Kullu Dussehra: An Introduction

Imagine a Dussehra where nobody tries to prove “my Ravan is bigger than yours”. There’s no staging of the Ramlila; children do not play with swords, maces, bows and arrows, and the victory of good over evil does not translate into noise and smoke.

You can see this Dussehra in Kullu.

The Kullu Dussehra is deservedly famous, but few know that it is nothing like the festival most of us celebrate. For one, it does not end on Vijay Dashami, but only starts on that day to go on for a week.

It is certainly connected to the legend of Lord Ram’s victory over Ravan, but that event is not central to it. Rather, local lore has shaped the celebration of Dussehra in the Kullu Valley for the last few centuries.

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The Kullu valley’s history goes back thousands of years. In ancient times this region was called Kulanta, which means the end of the habitable world. Of course, it was not the end of the habitable world. Lahaul-Spiti lies beyond it, and after that there’s Tibet. But the people of the plains thought Kullu was too inaccessible and their kings didn’t bother to invade and annex it.

And so, as is the case across most of Himachal Pradesh, the tribes and villages had their own local devtas or gods.

(Watch this video to see more Kullu Dussehra photos)

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Even a thousand years ago, the organised Hindu religion had not made much of an impression in Kullu. But things started changing slowly as Muslim invaders uprooted the Rajput kings in the plains. The Rajputs then tried to win new kingdoms in the hills and so brought the Hinduism of the plains to them.

One of these conquering princes came from the Haridwar region. His name was Behangmani Pal, and he founded the dynasty that ruled Kullu till the Independence of India.

Now, Behangmani did not start the Kullu Dussehra. That honour goes to one of his successors named Raja Jagat Singh, a contemporary of the Mughal emperors Jahangir and Aurangzeb.

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Behangmani Pal used to worship the goddess Kali, and she is the family deity of the Kullu royals to this day. But since he was an outsider in the hills, Behangmani needed to win over the people, for which the best strategy was to win over their gods to his side. And Behangmani did this with a clever story.

If you’ve been to Manali, you would have seen the Hidimba temple there. Now this goddess was widely revered in the hills, and legend says she approached Behangmani in the guise of an old woman while he was walking to attend a fair. She requested him to carry her to the fair, and the young prince agreed to do so happily. He even promised to carry her back from the fair.

Pleased with his kindness, Hidimba assumed her giant form, and told Behangmani to climb on to her back. Then she said all the land as far as he could see from her back was his to rule. This legend sounds like just another myth, but it gave legitimacy to Behangmani’s rule, and his descendants have always revered Hidimba as Dadi or grandmother.

When the raja of Kullu sends out invitations to the village gods on Dussehra, Hidimba’s is worded as a request while the others are like polite royal orders. When Hidimba reaches Kullu from Manali, the raja himself or one of his family representatives receives her on the river bank. After that she goes straight to the palace that the royal family vacates for her stay.

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Coming to Raja Jagat Singh, who started Kullu Dussehra, he ruled during the years 1637 to 1672. This (2022) is the 350th year of his passing.

When Jagat Singh became king, Vaishnavism or the worship of Vishnu and his avatars Ram and Krishna was not common in the hills. The king himself worshipped Kali while his people had their own multitude of gods. But then something happened that deeply impacted the state religion of Kullu.

There are two versions of this story. In one, the raja coveted a string of rare pearls belonging to a Brahmin. In the other, he coveted the Brahmin’s daughter. In both stories the Brahmin kills himself after cursing the raja that every time he sat down to eat, he would see worms in his food and blood in his drink.

The raja was leading a tortured existence because of the curse when a Vaishnav saint named Bairagi Krishnadas Payahari, arrived in Naggar, which used to be Kullu’s old capital. He told Raja Jagat Singh he would be cured if he could arrange to bring idols of Ram and Sita from Ayodhya’s Tretanath Temple to Kullu.

The Raja sent off Pandit Damodardas Gosain on this mission, and after waiting for a year the Pandit was able to steal the idols. When the idols arrived in the Kullu hills, the raja washed their feet and drank the water or charnamrit, and he was cured.

After this miracle, Raja Jagat Singh became a Vaishnavite, and declared Vaishnavism would be the state religion. He declared that Lord Ram or Raghunathji would be the king of Kullu from then on while he would serve the god as wazir or minister.

Twelve years before his death, Jagat Singh built the Raghunathji Temple in Kullu. And shortly thereafter he started the annual Dussehra festival in Lord Ram’s honour.

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Just like the Hidimba legend had been Behangmani Pal’s masterstroke, the Raghunathji legend enabled Raja Jagat Singh to tighten his grip over Kullu.

We know that the hill people lived far away from each other in small, independent communities. They honoured nobody more than their local gods. When Jagat Singh declared Lord Ram would be the state god, the position of the village devtas became secondary. It became their duty to come to Kullu and pay homage to Raghunathji on Dussehra. And when the gods bowed before Lord Ram in Kullu, the people who carried them automatically had to bow before Lord Ram’s chief servant, the raja.

So, the Dussehra of Kullu is not just about religion and culture but also politics. It is a stroke of political genius. People of a more independent spirit, such as the natives of Malana, did not want to bow to the king, so their god, Jamlu Devta, refuses to accept the Dussehra invitation to this day.

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When Raja Jagat Singh built the Raghunathji Temple at its present site, Kullu town was called Sultanpur. It had been important since ancient times as a market. The Dhalpur Maidan, where the Dussehra rath yatra is held, was a meeting ground for traders from Tibet and the plains.

Later, the rajas shifted the capital from Naggar to Sultanpur and built their palace beside the temple. A day before Dussehra, when north India celebrates Ram Navami, the village gods start arriving in Kullu, and head straight for Dhalpur Maidan where they have their allotted camps.

But the day’s most important event takes place at the Raghunathji Temple in Sultanpur. Late in the evening, the idols of Lord Ram and Sita are taken out of the sanctum and placed in a swing for devotees to worship.

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The next day, Dussehra, begins with the devtas making a beeline for the Raghunathji Temple. While the temple is their first stop, they spend more time at the Rupi Palace nearby, where they are greeted by members of the royal family. The reception at the palace goes on for hours and it is very loud and colourful.

In the afternoon, the idols of Lord Ram and Sita are carried in a palanquin to Dhalpur Maidan for the rath yatra. Not only the ground but also the buildings around it are covered with people eager to catch a glimpse of the event.

But though the wooden chariot in the ground seems ready to move any minute, the rituals and the unruly devtas ensure that the yatra does not begin till almost 5 pm. But when it does, it’s over in the twinkling of an eye.

The police cordon falls apart as the devtas make a mad dash after the chariot, and suddenly the quiet ground becomes a sea of bobbing heads. This is an adrenaline moment, which explains why it has become the abiding image of Kullu Dussehra.

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For the next four days, there isn’t much to see, unless you care for the cultural events organised every evening in the fairground. The fair itself is mainly an opportunity for the villagers to buy whatever they need, from bangles to automobiles, but it’s unlikely to enthuse big-city dwellers.

The sixth day is again important because that’s when the devtas have their annual meeting with Lord Ram. And on the seventh and last day, the chariot is drawn to the banks of the Beas river, where dry bushes are set ablaze to signify the burning of Ravan’s Lanka. Then the chariot is brought back to Dhalpur Maidan, and Lord Ram and Sita are taken back to their temple in Sultanpur.

The Devtas disperse and the villagers follow in their wake.

Kullu’s week of glory is over.

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The American nurse who became maharani of Indore

Indore was a quiet little city in the Raj days. But on March 28, 1939, its young king gave it a surprise. His highness, the Maharajadhiraj Raj Rajeshwar Sawai Shree Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, told an assembly of his nobles, officials and subjects that he had remarried.

Yeshwant’s wife Sanyogita had fallen ill in Honolulu and died in Switzerland two years earlier, leaving behind their only child, princess Usha. So, Yeshwant’s marriage should have been joyful news, but there was more than one hitch in it.

For one, he had married an American woman. An ordinary American woman who had been his nurse at a Los Angeles hospital a year earlier.

Now, Yeshwant wasn’t the first Indore royal to marry a foreigner. Ten years earlier his father Tukoji had done the same. But Tukoji had already given up the crown to Yeshwant before tying the knot with his American bride, Nancy Ann Miller. And Nancy had at least made a show of converting to Hinduism. Her marriage to Tukoji had been solemnised the Hindu way in the presence of his subjects.

But Yeshwant had married away from home. He said he had married in Europe, but the truth was his marriage to Marguerite Lawler Branyen had taken place at Taxco city in Mexico six months earlier – in September 1938.

Why wasn’t he being truthful? What did he have to hide?

The truth was that Marguerite had been married before. Her double surname was a giveaway, but the Indore state’s publicity office insisted Branyen was her maiden name. She had been Ms Branyen before her marriage to Yeshwant, it said. And that was a lie. Her name was Marguerite Lawler. She had been a stewardess on the Union Pacific Railroad before she did a nursing course and married John Paul Branyen, a jeweller.

Marguerite was working at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles when Yeshwant suffered a severe attack of asthma and was admitted there in 1938. Marguerite nursed him to health and won his heart in the bargain. It was enough for him to describe her as “the lady I love from the heart”.

When he announced his marriage in March 1939 Yeshwant said he had married Marguerite for mental peace. In his own words: “Without mental peace I cannot properly discharge my duties as ruler.”

So Yeshwant left the hospital with love in his heart, and Marguerite on his arm. He hired her to be princess Usha’s nurse and they travelled together to Europe and India. Reports said she used to call him ‘Junior’, and the Oxford-educated maharaja of Indore was cool with that.

But the British government was not cool about Marguerite’s status. They weren’t sure whether she was legally divorced, and to avoid a scandal they refused to address her as Her Highness. At first, they even opposed her presence at official functions.

But Yeshwant and Marguerite got along well enough. Unlike Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala and Nina Grosup, whose wide age gap led to tragedy, Yeshwant and Marguerite were the same age. She arrived in Indore and forgot her American working class life for a while.

There was not a quiet moment in their life. There were daily parties, and they seldom went to bed before 2am. The day started at noon with breakfast at 2pm, followed by more parties and games. Yeshwant, who was known as ‘Indore Sport’, was an avid hunter and bridge player. He once boasted about shooting 154 tigers. Marguerite also notched up 30 tigers, 8 panthers and 1 bear in the three years she spent in India

But eventually, this aimless life got on her nerves. By some accounts the strain in their married life arose from her inability to produce an heir. Whatever the cause, Marguerite flew back to the US in 1942, never to return.

In California, she lived in a mansion that Yeshwant had built at Laguna Beach just before the second World War started. It was more fortress than home, and it was said he had built it as a shelter against the war for his family. The house had thick walls, windows barred with iron grilles, double doors and burglar alarms. It’s a heritage property now.

Yeshwant stayed on in India for about a year, during which he managed to lose his heart to another American married woman named Euphemia Watts Crane, also known as Fay Stevenson. Her husband Frank Arthur Crane worked as an American aviation employee in India. But Yeshwant was smitten and decided to marry Euphemia. However, he could not do that without divorcing Marguerite, so he flew to Nevada in May 1943.

Why Nevada? To obtain the infamous Reno divorce, of course. In Reno, Nevada, getting a divorce was as easy as ordering fries. All you needed was proof of residence in the state, and that was easy too. A six weeks’ stay in Nevada made you a bona fide resident for the purpose of divorce. Special resorts called dude ranches provided accommodation for this purpose, and Yeshwant stayed at the Palomino Ranch.

He checked in on May 23 and had to kill time till July 4 when his six weeks got over. The Detroit Evening Times of July 11, 1943 said Yeshwant rode around on a horse wearing Levis jeans and a chef’s cap but no shirt. He carried a fishing rod with him all the time and often fished catfish in the ranch’s private lake.

The 4th of July was a Sunday in 1943 so the Monday after was a national holiday. Poor Yeshwant had to wait two extra days to file his divorce suit. He alleged extreme cruelty by Marguerite and became a free man in the morning of July 6.

But he wasn’t the only one seeking a divorce that morning. Euphemia also ended her marriage with Frank Arthur Crane in the same court, and 10 hours later they were married and off on their honeymoon in Yeshwant’s car. They had planned to drive from Reno to South California but the car broke down one hour later in Carson City, forcing the newlywed royal couple to spend the night in the honeymoon cottage of a motel. Not quite a drive into the sunset.

It’s funny they had started on a long drive in the middle of petrol rationing due to the world war. Yeshwant had a gas quota for driving in Los Angeles city only. So, two weeks later when he made another trip from Hollywood to Las Vegas, the office of price administration suspended his gas ration for 6 months.

What became of Marguerite after the divorce? Although Yeshwant had accused her of cruelty, he left princess Usha in her care, along with the fortress mansion. Usha and Marguerite had become very fond of each other and Marguerite, although childless, was a good mother.

Marguerite lived in the mansion for some time but felt lonely. She said she wanted to become a part of America again. It wasn’t long before she met Charles Masters, six years younger than her, and a member of the US coast guard. Marguerite fell in love with him and decided to do her bit for her country. She volunteered for the navy’s emergency services training at Hunter College in New York, where she had to be up by 5.45am every day, have breakfast by 6.15, wash her own clothes and live with 10 others in a barracks

She had found the simple life she missed and was enjoying it. But Usha had to be sent back to Indore. Marguerite had brought a picture of Usha with her to Hunter College, and she told the press: “I was lonely, so I knew Usha would be too. But I am going to bring her back after the war.”

That didn’t happen but she married Masters to start the plain ordinary family she had always wanted. “I have never been so happy before,” Marguerite told reporters in 1945, adding: “We just want the same right to privacy and the same right to happiness that is the privilege of every other American couple.”

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Sultan Ghari: The oldest Muslim tomb in India

The Qutub Minar is Delhi’s most famous monument. About 6 km away from it, and not very far from the Delhi airport at Palam is another monument built by the same king who completed Qutub Minar. It’s called Sultan Ghari. Not ‘garhi’, which means a fort, but ‘ghari’ – a cave.

Before we talk about this monument, let’s quickly recap some Delhi history. Muslim rule started in north India in the year 1192, when Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan. But Ghori did not rule India directly. He left it in the care of his general Qutubuddin Aibak.

Aibak started building the Qutub Minar, which is named after him. But he died early. Then his general, Iltutmish or Altamash, became king in the year 1210. He ruled till his death in the year 1236. This is his tomb in the Qutub Minar grounds.

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Okay, back to Sultan Ghari in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj area. This little-known monument is important because it is the first Muslim tomb in India. I find this hard to believe because Islam had arrived in India in the 7th century. So, a few small or big tombs must have existed before Sultan Ghari.

But experts insist Sultan Ghari is the first. Perhaps they mean this is the first ROYAL Muslim tomb in India. On that point, we can agree with them because Qutubuddin Aibak died in Lahore and was buried there. So his tomb is now in Pakistan

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Now we know that Qutubuddin Aibak’s successor Iltutmish lived till the year 1236. But one of his sons, a  capable young man named Abul Fath Mahmüd, or Nasiruddin Mahmud, who was the governor of Bengal, died in the year 1229. 

Sultan Ghari is the tomb of this prince – Nasiruddin Mahmud – and it was built by Iltutmish himself. It was completed in the year 1231 – well before Iltutmish’s tomb – which indeed makes it the first royal Muslim tomb in India.

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We know that Mehrauli, where the Qutub Minar stands, was the real city of Delhi in the 13 century. So why did Iltutmish build his son’s tomb so far out of town?

Well, the area where Sultan Ghari stands was not such a barren and lifeless place in those days. About 250 years earlier, the Tomar king Mahipal had built a small dam nearby, due to which there was water and the place had become a large settlement. In fact Mahipal’s name lives on in the nearby Mahipalpur village to this day.

But we don’t know the original name of the Sultan Ghari tomb. The current name, Sultan Ghari, simply means ‘cave king’, and it was coined by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan – founder of Aligarh Muslim University – in 1846. I found this information in a scholarly paper published by an Archaeological Survey of India officer named S.A.A.  Naqvi in January 1947.

So why did Sir Syed call it a cave? Well, that’s because the prince’s body is buried in an underground chamber or crypt.

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When Iltutmish died, he was succeeded by a son named Ruknuddin Firoz Shah. He was a weak king and his nobles killed him after a few months. Then Iltutmish’s famous daughter, Sultana Razia, became the ruler for a couple of years, until she was killed by her brother Mu‘izuddin Bahram Shah, who became the next king, only to be murdered soon after.

So, Iltutmish’s line came to a bloody end. 

I am telling you all these names because the small tombs of both Ruknuddin Firoz Shah and Mu‘izuddin Bahram Shah are just outside the wall of Sultan Ghari, but ASI officer Naqvi wrote it was not clear which prince was buried under which canopy. As for Sultana Razia, her grave is in the Shahjahanabad area of Delhi, far from her father and three brothers. 

Only one of the small tombs has survived, and it has a proper dome over it, which means it was built much later. How do we know that? You see, in the 1200s, when Muslim rule had newly started in India, Indian artisans did not know how to make a proper arch and domes. So the domes that were built at that time turned out to be weak, and collapsed. That’s the reason why Sultan Iltutmish’s tomb does not have a roof.

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So then, who built the smaller tomb with a dome?

Well, who else but the Shahjahan of the 14th century, Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq. He repaired the Qutub Minar, and the Qutub’s top two stories that you see now are his work. He also built many buildings and repaired many old ones. In Firoz Shah’s time Sultan Ghari had become dilapidated, so he repaired and restored it, and also made it prettier. 

We know that Prince Nasiruddin Mahmud is buried in the white underground chamber, so what was the purpose of the fort-like building around his tomb?

Well, it was a madrasa or college. And by Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s time this college had been destroyed. Firoz Shah claims he rebuilt it and fitted it with sandalwood doors. He replaced the old pillars with stronger ones and plastered the court of the monument. The staircase at the entrance is also his addition.

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When you visit Sultan Ghari, you will see ruins of many buildings around it. These are the remains of the village that existed around it in the late Mughal period. They are not architecturally important, but a reminder nonetheless that the first royal Muslim tomb had a ‘subject’ population around it.

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Watch on YouTube:

How Indore’s famous stuffed leather toys are made

 

A hundred horses, each one with its forelegs in the air, are sunning on the terrace of Anil’s house. They are well-muscled steeds, and Anil’s year-old son totters towards them gleefully, but he is picked up halfway to them and the danger passes.

The sun is shining brightly after three wet winter days and all hands are busy making up for lost time. Pulp casts of elephants and camels are hanging from the tin shed. A boy is twisting wire into frames for making tigers, another is pressing a mould with paper pulp inside, a woman is pasting leather on to the dried and touched-up casts, and I am witnessing the birth of Indore’s lifelike soft toys.

When the toys are finished, they will be packed and shipped to the metros, and even to Australia and the US. Although a traditional craft, they are not much in demand within Indore city, and are mostly sold at a few shops around the old palace, Rajwada. However, Mhow, just 23km away on NH-3, is a big market with its cosmopolitan mix of servicemen and their families from all over the country.

Toy making is an old craft in Indore, but it changed in one important way a few decades ago. While traditionally the stuffed toys were covered with velvet, the city’s craftsmen now use sheep or goat leather as it imparts a lifelike quality to the animal figures. “The muscle tone shines through leather,” says Anil. It is skin, after all, but why not use the more common buffalo hide?

Anil says three qualities make sheep and goat skins ideal for this work: “They are thinner than other hides, and take the shape of the cast that they are stuck upon.” Secondly, he says, “They absorb colour very nicely, which is essential to make the animals look lifelike.” Finally, though they are expensive, their supply is abundant.

Leather is the only raw material that comes from outside Indore. While it is supplied from Hyderabad, the paper pulp comes from Malwa Mills nearby. In fact, the area around this mill has most of Indore’s 20-odd soft toy factories. The remainder operate from Scheme Number 78, Nehru Nagar and Marimata Crossing. As for the little things like eyes and hooves of animals, these are available in the old markets around Rajwada.

With the raw material in place, how are all those beautiful animal figures crafted? The process seems simple enough, with not a single machine being used. But it requires a high degree of skill, which the craftsmen acquire with years of practice. Be it a horse, tiger, camel, elephant or any other animal, they all start out as a wire frame twisted deftly inside a minute. The same hands then bind straw over this frame to create a rough form upon which paper pulp is moulded.

The first workman completes his job within five minutes, and then another presses paper pulp onto this ‘skeleton’ with a mould. Since the pulp is wet and tender, the figure is left out in the open to dry, for a day. The next day, before the pulp hardens completely, an artist touches up the cast animal by defining its muscles and checks for any serious flaws that might result in rejection later on. All this takes just 15 minutes, and after some more drying the piece is ready to get its skin.


The glue used to stick the skin on to the cast is also special. It is made from tamarind seeds, by first roasting, then powdering them, and finally boiling the powder. Sticking the skin onto the cast requires a lot of skill as several small pieces of leather are stuck and yet the final skin has to appear seamless. The pasting is finished within 20 minutes, and then the pieces are set out to dry in the sun again, for a day

The basic toy is now ready, but to be saleable it needs vital finishing touches, like painting and embellishment. This job is done not in the factories but in the homes of the workmen. Each toy takes a few minutes to finish, but the pieces are returned only after a day, when they are a sight to behold. Especially the horses, which return not only richly painted but also equipped with tiny saddles and reins.

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How Shimla got electricity early in the 20th century

The summer capital of British India had an acute water shortage, and electricity was needed to lift water with pumps. A hydel station at Chaba resolved the crisis

By the 1880s Shimla had electricity, but it was such a rare treat that even the viceroy, the most powerful man in India, had to use it sparingly.

When Lord Dufferin and his family moved into the brand-new Viceregal Lodge (now Indian Institute of Advanced Study) at Shimla, in July 1888, they didn’t have enough electricity to turn on all the lights at once.

“The upper part of the house is usually left in darkness when the lower is fully lighted, as the batteries are not strong enough to light up the whole brilliantly at once,” says an entry dated September 15, 1888, in the journal ‘Indian Engineering’.

That was alright. People were so used to their candles and fireplaces that electric lights were more of a party trick. There was no pressing need to install more dynamos for lights.

But there was another problem that soon pushed the administration to build a power station for Shimla – the scarcity of water in summer.

Parched capital

Shimla was cool and scenic, which is why the British had made it their summer capital. But it simply didn’t have enough water for all the people who descended upon it in the season. The local stream used to run dry, almost.

“The supply at times becomes so scanty that people have to wait an hour or more to fill their vessels, and European families have been sometimes put on an allowance,” says W H Carey’s ‘A Guide to Simla’, published in 1870.

The administration had built a pumping station on another small stream at a place called Cherot on old Shimla’s outskirts. It had a steam-powered pump, but by the 1890s this pump was inadequate. And adding another steam engine would have meant carting more coal from the plains, which was not economical.

The obvious solution was to use hydroelectricity. The Satluj, a major river of Punjab, flowed in a valley to Shimla’s west. The Pabbar, a smaller but perennial stream, flowed in a more distant valley to the east. The Satluj was the favourite, of course, but surveys showed taming it to generate power would have been too expensive.

“One of Messrs Siemens’s engineers has been examining the project for drawing the requisite power from Sutlej; but on account of the expense this project is likely to be given up in favour of another, which would draw the power from the municipal waterworks,” a trade journal called ‘The Electrical Engineer’ reported in 1892.

Waiting for an investor

Shimla’s municipal waterworks was based on a small stream called Nauti Khad. Major General Beresford Lovett and Arthur Pook had made a plan to generate electricity from it in the 1890s, but work didn’t start on it for almost 10 years as no private investor showed interest.

“The development of such proposals has been hampered by the difficulty of finding capital for the purpose, whether in India, in Europe or in America,” says the journal ‘Electrical World’ of July 1-December 30, 1909.

Tired of the delay, the government decided to hand over the work to the Shimla municipality, and construction finally started right after the monsoon in 1909.

Although Nauti was close to Shimla, the powerplant had to be built at a lower height for the water to gather speed to drive the turbines. So, a site was selected at Chaba, on the left bank of the Satluj.

Not ambitious enough

Looking back, it was a short-sighted plan. Based on their then current power requirement, the British thought generating 350kW at Chaba would suffice. Their surveys had shown that Nauti Khad had enough water to produce 745kW “even without damming or collecting water by reservoirs”.

At the second All-India Sanitary Conference held in Madras (now Chennai), during November 11–16, 1912, Shimla officials had claimed: “The gaugings of the Nauti show that at the driest time of the year, we may expect 28 cusecs (cubic feet per second) flow.”

But time belied their calculations. By 1918–19, Nauti Khad’s ‘minimum perennial flow’ had reduced to 19 cusecs, and in the summer of 1932, “The minimum discharge in Nauti Khad fell to 7 cusecs during daytime and 12 cusecs at night as farmers were lifting water for irrigation.”

Fortunately, just before construction started, the planners had decided to build a reservoir for the Chaba plant. They had also agreed to make the plant in two equal parts. There would be the initial 750kW plant with three generators of 250kW each, and then scope for adding three more turbines and generators for a total capacity of 1.5MW.

Nature poses a hurdle

When work on the plant started in 1909, the deadline was 1911. However, unstable slopes and other unexpected difficulties delayed the work. Only one of the two tunnels that would have carried water down to the powerhouse was ready late in 1911.

The second tunnel had run into a wall of solid rock. Special drilling machines were needed, so two challenges arose. One, to build a road to the site, and two, to keep the machinery small and light enough for transportation on the backs of coolies.

The machinery had to be sent from London, but the India Office sat on the order for 6 months, and when instructions went out to send it as soon as possible, labour problems started in the UK and the machinery was delayed further.

A genius in charge

By this time Captain Basil Condon Battye of the Royal Engineers had taken charge of the project. He is a very interesting historical figure. During the first World War he invented a hand grenade that became famous as the ‘Battye bomb’, and was used a lot in France. He also proposed and supervised the construction of the 48MW Shanan powerhouse on the Uhl river in Mandi district.

After almost four years of construction, the Chaba plant started producing electricity on July 15, 1913. It was a marvel of engineering at the time as roads had been built especially for it, hills tunneled, one hilltop flattened, and a tank dug. Even with the imported machinery the project cost Rs 13,20,264, nominally the same as a small SUV these days.

Many aspirations bloom

The Chaba plant had opened with three generators producing a total of 750kW. Power from two generators (500kW) was reserved for the new “electrically-driven turbine pump” at Cherot, and the rest was used to fulfill people’s modern aspirations.

Starting in 1912, electric streetlights had been installed, and government buildings and private bungalows had been wired up. Each street pole was fitted with “one or two tungsten filament lamps, controlled at suitable spots by hand or automatic time switches.” The lamps produced light equivalent to LED lights of 7-10 watts each.

In the early days of municipal electricity, Shimla residents were charged one rupee per month for every light point in the house. The charges had to be paid regardless of whether the lights were used all day or not at all. Still, “quite a large number of shopkeepers on the Mall are already availing themselves of it.”

Along with electric lights, electric heaters also became popular rapidly. Initially, heaters were imported from Britain and were very expensive, but later FL Milne, an engineer with the Shimla electricity department, designed, patented and manufactured “radiators, water-boilers and several other types of heating apparatus” at “half to one-third of imported heaters”. The Shimla municipality offered special low rates on electricity for heaters to bring down the cost of heating to the level of coal fires.

Dream of electric mobility

By 1914, there was talk of introducing electric cars also. Until then, the people of Shimla used to go about on horseback or in rickshaws. Petrol cars were not suitable for the city’s steep roads, but electric cars were expected to have better gradability.

In 1915, Indian Engineering wrote: “There is no reason why small electric vehicles should not displace the rickshaw in hill stations, where these are in general use. Electric vehicles are now on the market that will take most of the gradients found in and about Simla.”

The American journal ‘Electric Vehicles’ wrote in its January 1917 issue: “In view of the attention now being given to the development of the electric automobile in this country, it is interesting to note that the matter is also exciting interest in Simla.”

The plans for electric cars were surprisingly modern. Shimla’s administrators thought the cars could be charged at night when demand for electricity fell. Battye proposed an electric car that would be 10.5 feet long and 5 feet wide – slightly larger than the hill rickshaws. With a 10-horsepower motor it would carry “two people and a third on the dicky seat” and climb “any hill in Simla over which the wheels could obtain a grip,” He also proposed having a removable battery in the car – the same idea is today known as “battery swapping”.

Insatiable appetite for power

The cars didn’t materialise but Shimla’s hunger for electricity went on increasing. The Chaba plant’s 750kW output was inadequate by April 1916. So, a fourth generator of 500kW was installed. Another 500kW generator was added in the 1920s. The proposed sixth generator was never installed as Nauti Khad’s water flow had reduced.

The water in the Nauti reservoir had been enough to run the 750kW powerhouse for eight hours, but as the capacity increased to 1.75MW, it was just enough for three hours and 20 minutes.

I have been to the Chaba plant thrice – in September 2000, May 2004 and June 2016 – and seen its turbines running. It’s a pleasure to watch the ageless machines spin and roar under the care of the powerhouse staff. Chaba’s output may be negligible compared with Shimla’s needs but it’s a living reminder of the summer capital’s tryst with electricity.

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It’s been 109 years of electricity in Shimla!

 

Chaba power plant overlooks the Sutlej near Tattapani/ May 2004

July 15 is an important date in the history of Shimla. It was on this day, in 1913, that the city got municipal electricity. The Viceregal Lodge and important installations like the waterworks had their ‘dynamos’ for years, but on July 15, 1913, electricity became a convenience that the common resident of the British summer capital in India could apply for and get.

Shimla could plug in because a little powerhouse at a place called Chaba, down in the valley of the Sutlej, came on stream. It was the first hydel plant in the region, built over four years. With just three 250kW Siemens generators at the time, it produced electricity that might not suffice for the needs of a few AC-running housing blocks these days, but a century ago 750kW was so much power that engineers were rushing to their drawing boards thinking up trams and electric cars, and other uses for it.

In time, two bigger generators of 500kW each were added, and Chaba became a 1.75MW installation. All five of those original units still roar dutifully every day, evidence of their sturdy construction and the engineering skills of Captain B C Battye’s team that built the power house.

I have visited this little gem in the hills thrice, and each time I have come away feeling happy because not only does the machinery recall an older, unhurried world, but also the people who keep it going show a degree of attachment to it that you do not associate with ‘sarkari’ jobs. They are proud of it, house-proud, in fact, the way you would be of a colonial inheritance up in Shimla city.

First visit: September 2000

I was a rookie reporter with a new bike. Early one morning I rode to Tattapani from Chandigarh (160km), knowing only that the place had hot water springs. What I did not know was that it had been ravaged in a flood a month earlier. On the night intervening July 31 and August 1, the Sutlej had risen in a cataclysmic flood that’s expected to occur only once in 61,000 years. The news did not get the space it deserved.

For a few hours, the river’s level increased by 60 feet over the normal – the height of a six-storey building. The torrent washed away 20 bridges on a 200km stretch and killed 135 people and 1,673 cattle. Property worth Rs 1,500 crore was destroyed. Tattapani, which at around 650m is almost the last point in the river’s steep mountainous course, was lucky because the flood waters reached it early morning and the villagers were able to scurry up the hill banks. But the village itself was a mess. The receding waters left rooms packed with silt up to the window sills.

A month later, people were still carting away the sand. The school ground and every single street were still under a grey, gritty blanket. My five-hour ride seemed wasted until, on the way back, I spotted the sign for Chaba. I rode there expecting to be turned away as you would be from any other dam or power installation in this country, but what I got was a surprised and warm welcome.

The powerhouse had also silted up in the flood and had to be closed, but the workmen had got it going again within weeks. That afternoon they were cleaning up and repairing the yard and their officer gave me a quick tour with permission to shoot at will. I stayed only about an hour because home was far away, but it remains one of my dearest travel memories.

Second visit: May 2004

In May 2004, I went on a tour of Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district in my little Maruti 800. I chose to return by the Shimla road to revisit Tattapani and Chaba. On reaching Tattapani, I was surprised to find an arched concrete bridge being built over the river. Until then, there had only been a shaky suspension bridge of some antiquity over which vehicles passed one at a time.

The staff at Chaba was just as friendly. It was late afternoon and nearing time for all of the power plant’s five generators to come to life. Although it stands beside the Sutlej, the Chaba plant runs on water from a stream called Nauti Khad, and under full load (1.75 MW) the water in its reservoir lasts for only three hours and 20 minutes. So, through the day, only one small unit is run, while in the evening all five are turned on.

They turned on one of the big ones just to let me get a shot for the magazine I then wrote for. I walked around and found an old Chubb brass lock on a door, a ceiling fan with wooden blades inside an office, and a concrete bomb shelter built in 1942 that was being used as a store. The whole place was a living museum.

Last visit: June 2016

I passed twice through Tattapani in the monsoon of 2006 but couldn’t visit Chaba. The new bridge was ready and the old one had burnt down within a week of its opening, locals said. Its skeleton still hung over the fearsome gorge. But when I returned in 2016, not a trace of the old bridge remained. The turbulent Sutlej had become a vast lake because of Kol Dam that had come up downstream. It wasn’t what I had brought my wife and son to see. We turned back without stopping and went to Chaba.

The 4km link road to the hydel plant was busier, there were many new buildings and we drove past the plant without seeing it. Coming back, I found it a quieter place, desolate almost. Had it been shut down? We squeezed past the locked gate and found 3-4 staffers, and the same smiling welcome, and the same Chubb lock and the same Siemens generators. Everything working fine. Truly timeless.

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Why India had 10-year waiting lists for scooters in the 1970s

 

India is a major scooter and motorcycle exporter today. During April-September last year it shipped 22.5 lakh two-wheelers abroad. But back in the 1970s it didn’t make enough of these vehicles for its own use.

At the start of the 1970s the waiting period for a scooter in India was 7 years. With 2.6 lakh pending bookings and annual production of just 48,392 scooters in 1970, this wasn’t surprising.

If you booked a scooter before your wedding, you had school-going kids by the time your scooter arrived. And things got worse before they got better – by the end of the decade the waiting period had increased to 10 years.

Test Of Patience

Buying a scooter in the 1970s was a test of patience. It started with you writing an application to the dealer. Then you went to a post office, opened a savings account and made a security deposit of Rs 250. The post office gave you a passbook, which you submitted to the scooter dealer as proof of intent to purchase.

And then the long wait started. When your turn came after 7, 8 or 10 years, the dealer returned the passbook and “authorised” you to withdraw your Rs 250 to make the full payment. To check blackmarketing, you weren’t allowed to sell your new scooter in the first year of purchase without the state transport commissioner’s permission.

This procedure had been laid down in a 10-year-old rule called ‘Scooters (Distribution and Sale) Control Order, 1960.’

Shifting Goalposts

The scooter shortage had been building up over the years, and the only way out of it was to increase production, but the government’s policies and attitude made it difficult. 

Those days, any project that needed an investment of more than Rs 10 lakh in foreign exchange had to be cleared by the ministry for Industrial Development, Internal Trade and Company Affairs. In 1965–66, many industrialists had applied for permission to set up scooter factories in India, but the ministry sat on their applications.

Eventually, all of those private proposals were scrapped and the government came up with a new rule allowing private companies to make scooters only if they did so “without foreign technical know-how and without foreign assistance.” 

How was somebody with zero experience of automobile manufacturing to make a scooter without a technology tie-up? This rule was unfair also because Automobile Products of India (API) and Bajaj Auto had been making Lambretta and Vespa scooters, respectively, with foreign know-how, for years. And their components were still not fully localised. But the government said their licences were up for renewal in less than a year, after which they would be expected to make every part in India.

Despite this near-impossible condition of indigenous design and production, private businesses responded enthusiastically. By February 1970, there were 31 proposals before the government, but once again it sat on them. In May that year, then industries minister (later President of India) Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed said, “Within six months some decision will be taken.”

Scooters India Fiasco

But the decision that followed surprised everybody. The government announced it would set up its own scooter company “with indigenous know-how”. On May 11, 1970, Ahmed said in Parliament: “Jo public sector mein karkhana lagaya jayega, vah bhi yahin ke maal ke upar lagaya jayega jo ki hamare mulk mein banaya ja raha hai (all equipment used in the government scooter factory will be fully indigenous).”

For two years the government did nothing, and then, proving the absurdity of its own policy, it went and bought Italian scooter-maker Innocenti’s factory in Milan for $1.85 million (Rs 1.5 crore in those days at an exchange rate of about Rs 8 to a US dollar). It bought the “entire plant along with all auxiliaries as well as the technical know-how, including worldwide trademark and export rights… of M/s Innocenti, owners of the Lambretta brand”.

The government admitted that bringing a scooter to market from the drawing-board stage would have taken 7-8 years, so an outright purchase was the wiser option. It promised to make 1 lakh scooters every year to shorten the waiting lists. But that was wishful thinking as the first scooter from the government-owned company – Scooters India Limited – was not expected to roll out for at least two years.

Besides, in correcting one mistake the government had made another. It had sunk its money in a scooter that had lost the race to Vespa globally and was a distant second choice in India. As against 84,883 pending Lambretta bookings on March 31, 1970, there were 176,933 bookings for Vespa scooters. So Scooters India Limited never ran to capacity even in those shortage years. Instead, it ran up huge losses before it went bust. 

Queues Grew Longer

Meanwhile, the waiting period for a scooter went on increasing. A study group of the government’s Planning Commission estimated that 2.1 lakh scooters would be needed in 1973–74. The think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) said annual demand would increase to 243,000 scooters within eight years, by 1979–80. But yearly scooter production in 1971 was less than 70,000 units.

Once again, government policies were holding back production. API and Bajaj were allowed to make only 50,000 scooters each. When they  applied for permission to increase production capacity to 100,000 units each per annum, the government started reviewing their applications under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act.

As for the new companies that wanted to get into scooter manufacturing, the government told them it would grant licences based on “what price they are going to charge the consumer and whether they can efficiently manufacture the scooter or not”.

But the new licensees would also have faced the production cap of 50,000 scooters per annum, making it difficult for them to compete with API and Bajaj on price. So, the new suitors dispersed, Scooters India Limited disappointed, and the waiting period for a scooter in India gradually increased to 10 years.

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