The ghosts of a literary Indian hill town still haunt the writers of the present

The lychgate of the Camel’s Back Road Cemetery.

GULABI AND PAHARI

By Arup K Chatterjee February 20, 2017

“All hill-stations have their share of ghost stories” writes journalist Sheela Reddy. “But the Doon must be the only spot that can boast of so many writers, living and dead, who have turned their home into their muse.”

The Doon is a quiet valley of hamlets in the state of Uttarakhand, India. It is home to a nearly 200-year-old English literary tradition and many Victorian styled decaying structures. Of all its little townships, Mussoorie and Landour comprise what is arguably the most fertile literary territory in the country.

Well-known writers from the valley include the legendary octogenarian author Ruskin Bond; historian Ganesh Saili; Stephen Alter with his warmhearted recollections of an American boyhood in the Indian hills and intrepid romances; the travel writer and spiritualist Bill Aitken; and the thespian-turned-essayist Victor Banerji.

Around the mid-1820s, Mussoorie became the first sanatorium in British India. It was established by Captain Frederick Young, founder of the Sirmour Rifles regiment, who also sowed the first potato seeds in the valley.

While Rudyard Kipling seemed to be more partial towards his beloved Simla, Victorian writers such as Emily Eden, Fanny Parkes, John Lang, and Andrew Wilson gave us numerous literary and epistolary writings on Mussoorie.

Most of them became characters in the ever-expanding folklore of the valley. Some turned into the endeared ghosts that are said to haunt the region.

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