SHIMMYING IN UMBRELLA LAND
The colourful madness of Shimla’s buzzing streets acquires a unique charm when experienced through a drizzle
While in Shimla, a dozen sensory delights clamour for your attention at every turn. Marvel at embroidered cloth patches that fold up into loose change purses. Or deride youngsters shimmying down the road as music plays out loud on their speakers. People in rain ponchos and coats in bright pop shades make for a quaint picture. Soak in the bustle of brightly lit showrooms and cafeterias. Observe a garment seller proudly claiming that her umbrellas sell better than her garments do, and a toy seller turned storyteller for the sake of business.
Speaking of umbrellas — they seem to be a recurring motif in this particular trip. Shimla’s Lower Bazaar, which, at present, is swarming with umbrellas — of all shapes and sizes and colours and closures. Even the Ram statue that our hotel window overlooks has one — a chhatra (a convex crown).
Up the slope, by a view point — obviously called View Point — is an amphitheatre of sorts for open-air performances. Nishan (the Sikh Khalsa emblem) flags flutter with revolutionary fervour. But the stage, at the moment, belongs to the Her Highness
The Wispy Mist. The rickety state transport buses negotiating a whiteknuckled bend far away, a dizzying stacking of hotels, and the sky made radiant by the setting sun, form the perfect background for the billowing god.
Bun sticks, pencil boxes, wind chimes, crocheted handbags and myriad trinkets abound on Mall Road and the Lakkar Bazaar, and lend the scene the sense of a fond past. Nostalgia has indeed permeated the soul of Shimla: The Maria Brothers is an antiquarian bookshop as old as our independence. The Town Hall, with its magnificent stone cladding and bright wooden panels, hosts an exhibition on Sikh history. The Scandal Point has its own history of elopement — it is said to be where the Maharaja of Patiala ran away with a... let’s settle for gori mem?
Two days is turning out to be too little to discover Shimla, especially if you take a minute look at everything and take breaks to indulge your palate. But thanks to the rapport between the Mall Road, the Ridge and the Lower Bazaar, nothing is ever too far away. Short-cuts in the form of several steep flights of steps interlink the three. One flight will whisk you right into the heart of the Mall Road from the bustle of the Lower
Bazaar. Another takes you smack at the entrance of the famous Trishool Bakery.
The pretty little café and cakery’s Colombian Brew sure is invigorating in this drizzle, but the pastries are the best bit. Saunter forward on Mall Road to check out handmade leather shoes at Ta-Tung, the Chinese shoemaker. Eventually, one reaches Sardar Patel’s statue where the Mall and the Ridge unite. Further up, the Ridge can be summed up thus: visiting humans, resident monkeys, photographers and horses for hire, and the Christ Church.
If not a generic Google search, the throng at the Church is enough to tell you that it is the most visited place here. Walk over to the eastern side and take in the sweeping rhododendron and deodar-swathed hills. Continue on the street behind for Lakkar Bazaar, the wooden crafts market.
Back on the Ridge, we head to the Kali Bari, which houses goddess Shyamala, who apparently has given her name to Shimla. Beside the vibrant Kali temple, the premises also house a Shiva temple, a curious white structure that looks, at first, like a spaceship, then a bullet... and finally, like an umbrella?