India Pilgrimage to the Past: A selection of Writing (Hardcover, Pran Nevile)

Pran Nevile has conjured up yet another masterpiece from his vast repertoire of memories and anecdotes that stretch for over 70 years when India and were one country and the author was experiencing the bliss of youthful years. He saw Hira Mandi in Lahore where K. L. Saigal was idolized and the dancing girls who made the city the Paris of the East, with each evening wearing the halo of romance amid the fragrance of Jasmine flowers at the mujra which made the “mehfil” redolent with feminine grace and encores. The book has much to make the reader linger on it, for it is imbued with the nostalgia of an age when peace prevailed, there were no communal tensions and terrorist attacks. The grapes of Chaman, the apples of Samarkand and the dates of Iraq vied with sweet melons, mangoes and oranges produced locally and Naseem, the West Wind that blew for Hijaj nourished them. Nevile takes us on a kaleidoscopic view of the past when Simla was the queen of the hills and the satraps of the Raj thought it fit to function from it as the summer capital after discarding Calcutta during the hot months. British beauties congregated and so did Indian women whose grace enamoured even the stiff upper-lip British and made their memsahibs envious. Nevile has portrayed the Nautch Girls who infatuated the Sahibs and the Beauties of Punjab who put into the shade even the Imperial women of rank and substance who sought their fortune in distant India. Music has been dealt with by the author to portray the merriment and gay abandon of those times when chroniclers like Fanny Parks went ga-ga over the ambience of the East. Cooling tales from Raj tells about novel ways to beat the heat at a time when electricity was still to make its presence felt widely. In the absence of fans, desert coolers, ACs and radio the gramophone dished out the best music that TV was to emulate later. Sufiana music was still to catch the popular imagination but regaled select gatherings. Kashmir, the paradise of harmony and bliss then, the charm of South India, fairs like the one at Pushkar, the attraction of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Mica paintings and rare views of India are all captured in early snapshots. All in all, a great read. What else can one want from such a versatile writer who has seen 95 scorching summers and an equal number of freezing winters while inhaling the smell of the mud after the first showers during the rainy season in between?