlier name.
How did the word Annadale shoot up? “Complete Guide to Simla and its Neighbourhood” was published in 1881. It mentions that Captain Charles Pratt Kennedy, who was an officer in the Bengal Artillery, later Royal Artillery of East India Company, was appointed as the Political Agent to the Hill States and held that position from 1822 to 1835. He was so struck by the beauty of this ground that he named it Annadale after his childhood sweetheart Anna. Dale means valley. It got corrupted to Annandale believe many. But the truth is and accepted by several historians is that the picturesque piece of ground, charmingly adapted for recreation, and affording a pleasant change from the perpetual slopes above about a quarter of a mile in circumference and surrounded by splendid deodars, the ground-area extended by cutting into the hillside during Dufferin’s viceroyalty (1884-88), was first named Annandale by East Indian United Service Journal in 1834. Quite a few officers in East India Company Services were from a small Annandale valley in Dumfriesshires in Scotland, they saw its replica here. And its name since then is Annandale.
The recorded history of Annandale with the word Annandale unfolds itself from September 1833, when a funfair was held here to collect donations for instituting a school at Sabathu for native females. How and why the complete guide of 1881 converted Annandale to Annadale is a figment of imagination.
After Independence, it all happened at Annandale and not Annadale: a Congress session in 1971; Dasehra celebrations till the venue was shifted to Hanuman temple at Jakhu in 1973; a small Dakota plane landed during the early 1950s due to a freakish fete of a young pilot; Radhakrishnan, as President of India, landed in a make-shift helipad for the first time, now a regular one; the Gayatriparivar performed a havan in 108 ‘yajna kundas’ and national women’s hockey tournament in the early 1980s. Today, it has a nine-hole golf course since the year 2002, a museum about and by the army since 2005 and also an attractive cactus garden. Long live Annandale!
Tailpiece
Doz writes in 1913 about Ye Shepherd’s race in which a sheep is tied to a long pole in the centre of Annandale. Riding couple come up to it and ask, “Ba Ba blacksheep have you any wool?” Afraid of horses and people around it, the sheep bleats. The competitors guess what the sheep has said, jot it down and race back to the starting point. The first couple whose answer matched with the one already recorded would win the top prize.
