Myths of Shimla's Mall and Scandal Point

I have received calls from friends asking about the origin of the word ‘Mall’. These enquiries have been tied to Shimla’s eponymous and famous promenade. A little bit of truth, mixed with a substantial amount of falsehood, has been passed around somewhat convincingly and seems to have been quite effective. This is still doing the rounds like a never-ending wheel on the Internet and on that fount of infinite knowledge, ‘WhatsApp forwards’.

One claim was that the word ‘Mall’ is an acronym for ‘Married Accommodation Living Lines’. In some, the word ‘Married’ has been substituted for ‘Military’. Well, the military had its lines at a considerable distance from Shimla’s Mall and unless the living was done under shop counters and in drawers stuffed with linen, the story is as false as many of the others that have been connected with the street. That is not to say that people did not live on the Mall. Many shopowners or bankers lived above their commercial premises. These shop-houses were something that gave the place much of its character and ensured that the Mall remained lively even after the banks had closed, and the shops had pulled down their shutters. It did not seem like the deserted places that Chandigarh’s Sector 17 or New Delhi’s Nehru Place become after shop hours.

Across India, apart from Shimla, many colonial towns or westernised expansions of older cities had a Mall — Lahore, Amritsar, Mussoorie, Kasauli and Darjeeling, to name just a few. While the process of transfer of the word ‘Mall’ from England to far-flung former colonies, taking on the role of a ‘high street’, remains open to calculated conjecture, there is no doubt that it originated in London. There is the kilometre-long Mall that connects Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square and continues to serve as a ceremonial route. The second, also in London, is the famous and fashionable Pall Mall, which goes back to the 17th century and is lined with smart shops and clubs. Both owe the origin of their names and purpose to the game of ‘pall-mall’, or ‘pell-mell’, a precursor of croquet and played with a ball and mallet. In turn, the English word for the game is derived from the Italian pallamaglio, meaning a ‘ball and mallet’.

Other whiffs of false news, fake stories and accepted reality have also meandered over the Mall. One being that no Indians were permitted there. Any number of old photographs belie this fact. Also, there was an overwhelming number of Indians who owned shops and other establishments and almost all the staff were Indian. This, however, does have a small ring of truth. There was a municipal bylaw that proclaimed that no job-porter or ‘coolie’ would ‘solicit employment, loiter or carry loads’ during the evenings on specified streets — including the Mall. This bylaw was twisted to include ‘ill-dressed’ Indians and later, to khadi-clad freedom fighters, who would be hustled off the street.

But perhaps nothing has been as accepted as the multiple myths of Scandal Point. Sadly, the most salacious story of them all is that there was no scandal. When the soon-to-be-famous Rudyard Kipling came to Shimla, the ‘summer capital’ of India, he wrote of its glittering social swirl and endless gossip. He created a world that was part-fiction, part-fable and part-reality. Those word-images are still with us. In 1888, Kipling’s story ‘The Education of Otis Yeere’ was first published. Of his creation, two characters appear in the story. There is Mrs Mallow and the formidable Mrs Hauksbee, who “…was sometimes nice to her own sex”, while she had “the wisdom of the Serpent, the logical coherence of Man, the fearlessness of Child and the triple intuition of the woman”. It is in this story that the phrase ‘Scandal Point’ first appears in print: “Your salon would become a glorified Peliti’s,” says Mrs Mallow, “a ‘Scandal Point’ by lamplight.” From this moment on, this phrase from Kipling’s pen enters perceived reality and with passing years, steadily gathers more stories.

Going by the popular tale, a Maharaja of Patiala carried off a British Viceroy’s daughter (or wife) from this spot on Shimla’s Mall. The Maharaja in question, at the time of the supposed incident, wasn’t born and if he was, he would have been an infant. Years ago, as now, little or large gatherings have sorted out the world at this crossroad and exchanged gossip. Within the course of a conversation, governments have risen and fallen on ‘Scandal Point’. There is hushed talk of ‘who ran off with whom’ and ‘who would like to run off with whom’. In a word, ‘scandal’.

The so-called connection with Patiala probably stems from the fact that the Patiala durbar had a ‘Vakilkhaana’ in the Middle Bazaar, just below ‘Scandal Point’. Here, employees of the Patiala durbar worked and conducted the sundry matters of this influential princely state. In 1929, 10 disgruntled citizens of Patiala drew up a list of charges against the Maharaja. The British Viceroy of India, Lord Willingdon, cleared the Maharaja of all charges. Employees at the ‘Vakilkhaana’, like many others, would probably sun themselves and air their views to anyone who would care to listen. With this incident, both the Maharaja and ‘Scandal Point’ have passed into urban legend.

— The writer is a Shimla-based author