Over the decades, Mussoorie, once known as the queen of resorts and the resort of Kings, a hill station where time once stood still and people experienced a rare tranquillity, has turned into a place which gives one the feeling that the rush and tumble of city life has made its way into the once quiet town and robbed it of its echoing silences. Its soul is now restless.
The jolly times of Mussoorie are long over. Even till some thirty years ago, Mussoorie retained its fashionable trends of live bands, beauty contests and X’mas carnivals. An extremely cheerful atmosphere prevailed in summer and tourists stayed for longer periods and struck lifelong friendships with other visitors to the hill station. The Autumn Fest in October was a great event which included cultural as well as athletic activities. It has now become a routine affair to which nobody looks forward. Over the last one decade or so, things have changed dramatically and the “weekend tourist” has taken over.
Though the crowds during the summer have increased, the air of liveliness and festivity can no longer be felt. “The fine gentry no longer visit us. Perhaps they want to avoid the traffic jams and the noise on the Mall,” says Naresh Vachani, an old resident of Mussoorie who runs the famous “Chick Chocolate” in the heart of the hill station. “But Mussoorie is now greener than it has been in a long time, thanks to the efforts of the Eco Taskforce.”
It was almost two hundred years ago (1823) when Frederick Young, the Irish army officer, founded landour and Mussoorie. lt. Young came to these hills for the sole purpose of bagging some game, peculiar to the hills. He was so enamoured of the surroundings that he decided to build a hunting lodge (shooting box) for his convenience. The shooting box had been set up in 1823 by Young and FJ Shore, who was the Joint Magistrate of Doon, on the Camel's Back Road. This can be called the first construction in Mussoorie. After that, Young built his residence in landour and named it “Mullingar” after the city of this name in his native Ireland.
The seventies and eighties were the heydays of the hill station with movies, fashion shows, beauty contests and live bands extremely popular. Morning shows at the various cinema halls were a great hit with everyone and so were the late night shows. Picture Palace was the very first cinema to have come up in Mussoorie. “The Electric Picture Palace”, to give it its original name, opened in 1912, soon after electricity came to the hill station. One of the country’s earliest cinemas, it survived for 90 years. Besides Picture Palace, there were many other cinema halls in the town namely Vasu, Rialto, Basant, Roxy, Capitol and Jubilee.
Says Vikas Hari, whose grandfather, P C Hari established the well-known Rialto cinema on the Mall Road in 1929, “The days of the cinema halls got over when people found alternatives like VCRs and later, cable TV. Till the mid-eighties, when people used to come with their families for long vacations, there used to be a crowd at the cinemas. Things changed a lot by the beginning of the nineties.” Vikas Hari ran the Rialto from 1995 till the time it closed in December 2002. Many of the old sprawling hill homes have vanished. Bungalow-styled Kenneth lodge has changed to pragmatic Mahajan Villa; Catherine Villa to monolithic Jas Apartments; turreted Fairlawn Palace to pin-cushioned Kamal Towers; tin-roofed Heaven’s Club to a characterless Shipra; brick-clad Madelsa House to a concrete Tibetan Nunnery; Kalsia Estate into Pearl Hotel & Shivam Hotel.
But tranquil landour (the old or the original Mussoorie) is a cantonment and has been spared any major changes. It is still idyllic.It was in 1826 that Young built the first home named “Mullingar” in landour. landour at 7500 feet, is largely unchanged. It is home to many celebrities like Ruskin Bond, Ganesh Saili, Tom Alter and Victor Banerjee.
Many impressive landmarks of Mussoorie town can no longer be seen. Among them is the landour Clock Tower (on the way from Mussoorie towards landour cantonment) which was demolished some years ago.
“Mussoorie came into prominence because of its easy accessibility and it is finally paying the price, in some ways, for being too close to the plains!”, says Ganesh Saili , a well-known writer. “But it is home for me and all those who chose it to be so. Those who went away from Mussoorie are the ones who want to turn the clock back. But we accept the town with all its faults and changes. It is the only home we know.”
