History breathes on the winding roads of Shimla, where Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 60 years ago confabulated with Lord Mountbatten to work out details of independence from the British. And it was also in Shimla in 1972 that India and Pakistan sat across the table, 25 years after they attained nationhood, to discuss the dynamics of their future relationship after fighting a war.

Shimla, with its cool climes, has been the setting for many momentous events in India with the powers that be choosing it as a retreat - be it British rulers escaping into the hills of their summer capital for six months of the year, or leaders of modern India choosing the town for crucial negotiations like the Shimla Agreement between Pakistan's Z.A. Bhutto and India's Indira Gandhi on a July day.

The British discovered this picturesque spot, now the capital of Himachal Pradesh, way back in 1819 and word of its scenic splendor soon spread. British officers and their families came here from as far as Calcutta, the then colonial capital of the subcontinent some 3,000 km away, to escape the torrid heat.

Castles, churches and bungalows soon sprang all over the place. In 1864, it was declared the summer capital of the Raj and soon became a fashionable resort town.

In 1904, colonial India's Viceroy Lord Curzon finished building one of the most spectacular railway tracks in the world. The 96-km winding track with 103 tunnels rose from the plains in Kalka to Shimla (then known as Simla) at over 7,000 feet.

Sixty years after independence, the modern day tourist still uses the track to get to the town, where the imposing Viceregal Lodge is the first to hit the eye.

This sprawling neo-Elizabethan fortress in grey stone, complete with turrets and terraced gardens spreading across 110 acres, can entertain 1,000 guests at a time.

From 1888 to 1947, the Viceregal Lodge served as the seat of power and was the palace of the viceroy. Many decisions affecting the destiny of the subcontinent were taken in this historic building.

The most crucial were a series of round table talks prior to independence and partition between Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten.

In the heart of the town is the imposing and stately Christ Church looming into the thin mountain air. This landmark monument remains the most photographed building till date.

Close to it is the Gaiety Theatre where some of the finest theatre actors of the country performed during the colonial era. And not far is the mysterious Gorton castle among a host of other colonial buildings that this hill station.

Except for the clean, cool air much of Shimla has changed since the British left in 1947. The population of this quaint colonial summer capital has swelled in the last 60 years from a mere 20,000 to almost 250,000.

And then there are the many tourists who come here to escape the heat of the plains, much like in the olden days.

Tourist arrivals to the town have more than doubled in less than a decade to well over two million every year. Until a decade ago, holiday makers came mostly in high summer and deep winter but Shimla has now become a round the year destination.

This has had the inevitable fallout on infrastructure, water supply and electricity.

The spectacular colonial architecture marked by stone and deodar wood and slanting roofs which dominated the Shimla skyline during the Raj era has given way to high-rise concrete buildings, housing hotels, offices and residential apartments.

Sanjauli, the most crowded residential area that lies in the north of the town, for instance, was the size of a village 60 years ago but has exploded into an urban nightmare.

The grassy slopes in the last three decades here have seen only haphazard concrete buildings, turning this once open scenic spot on the Hindustan Tibet highway into a concrete nightmare.

Successive governments for some reason chose to ignore Sanjauli and kept it out of the Shimla municipal corporation and so building by-laws did not apply here. Before it was finally merged a few years later, the damage had been done.

Residents often complain they cannot remove their sick and dead in this congested locality, which houses a quarter of Shimla's population at over 60,000.

Still the crowds continue to pour in -- there are over 300 hotels and small guesthouses in the town always waiting to taken them in.

To ease traffic congestion, the government plans to bore three huge tunnels under Shimla's five hills.

And water will be brought in from the icy Pabbar river via a 180-km pipe that will cost Rs.5.43 billion.

It was another time in another age that Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem "The Plea of the Simla Dancers"; and then penned these lines about the town he spent every summer in from 1885-1888:

"My month's leave at Simla,
or whatever Hill Station my people went to,
was pure joy - every golden hour counted.
It began in heat and discomfort,
by rail and road.
It ended in the cool evening,
with a wood fire in one's bedroom, and next morn -
thirty more of them ahead!
The early cup of tea,
 the Mother who brought it in,
and the long talks of us all together again."

Some of that experience can still be had. 

August 7, 2007

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