Dehradun Railway Station 1899

About two months ago I had gone wandering on a back road on one of my early morning walks and suddenly came upon some old red brick buildings of the Railways. If you were to enter the Dehradun Railway Station from the regular entrance, you would pass into the first platform, a number of rail lines and then you will see another platform. The buildings I am talking about are furthest from the entrance to the Railway Station, apparently built in 1899, well over a 100 years ago.



An abandoned shed (I thought I saw an old board reading, "Coaching Shed") caught my fancy and I spent quite a lot of time looking at it. Built of red brick with two great arched entrances, two engines or coaches could be parked there.

Here are the photos of that shed. I walked in and took a photo from inside and from the far side. It is amazing that this structure is still standing as a tribute to British engineering, long after it has become dysfunctional, like parliamentary democracy in India.

Although as a child we used the railways to go to school and come back, this happened only twice a year and I cant say that it gave us any great familiarity with the rail system. If we have any such familiarity, it is from the "yarns" we heard at night from children of railway engineers or administrative staff who knew all about how you had to build up steam and how you had to keep that fire burning by shovelling more coal. These boys often came to school with glass tubes used as a guage, which became "pea-shooters" using raw "cloggers" or hill guavas as projectiles.



I wandered out of the Railway Station and walked to Prince Chowk. From there I made my way back to our Guest House in Racecourse.

Hardip Sikund, Noted Educationist, Dehradun

On 29th May 2009, I took advantage of an invitation and visited Hardip Sikund, a senior Freemason and person of considerable professional eminence in Dehradun.

He lives at 7 Chander Road, near Welham Girls School in a bungalow which once belonged to an Englishman who retired from the Army Medical Corps and was a school doctor for many years.

The bungalow is in very good condition and maintained very well.

The compound has very old Litchi trees which Hardip thinks are on their last leg.

He took me for a guided tour of the bungalow and the grounds, then insisted I have a beer. Since I have been off liquor for almost 2 years now, I had instead a very delicious guava juice which he said was made locally.

I got the following passage off the website of the Indian Public School which appears to have been one of his last jobs. Hardip is in his late Seventies.







"MR. HARDIP SIKUND brings with him a wealth of both academic and administrative experience in schools of repute both in India and abroad. Mr. Sikund has rich teaching experience of over four decades. He has taught Chemistry, Physics and English to senior classes in school such as The Doon School, Dehradun; Wynberg Allen School, Mussoorie; Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC), Dehradun; The Lawrence School, Sanawar; Madhwani Senior Secondary School, Kakira, Uganda East Africa; The Aga Khan Academy, Nairobi, Kenya and Oswal High School, Nairobi, Kenya.

"During the course of his 40 years he has undertaken every administrative responsibility possible in a school. He has taken part in drama at almost professional level and has produced plays in most of the mentioned schools. He is socially accomplished and has been President of Rotary Club in Mussoorie and during his stint in Nairobi, he was also President of Lions Club there. He is a keen sportsman and loves playing squash."

I had Hardip's contact when I visited Dehradun for the first time and I must say he was warm and helpful and told me how to get to the Masonic Lodge which is on Beacher Road in the Cantonment. He even arranged for me to get a lift from Sumeet Nanda, an industrialist and the Senior Warden of Lodge Shivalik, Dehradun.

Hardip has a deep sonorous voice and delivers masonic lectures with the flourish of a Shakespearian actor.

Although he retired a long time ago, he keeps himself busy doing Physics and Chemistry tuitions and keeping in touch with friends on the internet.

Mussoorie is known as "Queen of Hill Stations" although having gone to study in the Nilgiris from 1955 to 1962, Ooty (Ootacamund or Udhagamandalam) has always been Queen of Hill Stations for me.

Mussoorie is just 32 kms from Dehradun where I am staying at present. I have done this distance by office car, taxi, bus (Rs.39 one way) and even scooter.

Apparently Mussoorie gets its name from a so-called "Himalayan Shrub" whose botanical name I havent been able to find as yet... a shrub called "Mansoor".

This morning I went for a walk to the Dehradun Railway Station and then through the Paltan Bazaar to Ghanta Ghar which is at the heart of the city. In Paltan Bazaar (Paltan is almost certainly derived from "Platoon" and means army or "fauj" in Urdu although I dont have my Hobson Jobson dictionary of Anglo Indian words at hand... I did a search on Google but not much luck in the limited time I have. In Malayalam and Tamil we hear the word "Pattalam" for Army which is probably derived from Battalion)

I passed a number of newspaper agents bundling their newspapers to be handed over to carriers who would take it to the four corners of the city. I pulled out my wallet to buy a news paper and was pleasantly surprised when the busy looking young man refused to accept money from me... "Complimentary Copy, Sir" he said... and I nodded in disbelief making a mental note to come on this route more often!

I am attaching a scan from The Tribune newspaper which talks about the Mansoor berry among others with names like "Hissar", "Kaafal" and "Kingod"... I am sure there is a legend behind each one of these berries... like "this one was fed to Sri Ram when he was wandering through the forest by this female devotee"... or something like that... its amazing how you can find a small island in the middle of any big river in India and it would invariably be called "Lanka"...

A friend wanted to know why I decided to call my blog, "Travel to the End"... nothing heroic there, just a take-off on Harry Belafonte's version of "Old King Cole" in which the Sergeant shouts, "March till the end"... It is also, I suppose a very old fashioned notion of the lengths to which one would go for someone!

Never too late

I must have been just 16 years old when I first heard Bob Dylan singing, "How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man..." (Blowing in the Wind)...

All of 20 years later, in 1983 I had walked down many roads and was about to start a new life at a little village called Bilekahalli outside Bangalore city. Our campus was new and built of regular blocks of grey granite. In the late summer light it looked like a prison facility although I knew that I was about to begin a new life once I left these grey walls.

I had a SONY Walkman and one of the tapes I had was Gordon Lightfoot selection... "Gord's Gold" it was... One of the haunting songs was "Carefree Highway"...

Pickin up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream
I wonder how the old folks are tonight
Her name was ann and Ill be damned if I recall her face
She left me not knowin what to do
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The mornin after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you

Apparently Gordon Lightfoot got the idea from a sign he saw just north of Phoenix, Arizona. The Carefree Highway intersects I-17, and leads to Carefree, Arizona, a small community north of Phoenix. (thanks to GOOGLE)...

Today I am still on that endless highway, and not worried if I am getting anywhere...

I am writing this from Dehradun in Uttarakhand State, North India. My nephew Roshan has been suggesting for quite some time that I start blogging... So here we are... this is the very first post on this site...