The capital of Himachal Pradesh which lies on the foothills of the Himalayas was created by the British because they could not bear the heat and dust of the Indian summers. In1863 Lord Lawrence, the Viceroy, decided that Simla would be the summer capital of the Raj. And thus every year the entire government would shift from Calcutta to Simla.
Later when New Delhi was built, the government would continue to move to Simla to get away from the scorching summer. Simla became in fact a carbon copy of England built in India. With Indian independence and the Partition, Simla became the capital of the Indian Punjab. This meant that many educated and professional Hindus and Sikhs from Lahore relocated to Simla in large numbers. Hence Lahore's cultural loss became Simla's gain.
In Simla, I befriended Som Parkash Ranchan, nicknamed 'Larry', who like me was born in Lahore in the same year (1932). We met almost every day in the coffee house on the Mall which had become a club for politicians, poets and painters.
I belonged to the last batch of students who passed out with a Cambridge school certificate from St. Edward's and, incidentally, during the same time that Ruskin Bond was at Bishop Cotton School. The prolific Ranchan wrote Bonding With Bond, an analysis of Bond's work, and my contribution was the title.
In school a couple of years junior to me were Hamid Ansari and Kanwarpal Singh Gill. The former joined the Foreign Service, was India's ambassador in many countries, and later became Vice President; the latter became India's 'Top Cop' though he continued to write poetry in English and Urdu. In fact Gill, Ranchan and I used to go on long rambles discussing literature and reciting our verses to each other. Suggestions were made on how lines could be improved and how metaphors and images might be sharpened. These were rewarding poetry workshops in which we argued about the weight of words and the colour of the syllables.
When Ranchan and I published a selection of our poems titled The Splintered Mirror in London the book was well received in Britain and India. The preface was written by Humayun Kabir who was India's Minister of Culture. Here are quotes from Kabir: 'In this book of poems the authors have retained in their writing some of the peculiar flavour of India. They have youth and sensitivity and sometimes they have found an image that is shot with beauty and have coined a phrase that lingers in the memory' and 'I hope they will continue to write, for the activity is itself a pleasure and nowhere is it so true as in art that it is better to travel than arrive'.
Nina Singha also from Lahore was a well known academic who held court in the coffee house. Her daughter Rina was a pupil of the Kathak guru Shambu Maharaj. Many of us, and especially Ranchan, were encouraged by Nina Singha. Ranchan got a Fulbright scholarship and left for the States where he became a professor of English. He then came back to Simla and was appointed head of the English department at Himachal Pradesh University.
And there was Professor Sud, another Lahori, who directed plays at the historic Gaiety Theatre where Bollywood's Prem Chopra first tread the boards. Mona Singha (Kalpana Kartik) was a student at St. Bede's College and married Dev Anand. Vera Sunder Singh (Priya Rajvansh) was also at St. Bede's and I often acted with her at the Gaiety before she went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She returned to India and partnered Chetan Anand, Dev Anand's elder brother, for many years.
Another friend of mine was Inder Kher who migrated to Canada and became a professor of English at Calgary University. The Maths professor Madan Sharma was immensely popular because apart from being an Urdu poet he was a leading ice skater. A confirmed bachelor, his students adored him.
The leading actor Anupam Kher, no relation of Inder Kher, is also a Simla-wallah. Uma Vasudev (known as 'Three-naught-Three', after the .303 inch cartridge of the famous Lee-Enfield rifle) was Simla's heart-throb. She possessed a rare charisma. She later moved to Delhi and wrote adulatory books about Indira Gandhi. It was rumoured that she was a member of the prime minister's kitchen cabinet.
The Gaiety attracted the country's leading thespians. I remember seeing the stirring plays written and directed by the great Prithvi Raj and in the cast were leading players such as Zohra Segal. And then there was the touring Shakespeareana group led by the veteran British actor-manager Geoffery Kendal which presented many of the Bard's works to packed houses. Prithvi Raj's son Shashi married Geoffrey Kendal's daughter Jennifer thus uniting two acting families. The film Shakespeare Wallah was based on Kendal and his travelling players. The Kendal family acted in the film which was produced by Ismail Merchant, directed by James Ivory and written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The music was by Satyajit Ray. For her performance in the film Madhur Jaffrey won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival.
The Gaiety I'm informed has now been enlarged and renovated. This is very good news indeed. I left Simla many years ago but Simla has not left me.
(Reginald Massey lives in the United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London)
