Jaskiran Chopra’s book, Memories of Another Day, is a fascinating trip that reflects vignettes from a person’s life, growing through the magical Seventies and Eighties in Dehradun, writes Lokesh Ohri
The Doon Valley evokes in those that have spent their youth here, a sense of nostalgia, which perhaps no other place can. Yes, everyone feels attached to their hometown, but a valley like the Doon, with its leafy arbors and blissful nooks has this special ability to tug at your heart strings in moments of separated solitude. Small wonder then, that someone like Rudyard Kipling described his little hotel room tucked away in Rajpur as a “lordly pleasure home”.
Ruskin Bond has been lamenting the trees his grandfather planted in their home on Old Survey Road, ever since he began writing. The lament has transformed into a wail with the present state of affairs in the burgeoning temporary capital, invoking sentiments such as, “Dear old Dehra, I may stop loving you, but I shall never stop loving the days that I loved you.”
Almost half a century after Bond’s first literary venture, Room on the Roof, describing his coming of age in the valley, comes Jaskiran Chopra’s book, Memories of Another Day. Stringing together little nuggets from her days in her valley of remembrance, the author once again brings home a realisation that besides that natural magnificence that once suffused it and now occasionally surrounds the denizens of this valley, it is the seemingly inconsequential stuff — the familiar fragrances in the bylanes, the relationships one forges with the tea seller on that specific turn of the mountain road or just the simplicity of the people one encounters while walking through it, that makes one long to return.
To me, the possibility of running into someone who offers a refreshing perspective on life while walking through the valley, remains the biggest prize that living here offers. I am tempted to narrate the tale of a rendezvous with a shepherd on the road to Thano Top a few days ago. I saw a man calling out to his sheep. “Where are you coming from?” I asked. “Harsil,” he responded with a straight face. “Harsil,” I gasped, “You mean you walked all the way, from close to the mouth of the Ganga, hundreds of kilometres into the mountains?” “Yes, what else can you do with 300 heads of sheep?” “But aren’t you scared of leopards and snakes?” “No, we have dogs, that’s the way we live. We do it every year.”
Even though several men have written about Dehra, what makes Chopra’s work so special is that it is perhaps the first time that a woman has decided to unburden her soul with outpourings of affection for this “cup” in the Himalayas, the Valley of Dehradun, that people like us call home. And on reading Memories… it becomes evident that the cup has indeed begun to overflow with descriptions ranging from those of rickety chairs of a cinema hall or the pink and orange of the autumn skies. In times that are overawed by the glitz of malls, only a daughter of the hills could have noticed the “mehndiwallah” in the street corner and given him a voice in her writings. Chopra follows in the time honoured tradition of Ruskin Bond with her simple yet elegant prose, talking about her life and times in the Dehra or the camp of Guru Ram Rai. Her protagonists are not lofty characters but common folk we tend to ignore. It is these characters that have the most uncommon tales to tell.
Yet, the book is not just about Dehradun. Jaskiran writes of her many loves, tea, reading, Urdu poetry, Hindi cinema and its music with rare candour and intense longing. To her, these little loves bring to life voices from the past that was perhaps more fulfilling; a past where people had the time to live and love and to share their little joys and sorrows. It is this concern for the change around us, which, she and I are convinced is definitely more for the worse than good, that is so reflected in her oeuvre. On our last meeting over a cup of tea, in the warm glow of the afternoon sun in Dehra, we found each other’s convenient shoulders to cry on over the spilt milk of disappearing landmarks of the country, the Fact and Fiction Bookstore in Delhi and the Rhythm House in Bombay (not Mumbai!). For her, change is something that is being embraced today for the sake of it irrespective of whether it can enrich our lives in any way.
The Doon Valley with its younger sister, Mussoorie, a little up the hill, has always been home to quirky characters. They notice birdsong and happen to be friends with Tughlaq, the adjutant’s mount at the annual Passing out Parade of the Indian Military Academy. They prefer letters to e-mail and get sentimental over the school uniform they outgrew several years ago. Jaskiran is indeed one of them and it’s amply reflected in her work. But time has a habit of moving on, and she’s at ease with the constant change. “Life has passed”, she says, “But these moments are all there. I have been carrying them inside me and will always do…more moments are added to memories. Memories keep growing in number. Are we here only to gather memories?”
The book is recommended for all those in the business of collecting memories in the Dehradun and Mussoorie that once were. Through her stories, firmly rooted in contemporary times, Chopra conjures visions of times when the hills reverberated with the hooves of horses and dainty women sat in dandees to take the ride up the hills. She brings to life the whispers from amongst the pines that spoke softly of love and the clip-clop of the tonga, trotting in the winter sun over the chipping tar of Inder Road. What her book achieves in an understated manner is the romance that springs from a lover’s pining for her lost beloved.
Despite the underpinnings of nostalgia that are so much a part of this book, it does not end up being a tear jerker in any manner. In fact, it is a fascinating trip that reflects vignettes from every individual’s life, growing through the magical seventies and eighties. Respect and affection for teachers, swooning over stars, getting a little weak kneed when someone recited Faiz or craving for bun-makhan in the hills may be passé for today’s teens, but never fails to evoke memories of another day for some of us.
The reviewer is Founder, REACH, Director-Programmes, Virasat, Convenor, INTACH, Dehradun, and CEO, Been There Doon That?