Rajpur, The Twilight Town
The laboured conquest of the subcontinent, albeit piecemeal, by the English East India Company did not sit comfortably with the motley crew of the company-walas comprising the Scotts, Irish, Welsh and, of course, the English. Nothing had prepared these seekers of fortunes for the backlash of Hindustan and the driving home of a hard lesson that conquest of climate did not come with conquest of the land. Besides consolidating their commercial interests, the other preoccupation for the British was the search for congenial stations for their families and also for their personal summer retreats. Thus Darjeeling, Shimla, Ooty, Mussoorie, Nainital and their like started dotting the lower Himalayas and the Nilgiris in the first half of the nineteenth century. For the successful establishment and sustenance of these hill stations, a number of foothill towns were set up at Kalka, Haldwani, Mansingudi, and Rajpur in the Doon Valley. These foothill towns were literally and metaphorically the scaff...