Dehradun’s Book of the Departed
At not too distant a time, when the British and tigers were still abundant in the Doon Valley, it was in vogue for the civil servants and those in public life to write big tomes dedicated to recording their memoirs or official gazetteers. Penning memoirs, both personal as well as official was par for the course for the British residents and often this peculiar colonial and Raj genre took a few thick volumes to satisfy the sense of obligation that its authors felt towards committing their thoughts for posterity. However, there is no field of human endeavour in which there is no exception to the common tradition. Residing at Dick Road in Dalanwala, the serene and sylvan suburb of Dehradun, AR Gill put together a very modest and slim volume with an equally unexceptional title, “The Valley of Doon” in 1952. This work of AR Gill defies the usual genres by being not a history, a memoir or a travel guide or just a compendium of useful data. Yet it manages in its modest word count to tou...