Tales from the lanes of Ruskin Bond’s Landour

Any visitor’s initial allure to Landour is, of course, its most famous resident — Ruskin Bond. During a visit, we spent an entire afternoon walking down its cemented lanes which were the first to witness the magic of his words, humbly giving way to the entire land to be etched in his stories.

Roaming around, we stumbled upon an artefact shop, which housed various antiques, embedded within which were stories, birthed around the same time as my grandparents or perhaps even couple of generations before.

It was as if time had stood still there, and yet you could find yourself mourning over the loss of every lost second, which had trickled down the hourglass. While I remained hooked to the remnants of past, my mother had found refuge at the adjacent shop which sold sandals, as the dusty antique shop had triggered her allergy.

The sandal-maker, with his white beard flowing down till his chest, submerging with hues of his kurta, sat on the floor of his shop, crafting a pair and smoking a cigar. I asked him if I could sit at the bench outside his shop. ‘Bilkul betaji, aapka hi hai,” he replied graciously.

As I watched, he sat there still, in the paralysed grip of time while the smoke from his cigar fleeted away like the moments which refused to be caged. Somewhere amidst this, a sandal was born.

Nainika Kishan, Chandiagrh