Other States - Uttaranchal   

Winter arrives, bringing cheers and dismay

C K Chandramohan

MUSSOORIE: Diwali -- the festival of lights -- abruptly ushered in winters in the region bringing cheers as well as dismay to many.

The worst-hit were the tourists who had come to celebrate the festival in the pleasant environs of Mussoorie; they were, however, greeted by rain, hails and chilly winds. As moving outdoors was ruled out, they switched over to merry-making in the hotels with the youngsters braving it in the chilly winds blowing on the Mall Road.

"We had come here to celebrate Diwali. But this sudden change in the climate has given us a very new experience that we could never dream back in Mumbai", said Santosh and his newly wed wife Sarika. Most tourists like C. Venkatesh and Sukhvinder Kaur from Chennai and Chandigarh respectively could be seen thronging the Tibetan market to buy woollens and eating hot `momos' with red chilly sauce.

The shopkeepers who had put up stalls full of crackers and fancy items were, however, feeling cheated as most of their stock could not be sold. "Now we hope to make up for the loss in the winters but the crackers will have to wait a full year to be sold out", said Sharad Gupta who runs a small shop near the Library.

The young local entrepreneurs like Subhash Rawat and Suresh Bijlawan who had hurriedly put up roadside stalls selling boiled eggs and steaming hot tea could be seen making a fast buck. " I do hope to make the tourists coming to Uttaranchal as happy as possible as I do not over charge even if the weather is hostile", quipped Rajender Rawat a fresh graduate who has put up a stall selling `choley and rajma' a few kilometres short of Mussoorie.

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Winter arrives, bringing cheers and dismay

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