City on a Hill

Two thousand feet below in the old Landour bazaar, there’s no corresponding self-doubt. Hugging the slopes their little shops gain from Mussoorie’s tourist congestions, drawing increasing numbers of buyers for the the black Landour sandals and finely crafted walking sticks. Beyond, however, the terrain is thinly inhabited — old cantonment curbs against fresh construction have held for decades — and sparsely traversed.

To the immense regret of Anil Prakash of Prakash Store. He is grocer to the entire hillside, keeps residents and tourists well-stocked with his fresh fruit jams and peanut butter, his cheddar and cinnamon rolls. And he offers rooms and apartments to weekenders and longer-term visitors. In the changing ownership of the properties on the hillside, he perceives the changes in town.

AFTER the Gurkha wars in the 19th century, the British saw in Landour’s mildly cool summers and rhododendron and cypress lushness reminders of home. There stories are encrypted on tombstones in the terraced cemetery, carefully guarded by Manohar. After vandals began striking, he received strict instructions to maintain vigilance against trespassers.

He gives us a distant viewing of the cypress planted by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1870 and the enclosed room that housed a mad woman — an enduring legend that keeps chroniclers of Landour’s spirits and mavericks, like Ruskin Bond, animated. Hardly any descendants, however, drop by, he says.

By the turn of the century, most of the properties on the hillside had been acquired by American missions. It gave the women a refuge from the summer heat in the plains, and the acrimony and politics that laced their cookbook committees — the centrepiece of Landour social life then — has been fictionalised by Stephen Alter. The cookbooks survive as tourist attractions, never mind that recipes have been altered in accordance with the altitude.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the flow of missionaries thinned and most cottages fell into disrepair. Prakash remembers construction material being sold to kabbadiwallas. That desolation is hard to summon now, as the properties have been acquired by non-resident owners from the plains. Intervening years have given the houses lavish coats of paint, and real estate rates are said to be prohibitive.

But, says Prakash, the local economy is suffering. Echoing Ruskin Bond’s frequent musings about these invisible out-of-towners, he says the new owners are usually loath to rent out their houses, and thereby keep the town better populated.

IT, in fact, reflects a change at Woodstock, whose 150th anniversary is being celebrated. Ashok Chatterjee, who left in 1951 and went on to head the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, says the school’s post-mission worries centre on the transient nature of attendance.

With children now enrolling for just a couple of years, would the school’s culture hold? It will, he reckons.

For Landour, too, there’s a predicament. Now the town hosts outsiders passing their tenures at the language school to study Hindi, and personnel posted at a Defence Ministry establishment. With a shrinking pool of full-time residents, some ask, will Landour lose its separateness and become just a serene suburb of Mussoorie?