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Literary Review
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ANITA JOSHUA
Once Upon a Time in the Doon. Writings from the Green Valley, edited by Ruskin Bond, Rupa.
Apopular getaway from the plains till
the last decade of the 20th Century,
Dehra Dun has been ?attened out by
the "development" that has come its way;
courtesy elevation as capital of Uttarakhand
and all the ills that accompany such a
designation.
To outsiders, Doon appears no different
from another dusty U.P. town - bursting at
its seams - with some vestiges of colonial
rule, but it evidently retains some of its
charm for those born or brought up in what
was once known as the "Green Valley". For,
though they lament what has happened to
Dehra Dun and hark back on the good old
days, the memories of most of the contributors
to Once Upon a Time in the Doon. have
outlived the ravages of time. Being home to a
number of residential schools and institutions,
many of the contributors to this volume,
edited by Ruskin Bond, spent their
formative years in Doon. Though the changes
that have taken place in Dehra Dun - particularly,
along its main thoroughfare Rajpur
Road - are a recurrent theme, no brief was
apparently given to the contributors.
So, while David Keeling writes about Rajpur
Road, bureaucrat and once District Magistrate
of Dehra Dun, Rakesh Bahadur
dwells on an encounter with a ghost who
walked away with his tobacco pouch. Then
there is a write-up by Raj Kanwar on Jawaharlal
Nehru's love affair with Dehra Dun,
the former Prime Minister's niece Nayantara
Sahgal's nostalgic account of what the Green
Valley means to her family.
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