In Search of Lost Time

Well, now we can, thanks to the American father-daughter author duo, who were based in Delhi and would travel to Mussoorie to visit friends at Woodstock, one of its iconic schools. Those weekend visits led to a fascination with the town and its history and the result is this book.

Footprints of the Past starts with Musoorie’s founder, Frederick Young, and its evolution as a salubrious getaway for the British during the heat of summer. Much like the government’s move to Shimla in summer, British soldiers and civilians based in north India headed to Mussoorie, a place where they could let their hair down while enjoying the natural beauty and the bracing, 7,000 ft elevation. It became the pleasure capital of the Raj at a time when Mussoorie and Landour were two separate hill stations. What gives this book extra elevation is the painstaking research and the archival photographs that inform it. For regular visitors to the town in recent times, some names resonate with a sense of romance and history — Barlowgung, King Craig, Hampton Court, Sister’s Bazaar, Camels’ Back, Oak Grove, Gun Hill, the Library, the Savoy Hotel and the oddly named Chateau de Kapurthala.

Unlike Simla, where officialdom put a brake on partying, Mussoorie had a hyperactive social life and an extended one — the summer break lasted from April to September, and the hottest spots were the Savoy Hotel and Stiffle’s, where there were tea dances, cocktails and dinner dances and plenty of scandals — hence Mussoorie’s Scandal Point at one end of the Mall. Many of the Indian royals, most notably of Kapurthala, also had summer homes in the hill station. Carriages, rickshaws and horses became the mode of transport till the first car, a Model T Ford, showed up in 1920, by which time there was a proper road from Dehra Dun, and another from Shimla. This is basically a book about geography and history, and much of it may seem tedious and heavy, but at its heart, this is a story about a town and its inhabitants and what made it such a special place, especially Landour, a cantonment built by the British army.

It is still very much an area dominated by the Indian army and government, and though it has merged with Mussoorie over the years, it still retains some aspects of its original avatar as a sanatorium, greener and less crowded thanks to strict restrictions on new construction, and, because of its higher elevation, a full 1,000 ft higher than the Mall. No wonder Landour is where Musoorie’s celebrity citizens live, from actors Victor Banerjee and Tom Alter to writers Ruskin Bond, Stephen Alter and Hugh and Coleen Gantzer, to name a few.

Like all hill stations in India, Mussoorie became a magnet for boarding schools, and this book gives us a history lesson on the better known ones, starting with Waverly College, Woodstock, Wyneburg Allen, St George’s College, Oak Grove and Hampton Court. Musoorie became known as the Edinburgh of the East, after the Scottish capital famous for its educational institutes. Sadly, apart from the schools and the refurbished Savoy Hotel, much else has been buried under the detritus of modern needs. King Craig, the entry point to Mussoorie, is now a cement monstrosity full of auto repair shops and petrol pumps. As recently as 1990, there were some 40 hotels. Today, to cater to the rush from the plains, there are over 200. Mussoorie’s past is buried under its present, and it takes a book like this to bring alive the fascinating history of the town when it was at its peak.