The Allure of Shimla

It took me almost 16 years to come back to Shimla.

The number may not sound as remarkable unless put this way: “the last time I visited Shimla, I was in the fourth standard at school.”

Memories from the previous visit were very vague. I remembered our hotel room was very small and not too cozy, the hill station was royally crowded, and that we had been to the Hanuman Temple thay featured hordes of monkeys inside the temple premises!

Of course these memories had not painted a very rosy picture of Shimla in my mind. And yet, I was ready and excited to embrace the city once again. Revisiting a place was not something new or unusual to me. However, this time it made more sense to revisit Shimla. 

Shimla, as one is aware, has always served as the summertime refuge for the inhabitants of the plains, that keeps swelling up with more people every year, in tune with the burgeoning population of the plains. Having lived in Delhi for all these years now, I wanted to experience how it felt to leave the heated plains of the city and explore the cold pastures of the hills.

The road to Shimla was an almost never-ending bus journey. I, for one, have never found bus journeys very tiring. On the contrary, bus journeys have always enthused me. They have fuelled me with a spirit to travel an extra mile. While travelling to Shimla, my mind kept thinking: “Pray, when will the dull, boring plains give way to the winding, uphill road of the hills!”For there is novelty in an uphill road.  The thought gradually turned into a prayer, and very soon an ardent desire to see the hills. Almost around the same time as the Sun decided to disappear in the horizon and call it a day, the hills showed themselves. Cool gusts of wind, thundering clouds, and a mild drizzle—all greeted me to the “Queen of the Hills”. A spoon-full of Maggi noodles was the first warm thing I tasted in the hills.

Our hotel, the Woodville Palace, was the former Summer Palace of the Royal Family of Jubbal. A Tudorbethic building sprawling over a lush green compound, replete with impressive archways, towering spires, lavish portico, and ebony woodwork—the beauty of the Palace is beyond what I can describe. It speaks of the refined tastes of the Jubbal royalty, and captures well the colonial past of the city. Once inside the hotel, I couldn’t help imagine myself being in the sets of a British Indian costume drama, the tenor of the play being set right by the ambience of the place. It is places such as these which one cannot get enough of. Nor can one envisage the pain of having to leave such a place. Like the residents of the cursed palace were warned to keep away from the house by Nazar Ali, in Tagore’s “Kshudita Pashan”, I could sense the palpable tension of being trapped in a palace of illusions, one that could pull you into a whirlwind of desires, unless you chose to keep away from it.

A cold night gave way to a pleasant, cloudy morning. The interplay of clouds and the Sun created a fascinating canvas, beneath which the city and her people woke up. Unlike Delhi, Shimla has a remarkable number of red-roofed and tiled buildings, ones which shone brightly in the valleyscape. Deodar trees, pines, rhododendron flowers, wisteria groves—indeed, the hills have received Nature’s bounty unlike any other place had.

What will remain in my mind as an almost eternal memory was the walk (read “trek”) to the State Museum. The road to the museum held its head up to almost reach the sky. For us, residents of the plains, jt threw an open challenge to conquer its summit without our knees giving way, of course! 

The museum, housed in an old Victorian mansion called “Inverarm”, offered the perfect setting to explore the state’s rich and diverse heritage. The museum staff were kind and welcoming, something I am unfortunately not very used to! I walked around the museum, observing and documenting things, very often marvelling at the diverse collection of the museum. Although I missed meeting the Assistant Curator of the museum by a whisker, I reassured myself to visit the museum, and him, again in the future.

By then, the drizzle had turned into a bit of a downpour. What could have been more romantic than a walk amidst the mild rains. The wine shops along the main road were now slowly filling up with men and women, desirous of a warm sip. 

I started walking towards the Mall Road. This turned out to be one of the most rewarding walks, as the road was lined up with rows of Tudorbethan and Gothic public buildings—the Vidhan Sabha, the CBI Office, the BSNL Office—and many others big and small. A British era -small roadside water tap carved with a Greco-Roman lion’s mouth stood as a silent spectator of the changing times of Shimla.

Soon, I reached the Scandal Point. From here, the huge Town Hall building and its adjacent Gaiety Theatre building could be easily spotted. The grey and lime yellow hues of the buildings seemed to be in perfect synchrony with the grey skies above. I met my college friends, one a fellow archaeologist, another a talented photographer. We had lunch in the “Wake and Bake Cafe”, with the window offering a nice view of the marketplace, one that has set the stage for bazaar gossip all through the decades of Shimla’s existence.

A walk through the Mall Road is not complete without some shopping. Although my itinerary initially had a visit to the Banton Castle, I kept that aside for another visit. As evening started setting in, the “Golden Hour” appeared. The Sun cast a bright golden yellow light across the city, cutting through the cloud-mesh. While one part of the city was covered with rain-filled clouds, the other was not. In the dying light of the Sun, the reds, lime yellows and greens of the cityscape shone once again, before slowly disappearing into the darkness of the emerging night.

I walked back to the hotel. On my way, I came across a line of Sumitranandan Pant’s poem, inscribed on a marble slab. The lines of the poem echoed with the sense of fulfilment in my heart. The moon, a bright golden one, appeared through the deodar and pines groves. The night heralded the end of my stay in Shimla.

The visit to Shimla wouldn’t have been complete without the lovely company of my friends and colleagues. We all laughed, cried, ate, slept and lived together for three days. Shimla was the perhaps the perfect place to capture the madness of our hearts, to host the often rambunctious crowd that we turned into, and to cool down our exhausted selves. As our bus rushed its way down the hills back to the plains, my heart cried: “Why this rush! Can’t this process slow down a bit”! 

To be honest, I am still not over Shimla. My heart is too full of the city to let anything else take over. However, as an inhabitant of Delhi, I know Shimla is not far away. I also now know what motivates the people of Delhi every year to move up to the hills during the Summer. It’s the lure of the hills that one cannot evade. The hills have cast a spell upon me, and I have to work hard to cast it off. This trip has given me enough memories to last a lifetime, and some unchecked items in my itinerary that have made me resolve another visit to Shimla.