Shimla

The Viceroy's Residence

    From the building above a fifth of the world's population was ruled up until the 1947. The Baronial style makes it look like it belongs somewhere in Scotland, reminiscent of a ritzy sort of private school or a manor house. In actuality it sits 2000m above sealevel in the hill station of Shimla, way up in North India surrounded by a mountainous landscape. The jurisdiction of the Vice Regal who sat within the building extended from the far edge of modern day Pakistan to the furthest side of Bangladesh, from the Nepali boarder down to the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The partition of India and Pakistan was drafted here, as were the terms of independence. Gandhi visited many times, as did Nehru. In some ways it was more important than Calcutta or Delhi.

A retro fire engine

  Yet for all its exotic history of subcontinent dominance central Shimla comes across as a slightly daft Victorian town suspended in the mountains. Mock gothic private residences, shabby hotels, a little library, a post office, a toy train that winds the five hour trip from the valley, a promenade that traces the back of the mountain where you can imagine the fine ladies wondering along a hundred years ago. It captures that quintessentially awkward and paralyzingly sentimental 19th century Britishness right down to an amateur dramatics society
     I happily watched a performance of this society at the theatre where I was delighted to see that the acting was terrible and the plot totally incomprehensible and bizarre - as everyone hopes from amateur dramatics. Something to do with a robot being stolen by Nazis or something. And the robot did a spot of really bad breakdancing at the end. Magic.

A perplexing part of the play when the robot was
imprisoned in what seemed to be a mosquito net