Don’t you ever wish that you could step into your favourite story: visit the forbidden forest at Hogwarts or stroll through the grounds of Pemberley, where Elizabeth’s feelings for Mr Darcy undergo a change. In India, some enthusiastic storytellers have made this possible by offering curated tours based on books that have regaled generations. Also, there are some bibliophiles who have taken matters into their own hands and are visiting landmarks mentioned in their favourite books.
On a Malgudi Trail
“RK Narayan was all around me during my childhood,” laughs Priya Sukumar, a Chennai-based businesswoman. “My mother did her research on Indian writing, especially on Narayan. So I grew up to be one of his biggest fans.” Little did she know that the delightful world of Malgudi so vividly imagined by Narayan would come to life in the city of Mysore. One-and-a-half years back when she and her husband, Sukumar Rajagopal, former CIO of Cognizant, visited the city, they got to know about the Malgudi tour conducted by the Royal Mysore Walks and they couldn’t wait to experience it. Specialists in offbeat travel experiences, the team has been trying to draw parallels between Mysore and Narayan’s fictitious town and has conducted 30 such Malgudi Days tours so far.
According to Vinay Nagaraju, partner in the company, being a resident of Mysore, Narayan had the opportunity to study real-life characters in the city. His stories were influenced and inspired by many of these. “For instance, there is a printer’s shop like Sampath’s in the city. There are also similarities between Malgudi’s Lawley Statue and Commissioner James Gordon’s statue at the Mysore DC Complex.
The four-hour tour is conducted in a vintage open-top jeep and ends with a hot cuppa at a cafe called Malgudi, which has caricatures inspired from the book sprawled across the walls.
“The tour also offers a glimpse into the life and times of Narayan. For instance, one can see the banks of a lake where he used to write, the college where he studied and more,” says Sukumar.
Following in the Footsteps of Bond
For bibliophiles the line: “The Name is Bond” usually ends with “Ruskin Bond” rather than the ubiquitous “James Bond”. Generations have grown up reading about The Adventures of Rusty, Room on the Roof, Angry River and more such colourful stories set in the bustling towns of Dehra and Mussoorie. In the autumn of 2005, Dr Lopamudra Maitra, a Pune-based anthropologist, and her husband decided to embark on a Bond-inspired tour. “We started by visiting Bond’s cottage in Landour; then picked up his Landour Days and walked around Dehra and Mussoorie to find the landmarks mentioned in it,” she says.
The couple visited the famous Clock Tower, located at the beginning of the bazaar and a number of tiny curio shops on Mussoorie’s Mall Road, which were mentioned in the book. “We even ate at the hotel that he has written about in a lot of his books and went to the Cambridge Book Depot which he visits regularly,” says Maitra. They were, however, unable to find his old house in Dehradun where his grandparents used to stay.
The Stories of the Raj in Delhi
The capital city offers a treasure trove of tales about the last days of the Mughals and the rise of the British Empire. Curated guided tours are now being offered around the city, based on books that focus on this period of Delhi’s history – starting from 1857.
Delhi Heritage Walks has done a walk based on SR Faruqi’s Kai Chand tha Sar-e-Aasman, which depicts India of the 18th and 19th century. “The protagonist is a woman and a resident of the city, so the walk offers a perspective of 18th-century Delhi through her eyes,” says Kanika Singh of Delhi Heritage Walks. The team picked up places like Ballimaran, Red Fort and more where the story would retain.
Similarly, we did a walk around William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal. The city still has remains from 1857. As part of this we went to Thomas Metcalfe’s house and the place where Master Ramachandra of Delhi College fame is buried.
Another such guided tours company is the India City Walks that curates trips to showcase heritage, culture and city life across India. The team picked up Besieged: Voices from Delhi 1857, that depicts lives of the common people, soldiers, potters, spies, faqirs, doctors and many more, all trying to live through the turmoil in the city.
We included locations such as Nicholson’s cemetery, named after a British commander, the European enclave of Kashmiri Gate, and the house of David Ochterlony, now part of Ambedkar University Campus and believed to have been built on the remains of Dara Shukoh’s library.
– Sachin Bansal, Chief Explorer
(Avantika Bhuyan is a freelance journalist who loves to uncover the invisible India hiding in nooks and crannies across the country.)
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