Shimla obsessed

Whenever I rummage through the attic of my memory, my favourite pullouts are Shimla reminiscences. At the risk of being labelled as Simla-obsessed by my progeny, I can mull over my days there till listeners don’t ever bother suppressing yawns. When I think of Shimla, I think of my growing-up haunt of yore, not this bizarre concrete jungle persistently smelling of you know what. In the past, as we drove up the hills, the ascension synchronised with the changing vegetation. The lower hills as they began from Parwanoo, on to Kasauli, were festooned with delightful cherry blossoms in March, when school term began. Similarly, the variety of pines changed from Kasauli onwards, the pine-laden trees swished with a heady whiff as those riotous red flowers welcomed us to Simla.

Today, the bottleneck between Parwanoo and Kalka is usually choc-a-bloc with traffic, making the travel uphill a nightmare. One witnesses here an illustration of survival of the fittest: the poorest road manners displayed as cars jostle with each other. Sometimes, passengers spill out to wrestle with each other, not realising that queuing up would consume the same amount of time.

As we go further up, I recollect that if we were travelling by bus, as the vintage Leyland would chug up, the sight of the verdant mountains and the radiant peach blossom and flame of the forest would make us forget the dust and grime of the plains. Today, slick video coaches go up, blinding travellers to the beauties of the mountainside. The peach blossoms are history, the mountains ravaged, strewn with garbage dumps or uprooted trees. In some places, uprooted trees are piled up, akin to skeletal piles. Unfortunately, the unwritten epitaph on these will only be known by those who saw them swish away in their glory.

The only thing constant is the monsoon mist, playing hide and seek amidst the mountains. These washed hillsides are hidden in thick misty curtains; spurts of sunshine lift up the latter only to display nature at its hilt.