LIFE ON A HILL STATION

 Life on a hill station

 It was a beautiful hill station. We used to live in a double storied house, a part of Metro Hotel right next to Subhash Chowk in the centre of the little town. It was the main chowk from where one road went to the courts where father was the administrator. The other was called "Garam sadak" as it used to get the sun and ended into GPO or Gandhi chowk from where it turned into "Thandi sadak" where the snow used to melt last and spiralled back into subhash chowk. Mostly the independence day and the Republic day functions used to be organized at Subhash chowk or Gandhi Chowk where Papa wearing a band gala coat and a Kullu cap would hoist the flag. His boisterous speech used to be the highlight of the day. Children from the government schools would perform patriotic songs or items. I remember the "chacha" as he was known, a halwai would sometime recite his poem in chaste Punjabi, "har koi ajj Khushi which Mast Hai, 15 August Hai ji 15 August Hai".  

            Just on Subhash Chowk was the gate of the old Convent School and College, an elite residential institution where girls from different states of North India studied and where I went as a first year graduate. We never participated in those independence day or republic day functions. We had our own annual concert and fete where only parents were allowed to attend not the general public. I was one of the few day scholars, initially treated with disdain by the hostlers who changed their tune and accepted me once I beat them in all my subjects in the first trimester exam. 

    Summers were great. I used to especially love the monsoons with mysterious mists and the music of rain drops on our tin roof, though my mother used to hate them as the clothes wouldn't dry for days. Rains used to be torrential for a couple of hours then it would clear up as suddenly but the fog and mist would envelope everything and make the dry clothes also wet. During those times if at home I would be sitting for hours ferociously painting with my water colors mostly drawing inspiration from the back page of Readers Digest for paintings. Then they would adorn the back of the wooden cupboards which worked as a partition in our hall. I had wanted to take up painting hobby class in the college but an honest civil servant could hardly afford the extra exorbitant fee the convent was charging so I decided to go it solo.  

The whole summer, the town used to be full of hustle bustle of the tourists flocking from Punjab and other states. We used to hate them for their flamboyance, their lewd stares and loud gestures. They would invade the serenity of the sleepy hills and scatter litter around in their wake. Of course the town's other population welcomed them with open arms, especially the hoteliers and the shopkeepers with their over the top gift and souvenir items. There was this "imported Serdie" as we called him, who would sell spurious goods "imported" from different places, which in those pre liberalization of economy times were a great attraction both to the locals as well as to the tourists. Omnipresent on the roads or chowks, used to be the "Chana zor garam" wallahs. Ten paise for one rolled up cone of chanas or roasted peanuts which were a must in our hands as soon as we would come down for the walks. 

Every evening it was a ritual for us to take a walk through garam sadak to GPO and back through Thandi sadak. That was the time you would meet friends or mom's friends on the road, almost daily pick up a fight with the boisterous young tourists on the streets. As especially me passing through an awkward stage of being exceedingly tall and lanky would not take eve teasing at all and retaliate at the slightest provocation. 

             Winters in our hill station were extremely severe. Unlike the present globally warm days, sometime the snowfall used to exceed three feet or more. The whole landscape would transform into some picture book surreal beauty especially in the morning when you woke up to a fresh heavy bout of snow. We young siblings would revel in the surrounding beauty while our mother had to face the jarring music of the hardship of day to day life. The water would freeze in the pipes. The roads would be blocked. The maid would not come. The cook was gone hours buying vegetables of which mostly potatoes and onions were available. The funny sight would be the rows of frozen clothes downstairs in the glazed varandah. At night we would scare our youngest sister in dim light. The bloated hanging rows of pants and shirts would look like as if someone was wearing them. All the slanting roofs would have hundreds of big pointed knives of ice pointing downwards, sometimes making it look eerie. 

The town used to be cut off from other places sometimes for a couple of days till the administration could make a pathway in the center of the roads for vehicles to ply. This would create high walls of snow on both the sides of the road. Once my mother who was coming from Punjab got stuck five kilometres away beyond which the road was blocked with snow. Only jeeps could ply and she had to wait in biting cold till a jeep could be sent to her. Even that would have taken more than one hour to reach in the snow. Just then she saw mother superior and another sister getting into a jeep from the stranded bus. She went to them and requested them for a lift. They refused and went away. My mother had to wait a long time till she was picked up. She never forgave them for this. She would always say compassion and empathy are more important virtues to practise than preach. 
                 Those were the seventies. Life was an Eastman color kaleidoscope those days for my young and impressionable mind. We would walk down the hill to watch a movie in the cantonment cinema hall. We had one theatre in the town too but it was more fun to go there especially with friends. Sometimes film actors would come for shooting. And we used to be in great demand as due to my father we would be invited to have tea or dinner with them in the hotel where they were staying. And our parents would allow us to take one or two friends. There we would run into the children of other officers, mostly our peers and we would show off as if we were not enamored by the stars on the table. 
Those were growing years, care free, fun times before the grind of higher studies, career and family life set in. 
Like a drop of dew.. Fresh and sublime!