The city's main shopping
centre and promenade packed with clubs, theaters, restaurants and bars,
it houses shops filled with the latest in fashion, from Bond Street, benares,
or Mumbai. As the town grew, so cam enlarge stores like Whiteway and Laidelaw,
the Army and Navy Stores, Ranken Brothers and others. This was the seat
of imperial power and mi'lady demanded nothing but the best so laden ships
came from over the seven seas to cater to Imperial tastes. It was impossible
to import the London theatre so the reproduction of the Old Garrick. The
Gaiety theatre, was built staging Shakespeare, Marlowe, Agatha Christie,
Noel Coward even T.S Eliot; the players, amateurs could give even the most
versatile seasoned stage star of the era, a run for his money. Young army
officers and their wives, they took to greasepaint and the boards like
a duck takes to water. The Green Room, inevtiably, turned into a social
club. Soon elegant hotels like Davico's, Wengers, Cecil and Clarke's came
up providing drinks, dinner and dance. The tea dance invariably led to
the dinner dance at the Davico's Ball room or at the Cecil Hotel, a short
distance away. After a rousing game of golf, or billiards on the Mall itself,
it was the thing socially de regeur (proper) to sip a glass of cool bear
in the filtering sunlight at one of the hotels overlooking the avenue.
This was Shimla's past and this is Shimla's present. Life still follow
the same pattern. Everybody seems to on a holiday in Shimla. There is not
much to do in and around town. After independence some of the ultra British
stores moved away, but the quality remains the same, indeed, even with
a larger variety of goods to delight the eye and taste. After shopping
on the mall, the road usually leady down the crooked alleys of the Middle
and Lower bazar below the Mall where hill-men display thier quaint creafts
and other shops offer merchandise to suit every pocket, every taste. Some
find it fun to haggle with the Tibetans, others look for unusual bargains
and curios from the old Viceregal Estate or the homes of departed British
Officials, Indian Estates and rare manuscripts, books, hand paintings,
clocks and many more at Maria Bros., or Book Emporium both at the Mall. |
