On five of the six days that we were under voluntary captivity at Mashobra we managed to sneak out to Shimla for a couple of hours in the evenings after the training sessions ended. The training sessions went on every day right from half past eight in the morning to half past five in the evenings leaving us with just a few hours for ourselves. And those few hours we chose to spend in Shimla which was about seventeen kilometers away. With my two room-mates we worked out a deal with Deep the cabbie- for five hundred bucks he would ferry us to and from Shimla. Another person and our share would come down so we looked for a companion to take along.
On the first visit to Shimla we couldn’t see or do much because it rained. We just checked out Lakkad Bazaar and the famous Mall Road. We were soon huffing and puffing from walking up and down the sloping roads. The one good thing about Shimla was that no vehicles were allowed on some roads especially the Mall Road. Shimla is charming and quaint in a way. It has an old world feel about it that I found attractive. The place was neat and orderly in the way very few tourist places are. No one hurried about like in Hyderabad where the people rush as if the world is coming to an end.
There were a lot of things about Shimla that struck me as odd. There were no diesel cars around and all cabs seemed to be Maruti 800 cars. Another thing that struck me was that there were no fans anywhere in Shimla. Our rooms in the hostel too did not have them. Obviously, there is no need for fans or air-conditioners in such a climate. When I am in a new city I immediately compare it with Hyderabad. Needless to say there were too many differences between these two cities but one thing that stood out was that I did not see a single beggar in Shimla. Nor did I find anyone doing all those things that we Hyderabadis specialize in.
On the Mall Road we gawked for a while and just before we were headed back I found the board of a bookshop – Maria Bros. It was a shop selling antique, rare books, maps and such stuff. I wondered how I missed it. We returned to the Indira Gandhi Medical College where our cab was waiting for us. Maria Bros would me my first stop the next day.
The next day (Tuesday) it had rained early in the morning and later in the afternoon there was a hailstorm which brought down the temperatures to a level that my teeth started chattering. Sometime later it became sunny but the temperature remained the same and so we hurried to the room to change before rushing to Shimla. This time we had a companion in the cab who would be a permanent fixture for the rest of the week. It was the nattily dressed officer from Sikkim- Pronnoy Dewan, a well read and lively person. The first thing I did on reaching Mall Road was buy a jacket that I did not take off until I got into the bus to Delhi on Sunday morning. After buying the jacket we had momos, the first time I had momos. They tasted quite nice but Pronoy informed us that the momos that the Tibetans make are the best ones. There were Tibetans on Lakkad Bazaar selling clothes, bags, footwear in a row of tiny shops on the road. The Tibetans were polite and grateful that we had bought stuff from them.
On the next day the trip to Shimla was a sightseeing trip sponsored by the institute. We saw the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, a well maintained colonial building where the Shimla Treaty was signed. The conducted trip was way too short and before I knew it we were out of the building. Then the moment I was waiting arrived when we reached Mall Road. I headed straight to Maria Bros and discovered a lot of fascinating stuff- old books, magazines, maps and other stuff dating back to the 1850s. In fact I saw stacks of bound copies of ‘Punch’ magazine of 1850 and whereabouts. There was nothing I found interesting though I felt the store itself was interesting. It looked like an ancient store itself. The owner Rajiv Sud sat silently in a corner and graciously agreed when I asked him if I could take pictures of the store.
That wasn’t the only bookstore in Shimla on Mall Road. There were two other stores selling second hand books but I found nothing to buy at either of the stores. It was quite a disappointment. Somehow it did not strike me to ask the Maria Bros guy if he had any fountain pens with him. After the shopping we strolled on the busy Mall Road and Ridge (?) checking out the brightly lit church, bought peanuts from a vendor and watched the crowds. We bought shawls from Ram Lall and Sons. On one of those days we had Chinese food at a hotel on Mall Road whose name is I guess China Town. But I remember that the Chop Suey was out of the world. Later we had tea in a small local shop which had an ancient wall clock. We returned to the hostel quite reluctantly but those were evenings I would never forget.
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