Kasauli: Wintering Grounds

A piece for Outlook Traveller, on finding warmth in a Kasauli winter. 

"If you had come to buy these same gloves a week ago, they would have cost you Rs 90,” announces the woman, holding out a pair of black gloves with a wavy pattern in grey. Perhaps I appear puzzled, because she looks at me with the air of one explaining something to a very stupid child. “Because it was snowing, madam. You couldn’t take your hands out of your pockets even to pick up a cup of tea, without these. But now the sun is out, so...,” she trails off half-heartedly.

With minimal bargaining, we acquire two cheery woollen caps and three pairs of gloves: two black-and-grey ‘Chinese’ ones, one bright blue and hand-knitted. Once breathing into our cupped hands is no longer necessary, we return to our slow amble down the cobblestoned market street that does so much to maintain Kasauli’s reputation as North India’s best-known hill-station-in-a-time-warp.

Family friends and websites alike have told me that Kasauli has “a British colonial feel”, so I’m expecting the cobbled road, gabled roofs and potted geraniums, and even the sight of bread and butter pudding on the Hotel Alasia menu doesn’t surprise me. But it’s the angrez-style weather talk that catches me unawares. “Kaise ho, aunty?” calls a young woman to a sari-clad lady. “Kya thandi hawa chal rahi hai na?” A hotel waiter describes in unsolicited, sorrowful detail at exactly what hour of evening the wind will start to blow, and when a slippery frost will form on the road. 

Later that afternoon, when Father Ashanand, the gentle young priest who’s just been posted to Kasauli’s old Anglican church, excitedly shows us a musically-annotated video recording of last weekend’s snowstorm on his cellphone, I’m convinced. In Kasauli, the weather is the only news. 

To give Kasauliwallahs some credit, though, winter here does have many shades. It can be wet and windy, grey and gloomy, or as crisp and golden as a crunchy slice of toast. We have good luck—it’s a bleak, grey morning when we arrive, but two almost-toasty days follow. The wind stays sharp as a whiplash, but the sun warms your back as soon as you’re out of the shadows. “Arrey, madam, I can’t tell you how lucky you are,” gushes Aruna, who helps run the reception (and much else) at Ros Common, the Himachal Tourism hotel where we’re staying. “It was raining, then it was snowing. Grey, then white, then grey again—no blue sky. We’ve been aching to see this for two months!” ‘This’ is pronounced while waving expansively in the direction of a semi-circle of snow-clad peaks that seems almost to surround us as we sit in the semi-paved garden of the restored colonial bungalow. I’ve never been much of an enthusiast for mountain views, but this is simply stunning.

Aruna points out the Dhauladhar range and the famous peak called Choor Chandni, all the while providing tidbits about Ros Common’s previous lives. “This used to be a girls’ school, and then a CID office. The hotel started in 1983. I first came here from Shimla with my uncle, in 1987—it was my first posting. There was none of this cement and paving then, it was a garden: a mass of creepers, and roses and ghadi phool (they look just like the dial of a watch) growing all over the roof. I just took one look at it, and at this view, and fell in love. I’ve been here ever since,” she laughs. The old mali responsible for that glorious garden retired a few years ago, and the riot of life and colour has since receded into a more subdued, matronly existence: black wrought-iron chairs and tables, with only the odd yellow cosmos peeking through. “Lots of things have changed here, even though we tried to preserve everything,” muses a pensive Aruna. “This was built as a private house with interconnected rooms, but we walled up the doors—guests complained about the sound travelling. We replaced the old wood pelmets with curtain rods, but they keep falling off—today’s nails don’t stick in these walls!”

Kasauli has many buildings dating back to the 19th century, though they’ve been through several incarnations since. The imposing grey stone structure of the Protestant Christ Church was erected in the 1840s, and although the fittings were redone over the next 50 years, a lot of the woodwork—the pews, the gallery and the altar—is very old. (There’s also the stone engraving of the Ten Commandments, whose sonorous magic can only be absorbed by reading them aloud when you’re there.) The Lady Linlithgow Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients is now the Research and Training Wing of the Central Research Institute. The Kasauli Club was founded as the Kasauli Reading and Assembly Rooms in 1880, while the twin hotels now known as Maurice and Maidens began life in the 19th century as the Kasauli Hotel and Hotel Grand. The faintly seedy Kalyan Hotel used to be Kali Charan and Sons, a fancy store which stocked French wines, Scotch whiskies, Swiss dry fruits and British cakes and cookies. All that remains of the original owners is the statue of a black cocker spaniel outside, presumably the likeness of a loved pet.

*** The old may not have stayed unaltered, but not much that’s new is allowed in. The town is administered by a half-military Cantonment Board, which is fairly strict about what it permits. “Construction is not banned entirely, but new properties are not allowed. If you have existing property that you want to build upon, you have to submit a plan of the proposed changes, and a maximum of 10-15 percent increase is allowed,” explains old Mr Gupta, who’s been running Gupta Brothers, Kasauli’s most well-stocked all-purpose store since 1978, and was once elected Vice President of the Cantonment Board. “You see, there are more than 60 bungalows owned by really big guns. And they don’t want anyone new to come in.” Mr Gupta is still smiling sadly when a burly gentleman in the store jumps into the fray. “Hah! All these folk supported the British and got a knighthood,” he smirks, “They don’t want anyone else to get a piece of the pie. The idle rich, y’know, they don’t want the hoi polloi around.” It’s certainly incredible how many recognisable names from Delhi and Punjab own summer homes in Kasauli. There are the khandani rayees—like Khushwant Singh, whose house is inscribed with the name of his grandfather, Teja Singh Malik; the army-wallahs—a host of generals and brigadiers too numerous to name; the artist-intellectuals—like painter Vivan Sundaram (who recently lent his house to actor Pankaj Kapur when Kapur had trouble finding a place to stay); not to mention doctors and lawyers. More recent arrivals—politicians and cricketers— have to settle for what they can get: a mansion, but outside the town. Surjeet Singh Barnala’s massive estate is on the way down to Parwanoo, while Yuvraj Singh is building his home in Jagjit Nagar, 8km away. The other source of visitors to Kasauli are the nearby boarding schools—earlier Lawrence School, Sanawar, but now several others. “People come to get their kids admitted, then later to visit them,” says Jai Kishan Thakur of Daily Needs. Thakur and his son Akhilesh are the third and fourth generation to run this popular shop, still remembered for its ham sandwiches and hamburgers by nostalgic old Sanawarians. “Earlier the kids used to come down every Sunday. But recently there have been problems—too much money, drinking, misbehaving with elders. Now students are allowed just one or two trips monthly, and then too accompanied by their teachers,” rues Thakur. New Sanawarians may have been partially barred from the town, but plenty of the old ones can be found looking down from the walls of Sharma’s Photography Studio. A curly-haired, impish Pooja Bedi (next to her mother Protima) shares space with an impossibly young Maneka Gandhi and an equally unlined Sanjay Dutt. There are also gorgeous portraits of Farooq Sheikh and Deepa Sahi, though it’s only when I see Shah Rukh Khan circa 1990 that I realise why they’re together here. “Yes, Maya Memsaab was shot here,” smiles Mr Sharma. “That house at the corner, opposite the church, was Maya’s house. And Paresh Rawal was the dukandar of the shop next door.” I summon up my memory of Ketan Mehta’s film, and it’s true, it’s all echoing streets and swirling mists. The mists are missing, but this is certainly the same place, in the same season. We walk all the way up the Upper Mall without meeting anyone except the crotchety old Sikh gentleman who guards the entrance to the Kasauli Club. There’s no sign of students (rowdy or otherwise), or parents, or even the odd brigadier walking his dog. Best of all, there seem to be barely any other tourists—except on the obligatory but pointless trek up to Monkey Point, where a whole busload of college girls were being shepherded along. We see no tourists in two days. But we decide to spend the third morning in even more splendid isolation—walking along Gilbert Trail, a pine-fringed hill path that veers off the tarred road just above the Army Holiday Home. I tread carefully, imagining some memsahib a century ago walking the same path. We walk for two blissful hours without meeting a soul, listening to the wind whistle in the pines. Maybe, I say to myself, Mr Thakur at Daily Needs has a point—“Yeh badal jayega toh phir Kasauli nahi rahega!” THE INFORMATION: GETTING THERE  BY TRAIN Your best options are the Kalka Shatabdi, or the Kalka Mail. From Kalka, the fastest way to get to Kasauli is by road—one hour on a bus, or an overpriced taxi (Rs 700-800). A more picturesque option is to take the Kalka-Shimla ‘toy train’ till Dharampur, from where you can hop on a local bus for the remaining 12 km to Kasauli (Rs 8).  BY ROAD Kasauli is a comfortable 6hr drive from Delhi (325km). WHERE TO STAY Hotel Ros Common (Rs 1,550-2,350; 01792-272005) is a lovely old bungalow converted into a comfortable six-room hotel by the HPTDC. Glorious view, laidback but friendly service, and great chicken sizzlers. Hotel Alasia (Rs 1,650; 272008) is old and atmospheric, though the lawn looks rather sorry for itself and the old games room hasn’t recovered from a fire a few years ago. There’s an almost-Victorian carpeted lounge complete with a piano, and functioning fireplaces in some rooms. Hotel Anchal (Rs 400-1,200; 272542) is located at the end of the Lower Mall, Anchal and its competitor Gian provide options for budget travellers. Basic, clean rooms with attached baths. The incredible ‘family suite’ sleeps eight and has its own balcony overlooking the valley.

WHAT TO EAT Eat a bun-sum (a hot samosa stuffed in a bun) at Narender Singh’s shop in the bazaar. If you’re feeling intrepid, try his other ‘special item’—bun-gulab jamun (“Woh jam jaisa ho jata hai,” offers its inventor). Try the Daily Needs burger, with its peppery ham and perfectly toasted caraway-strewn bun (tell them to go easy on the ketchup). Definitely stop by the chai shop at the end of the bazaar for a plate of pakoras in the evening—superb by any standards.

First published in Outlook Traveller, March 2008 issue

Saltz: Pan Asian fare spices up GK-I

Having opened at the start of a full-on Delhi summer, Saltz seems like it has tailored its aesthetic to the blazing heat outside. A smallish space in GK-I’s M Block Market, the restaurant has white floors, two all-white walls and two walls that are entirely glass. The tables are white too, and the unfussy chairs are a sort of space-agey silver. The effect is entirely pleasing – like sitting in an air-conditioned glass box that’s simultaneously sunny and cool. And there’s a gelato parlour just downstairs.

The menu is a manageable mix of Pan-Asian main courses and café-style fare that’s light on the calories and heavy on the veggies and whole grains, with things like a healthy club sandwich with ham, chicken, lettuce and egg white on whole wheat bread (Rs 160). We decided to steer clear of low-cholesterol options and sample some of the tempting South East Asian food.

The crispy fish and raw mango salad (Rs 170), which we began with, was absolutely glorious. The fish was not itsy-bitsy pieces, but a large hunk of flavourful red snapper, batter-fried, accompanied by a substantial mound of julienned cucumber, red peppers and raw mango in a tangy lemongrass and peanut dressing.

The siomai (described as Indonesian steamed dumplings) were delicious but, to our surprise, not dumplings. The meat did not come wrapped in anything at all. But that only meant there was more of the melt-in-your-mouth steamed chicken, so we were not complaining.

The lamb in Penang sauce (Rs 250) was less adventurous but quite good. Flavoured with the ubiquitous lemongrass and galangal (Thai ginger), it came with Thai flat noodles. The seafood laksa (Rs 325) – prawns and fish with rice vermicelli in a curry sauce – seemed like a wonderful one-dish meal, but it was just too spicy for us. For once, we weren’t glad when that fiery red turned out not to be food colouring. We ended with two scoops of gelato – melon and black forest. Both disappointed – but we enjoyed eating out of the elegant glass goblets.

Saltz has not quite been discovered yet. On the Sunday afternoon that we visited, the place was more or less empty. But the food is good, service smiling and efficient and there’s gelato to be had – so hopefully, it’ll soon be put on the map by the GK ladies-who-lunch. Trisha Gupta

Saltz M-69 Greater Kailash-I, M Block Market (4653-6281). Daily 11am-11pm. Alcohol not served. All major credit cards. Meal for two Rs 1,300.

Time Out Delhi 2007

Mosaic: Putting the bits in their places

Another restaurant in CP. Ho-hum. “Fine Indian cuisine,” says the description. Ho-hum again. The only way to get excited about Mosaic is to go there. Because once you’ve actually sat down at one of their striking orange-tablecloth-ed tables and opened their large maroon menu, you will find yourself faced with a seemingly endless array of possibilities that cannot fail to thrill you if you have the slightest bit of curiosity about regional Indian food. Mosaic’s menu traverses the entire country. 

The space is small, low-ceilinged and cosy, with no more than ten tables. The orange and ochre draperies are set off by bare white walls, and by way of decoration there are a few terracotta pieces that go well with the colour scheme. No frills. The focus, quite clearly, is on the food. It seemed only polite for us to respond with the same dedication – so we went down the menu, course by course and region by region.

We started by sampling a couple of the starters – mochar chop, which is a classic Bengali snack made out of spiced banana flower (mocha), covered in mashed potato and breadcrumb-fried, and prawns Koliwada, a deep-fried masala dish that goes well with beer and was apparently created by Punjabis living in the Koliwada area of Mumbai. The mochar chop (Rs 100) lived up to expectations completely – four decent-sized roundels, with the soft mocha filling and the crisp outer layer in perfect proportions. The prawns Koliwada (Rs 225) was disappointing – the masala was generic and overpowered the poor prawns. 

Next up was soup. The mixed seafood moily (Rs 100) was a flavourful Kerala-style coconut broth, with lots of little pieces of prawn and squid, while the smoked sitaphal soup (Rs 65) was great comfort food – basically made from smoked pumpkin, pureed to a smooth pouring consistency and gently spiced. 

Then came the main courses. The pork in til gravy (Rs 200) had tender cubes of meat in a distinctive sauce, and came with a choice of side dishes and cereal. (We chose a Coorg mushroom dish and rice.) The mirch baingan ka salan (Rs 150), a Hyderabadi specialty made of brinjals cooked in an exciting combination of green chillies, peanut and sesame seeds, was sadly lacking in flavour. And the brinjals hadn’t absorbed any of the sauce. 

By this time, we were stuffed as well, but the desserts looked too exciting to ignore. We plumped for the innovative-sounding chikoo mousse and the paatti shapta, a complicated Bengali dish of rice pancakes with a filling of grated coconut and palm gur, served with a dollop of kheer (this is what Bengalis call thickened milk that’s on its way to becoming cream – it has nothing to do with North Indian kheer). The chikoo mousse (Rs 70) was light and fluffy and delicate, and has converted even those of us who have no love of the fruit. But the paatti shapta (Rs 75) surpassed everything else on the menu – it’s simply the best I’ve had outside of a Bengali home. 

Last but not least, mention must be made of cheap beer (Rs 175 for a 650ml Kingfisher bottle). This space earlier housed Mag Pappas’ Odyssiea – where you could knock back the Kingfisher as you chomped on Souvlaki. There is now no place for Greek food here, but the management has wisely decided to continue with the joyful tradition of happy hours until 11pm, with 50 per cent off on all Indian liquor. We’re planning another visit to Mosaic soon.

M-45/1 Connaught Place, Outer Circle (2341-6842). m Rajiv Chowk. All major credit cards accepted. Alcohol served. Meal for two Rs 800-900.

Published in Time Out Delhi, 2007. (Mosaic, unfortunately, no longer exists.)

Maulana Azad: Theatre Review

M Sayeed Alam’s dramatic monologue is not an easy play to sit through. It’s a solo performance with not a lot of action and many meandering stories about Congress politics before independence, and it’s two and a half hours long, with no interval. It’s also in a chaste Urdu that is often difficult to understand. (May we suggest a brochure that provides translations, at least of the Urdu couplets with which each scene begins?) Two things make the play watchable: the fact that the script is peppered with little titbits – Azad’s taste in tea (white jasmine), or how Nehru mumbled in his sleep – and a fluid, measured performance from Tom Alter, who plays Azad. It’s fun to listen to Alter dismiss British-Indian style tea as “liquid halwa”, propose that Ghalib’s Persian ustad Abdus Samad was an imaginary figure he invented for himself, or reminisce about how he taught himself English as a young man after reading Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s statement that Muslims could never progress if they did not take to Western education. But such trivia only makes an occasional appearance – most of the play is concerned with Azad’s views on his contemporaries, his responses to charges laid against him or the Congress, which he represented for much of his political career, or his fears about the future of Muslims in the subcontinent – what most people would consider the stuff of politics proper. Here the script takes its lead from Azad’s autobiography, India Wins Freedom, and doesn’t shy away from controversial topics, like that of whether the Congress could be said to be a “Hinduon ki jamaat” (party of Hindus), or the role that Nehru and Patel – and in Azad’s view, Gandhi himself – played in letting Partition happen. Maulana Azad’s firm opposition to the very idea of Partition – and his inability to ever reconcile himself to it – lies at the heart of the play. We hear Azad’s meditations on the absurdities that Partition involved – the fact that Allama Iqbal, the poet who wrote “Sare Jahan S e Acchha”, eventually became the much-feted national poet of Pakistan, while Jagannath Azad, who wrote the Pakistani national anthem, came to India in 1947 and eventually found a job in the government’s publication division. We hear his almost rhetorical – but grief-laden – question about what was to happen to the mosques and madarsas on this side of the border if the Muslims were all to leave for Pakistan, and his sad description of a mosque which had become a halwai’s shop. The politics and history is competently handled, though the play tries to pack in way too much and several references remain just that – scattered references. What stays with you after the play is a faint whiff of the man – a man who may not have had the much-mythologised elegance of a Nehru, the flamboyance of a Jinnah or the hot-headed oratory of a Bose, but who was still a titan of the sort that no longer populates our political universe. Trisha Gupta

Source : Time Out Delhi ISSUE 9 Friday, July 25, 2008

Theatre Review: Uttararamacharita

Hindi/ Urdu, National School of Drama, June 3 & 4

In the Uttarakhanda (believed to be a later addition to the Valmiki Ramayana), Rama learns from his guptachar (spy) – the aptly-named Durmukha – that his subjects are scathingly critical of his acceptance of Sita after nearly a year in captivity. Rama decides to abandon his pregnant wife in the forest, and a heroic romance is transformed into tragedy.

Over the centuries, many attempts have been made to rework the text, to somehow bring Rama and Sita together. Bhavabhuti’s eighth century Uttararamacharita is foremost among these literary interpretations of the Uttarakhanda. This classic Sanskrit play in seven acts has been translated into Hindi by Satyanarayan Kaviratna, and condensed into a three-act production by veteran playwright-director Prasanna and the members of the National School of Drama’s Repertory Company. 

The play can be said to have two parallel tracks – the first, the main romantic-tragic events that unfold in the lives of Rama and Sita, and the other a comedy track involving side characters or “common people” who comment on, deliver news of, and in one instance, even re-enact the events of the primary track. The actors in comic roles all have brilliant timing. The tragic sequences involving a rather camp Rama and a (deliberately?) melodramatic Sita are less impressive, perhaps because the contemporary tone and tempo of dialogue delivery doesn’t seem of a piece with the rather formal, poetic, alliterative language being used. Both end up seeming a trifle contrived. It’s in the musical and comic interludes and the recitation-like speeches of the guptachars that the language seems to come into its own. Perfectly choreographed by Vimla Shimladka and backed by Govind Pandey’s superlative music score (drawing on Mohan Upreti’s original compositions), these sequences provide a marvelously energetic dramatic experience.

Like all NSD Repertory productions, a great deal of attention has been paid to stage design and costumes, and it shows – though the more traditional-looking white sari-clad Sita and partly bare-chested Rama of the later sequences were infinitely preferable to the Harlequin-like clothes they wore in the first act. Another highlight of the production is the lighting design (by Parag Sarmah) and the innovative use of moving silhouettes on a large screen to create mood and additional dramatic effects with minimal ingredients.


Published in Time Out Delhi, 2008.

Time warp: Banabhatta ki Atmakatha

MK Raina’s fascinating play asks questions of history and context, and of its audience as well.

MK Raina may not have directed a play at the National School of Drama for the last 12 years, but his association with the NSD goes back a long way – he graduated from the School in 1970 and taught there briefly in 1976-77. Among Raina’s students at the time was Amitabh Srivastava. That’s the other long-standing connection that’s made the current production possible – Srivastava, now an established theatre actor and translator, has adapted the novel Banabhatta ki Atmakatha, timed to coincide with the birth centenary year of its author Hazari Prasad Dwivedi (1907-79).

“The first time MK and I worked together was in 1985-86, when I adapted Jagdish Chandar’s novel Kabhi Na Chhode Khet,” remembered Srivastava. Since then, there have been several collaborations, including a play about the Hindi poet Subhadra Kumari Chauhan in 2004. “It was staged in Allahabad, and in other towns where she lived. We had one show in Delhi too – but how many people in Delhi are interested in the lives of Hindi poets?” asked Srivastava.

The question is not merely rhetorical, but it doesn’t seem to have prevented Srivastava and Raina from taking on the challenge of staging Dwivedi’s highly poetic masterwork, which also purports to be the autobiography of the classical Sanskrit poet Banabhatta. Interpreting Banabhatta ki Atmakatha for a contemporary audience is no easy task, for the text demands not one but two leaps in time. First, it has to be approached as a text pre-occupied with the task of nation-building – Dwivedi wrote it in 1946, very much in the context of approaching independence. And second, it has to be read as a historico-philosophical take on the socio-religious tussles that characterised North Indian society in the seventh century AD, when the historical Banabhatta lived.

Banabhatta was the court poet of King Harshavardhana, who rose to power in North India after the decline of the Gupta Empire, ruling from Kannauj and Thanesar (now a small town in Haryana). In fact, Banabhatta’s lyrical-but-florid Sanskrit biography of the emperor, Harshacharita, is one of the primary historical sources for the period. And Banabhatta’s Kadambari, credited with being one of the first novels ever written, is so iconic of novel-ness that, Srivastava says, “Maharashtra mein novel ko upanyas nahi, kadambari ke naam se jaana jaata hai.”

Banabhatta, however, wrote no autobiography. Dwivedi’s novel is an entirely fictional account of a few months in his life. We do know that the poet’s parents died early, and that he left home when he was fairly young. It took Dwivedi’s leap of imagination, however, to make the young Bana a vagabond. “Dwivedi’s Banabhatta is a tramp. He runs a theatre troupe in Ujjayani, he becomes a fake sadhu and then an astrologer,” said Srivastava.

The play opens with Bana’s arrival in Thanesar, where he runs into Nipunika, a low-born woman who once acted in his troupe and used to be in love with him. Nipunika persuades Bana to help her rescue a princess named Bhattini, who is being held captive by one of the smaller chieftains of the area. Then begins a long journey through the Gangetic plain, punctuated by encounters with religious and political figures: Buddhist monks from a nearby vihara, Brahmins, Vaishnavs, tantriks, aghoris. For Raina, the text has many “anti-Brahminical beliefs” embedded in it. “In one scene, Bana hides something in an aghori Bhairav shrine, and the aghoris catch him. And they tell him, ‘tumhare shastra tumhe paakhand sikhaate hain’. No wonder, when this novel was released, the Brahmins of Banaras were up in arms,” laughed Raina.

And yet the novel is deeply imbued with allegories, many of which emerge from Hindu mythology. “Bhattini is an allegory of Sita, and of the mother goddess. She is kidnapped and unlawfully imprisoned, and when she emerges into the open, it is really as if she has emerged from the belly of the earth,” mused Raina. “And she worships Varaha, Vishnu’s boar avatar, who saved the earth by going down himself.” Varaha is also symbolic of the need to save the nation through sacrifice – as Srivastava put it, “to bring it out of the daldal (quicksand).”

The play promises to be interesting in terms of stage design. “I’m using the classical Sanskrit stage, which is minimal. The stage is divided into two parts, the front portion or Rangshish, and the slightly raised back portion, or Rangpith. And two doors, through which the actors enter and leave. That’s it,” said Raina.

The other striking thing about the play is its strong female characters and their engagement with each other. “The bond between the low-caste Nipunika and the noble-born Bhattini is based on Bhattini’s experience of having been kidnapped,” said Raina. Srivastava elaborated, “At one point, Bhattini says the whole country is searching for the missing daughter of Tuvar Milind because she is a princess. But no one thinks of the fact that all the dasis working in these rajmahals are also someone’s missing daughters.”

Published in Time Out Delhi Issue 9 Friday, July 25, 2008