Kavita EzekielLiving in a place for a long time, one tends not to delve deep into the history of the place, taking many things for granted. The extent of my knowledge about Mussoorie at the time I first arrived in the mountain town north of Delhi, India, was that this scenic hill station was a favorite of the British during summers before Independence, and Landour, where we lived, was a recuperative location for their soldiers suffering from the myriad maladies of the hot, dusty Indian plains.
Distance ignites curiosity about the stories connected to past homes on the hillside. Now that I have been away for the past twenty-six years, I decided to do some research about the town and find out more. The name Mussoorie comes from a shrub ‘Mansuri’, which is indigenous to the area. The town is often referred to as Mansuri by the Indians. I had heard the Garhwali workers at the school refer to Mansuri and I thought it was the name they used when speaking in the Garhwali dialect. I read so much of the interesting history that it lent even more of a romantic charm to the place where I had spent sixteen years of my life.
Our campus house was called Abergeldie Duplex, distinguishing it from other staff homes in the vicinity named Abergeldie Cottage and Lower Abergeldie. Our Abergeldie was about a ten-minute walk uphill from the high school where I was teaching. Everything on the campus was either uphill or downhill. One had to develop those mountain legs. There were two ways to reach the house. The first way to get home was the shorter route where you would huff and puff your way up the broken stone steps, past a few staff cottages and walk the narrow path before reaching home. The servants’ quarters were also located on the way. Their children would wave and call out to my toddlers as we passed by. You could hear the crunch-crunch of your shoes on the path beyond the steps that led to the gate of the house. The path was extremely narrow, and your body felt almost sandwiched between the overhang of the roof of one of the staff cottages, and the retaining wall above, on the other side. You had to duck low to escape bumping your head. Just above the retaining wall along the narrow path, was a cave, camouflaged by bushes. A dog once chose it to give birth to her puppies there on a heavily rainy day! Several trees graced the landscape above the gate, lending the scene an appearance of a forest! The occasional barks of the little barking deer and deep growls of the baghera in the forested ravines below would make our hair stand on end, freezing the blood.
The path did not end at our house. It veered sharply uphill to another house three hundred feet above. It was canopied with large trees whose overhanging branches gave it a mesmerizing air. Sitting on our verandah and gazing at it, I would find myself lost in a dreamlike reverie.
Or, to reach our home, you could take what the Beatles would call ‘the long and winding road.’ In this case, a long and winding gravel path to get home. In the Fall, the path would be full of leaves, and I once slipped on them while walking with a friend who was visiting us. Ironically, I was cautioning my friend to beware of slipping just before I myself took a tumble! In Summer, the path would turn red with fallen rhododendrons, and, signaling the end of the Monsoons, the snake plant with its clustered green berries on top of its head would turn red.
Two duplex houses stood side by side sharing a common courtyard with a pushta or retaining wall which was a characteristic feature of all the houses higher up on the hillside. The door to our house was painted green and had an old iron deadbolt latch on the outside and another on the inside. Coincidentally, the door to my home here is also green. It reminds me of my grandmother whose favorite color was green. In the courtyard, the clothesline with clothes flapping in the sun and well-beaten rugs slung over the pushta fence, added charm and a sense of homeliness to the outside. Flowerpots placed along the wall created the effect of a painting. Our children and the neighbor’s children rode their bicycles round and round, and colorful birds flew in and out of the surrounding trees. A baby owl once crashed into the fence. The children tried to revive it by giving it water but eventually took it to the Science teacher at the school lab. Monkeys were a permanent feature of the landscape. They came in two types: the more vicious being the brown rhesus monkeys and the large grey and black bearded langurs. Though generally pets were not allowed by the school rules, some staff had dogs and cats. They were beloved pets, and one dog became the school mascot. He often came and lay outside our door, with my little son lying on his neck with his bottle of milk! Dog and child were in perfect harmony with each other.
The furniture inside the home was included as part of our campus housing. A divan, sofa, beds, dining table and chairs, and a wood burning stove were already in the house. A red rocking chair added charm to the living room. The draperies and any other additions we wished to have were to be furnished by us. So, we added plants, wall hangings, cushions, Kashmiri carpets, a chandelier in the dining room, walnut lamps, and Kashmiri nesting tables. A samovar and an ornamental hookah were placed on the nesting tables. The television and a stereo ‘system’ with giant Sony speakers were bought later. Soon the house became transformed into a home in a few months. It felt warm and cozy. There was no desk in the house, so I marked my English essays sitting on the bed with a cushion, when the children went off to sleep.
There was a constant flow of staff, family and student visitors to the home. One year, we had a graduation after-party in our home. We moved the furniture to the outside courtyard to make room for the dancing and ease the flow of people to the dining room where the food was placed. It was an amazing gathering of students celebrating their final day at the school. Some had been friends since their earliest years. There was joy on the occasion and tears at the parting from friends. We were young then, and our connection to the students of that particular class fueled our enthusiasm to organize the event.
Home was not simply a geographic location for us but a place where memories were made. In 2005, we visited Mussoorie and the first thing we did was to take a walk up the hillside to the home where we had lived for sixteen years. Someone else lived there now, and there were new neighbors. We were back there with our emotions; it was as if we had never left. Everything seemed to be as it was years ago, and time stood still. I’ve lived in many homes in my childhood and after marriage; each one has a special place in my heart. They were not mere houses built of bricks and stone; they seem to pulsate inaudibly with life entwined with ours.
