When I visited Mussoorie, the “Queen of Hills” last month, I had my lunch at “Green” restaurant which is still in the same place where it was located when we were in school. Why I say this is because many things in Mussoorie have undergone changes since then.
Kwality Retaurant has vanished just as it has done so from the Doon valley. The old cinema halls of Mussoorie have closed down and the many well-known shops of photographers can no longer be found. The famous Empire Store which used to be next to Chic Chocolate closed down many years ago and several small cafes have now given place to joints like CCD and McDonalds. Yes, slowly but surely, Mussoorie’s face has been changing since we knew it in our childhood.
However, Green has been there all these long years.Though I guess the ownership has changed hands and its look has greatly changed. This was a special place for my cousins and myself during the wonderful summer vacations we spent every year while we were school kids in Dehra Dun. We had most of our meals at Green though the staff of Neelam restaurant often tried to lure us (the two restaurants, located very close to each other, were strong rivals ) and asked us to check out Neelam . We were loyal “Greenites” and not once did we fall prey to the Neelam staff.
When I tried out “karhi- chawal” last month at Green, I must say I was disappointed .This was one dish which we waited for all week in those good old days. Karhi was not cooked every day and people waited for Fridays when they could savour freshly boiled rice with steaming Karhi full of yummy pakoras. It was the typical Punjabi karhi and not the thin and light Sindhi or Gujarati Karhi with vegetables instead of pakoras.
In those days, there were some special things written on the white wall of the restaurant with green paint in a blurb-like manner. We always used to read out these words and never got tired of doing so. Now I often wonder why we were so fascinated with them. Those days, the Yash Chopra film –Kabhie Kabhie – had been released and proved to be a blockbuster. So one of the “blurbs” said “Kabhie Kabhie Karhi bhi Banti Hai”. Another said “ Hari Chutney bilkul taaza hai” .And yet another one which I can recall was “ Adrak waali chai pijiye, thakaan door kijiye”. We had never seen such gems of wisdom displayed in any other restaurant and thus found them quite interesting. I asked one of the waiters the other day. He gave me a blank look. How was he supposed to know about these wonderful statementsIJ In fact,I just wanted to tell him about how Green looked at one time .But that would mean nothing to him.Those memories are mine and precious only for me.
I sat alone, looking out at the lane outside, and my mind kept going back the late seventies and the eighties when Green was part of our daily summer itinerary. The dosas, the omelettes, the chhola-bhaturas ,the gulab jamuns, the green salad, the raitas- we used to live on these amazing dishes that made us love Green. However, I now feel that what charmed us most was the homely atmosphere and the friendly waiters (we went there so often that they had to become friendly!).We knew all of them by their names asked them a lot of questions about their lives.
They enjoyed our visits and pampered us quite a bit.We could sit there for hours and they would not mind. Out of the window, we could see people on the Mall , shopping, walking, talking.That scene is still the same and made me nostalgic. The food was different, the owners have changed , the blurbs have gone, life has gone by .However, the very fact that the restaurant stands where it used to and looks quite a bit like what it used to in those years gave me a lot of joy and satisfaction. I recalled my cousins and our childhood . We were such regular visitors to the hill station that some of the people there thought we were locals ! Most of the shopkeepers of Mussoorie have shops in Dehra Dun too.
So we met them in both cities. It was a smaller world then and people knew each other well.Thank you Green, for bringing back lovely memories