Gupp & Gossip from The Hills

There is not such a place as these hills for the tongue of false report to wag about. Everybody else’s affairs to be more worthy looking after than their own. If you have a friend or two to lunch, tea or dinner, the whole town is sure to know before noon next day what was on your table and who said or ate what.

Ganesh Saili reveals his very personal collection of gupp and gossip from the foothills of the Himalayas in his latest Gupp and Gossip from the Hills.

Author and photographer, Ganesh Saili was born and brought up in the hills of Mussorie where he lives. For four decades he has researched and trekked the Himalayas capturing in words and film the all-defying beauty of these regions. Numerous periodicals, journals and twenty books, (some translated into twenty-four languages) are a testimony to a love for his roots. After his widely acclaimed Mussoorie Medley, Gupp and Gossip from the Hills reveals a hill-resort that is not yet another Peyton Place, but it slowly seems to be getting there.

TK Manoj Kumar has been a Disctrict Collector, Secretary to a Chief Minister and taught at the IAS Academy Mussoorie. Part time artist, avid squash player, and once upon a time the first runner up in the BBC Mastermind show, he believes that the best is yet to come. Presently, he is Principal Secretary, he is Principal Secretary to the Government of Kerala of the Departments of Non-Resident Keralites, Tourism, Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development.

I owe this book to the memory of our Guppastiks or folks of leisure who've kept the hills busy: some found pleasure in doing; others gossiped. At the very beginning, I confess, this is a very personal collection of gupp and gossip from the foothills of the Himalayas.

Rummaging through the dusty drawers of memory, I found these tall tales the town tells. You will find them ephemeral: some full of fun and frolic, others remain, regrettably, tragic.

We have had our fair share of merchants, traders, writers, poets, artists, actors, faith healers and antique dealers. It never ceases to amaze one how quickly in these parts the actual record of events gets confused, how quickly heroes turn into villains and our real history lies buried till it surfaces, albeit briefly, at twilight in family legends. It is no easy task to evoke the past solely from mental notes.

Many years down the road, I share some of this idle prattle and tattle, with you. If you took these folks all together in a single embrace, none of them have ever before been between two covers-literally!

What then do they have in common? You wonder.

All of them, at one point or another have spent time in these hills of Mussoorie where if there's any dirt about, someone or the other is bound to dig it up and leave behind tales to fill up the void.

Such is life for us: everyone knows about everyone's little oddities and eccentricities, those little quirks in our natures, which make us so different yet so special. Though it's a bit like life lived in a fish bowl.

To you, gentle reader I bring these stories full of our scandalous ways, the bonhomie, the skirmishes and reconciliations. None of them are of earth-shattering importance. It's our antics, we do, or say, or think or dream.

Rest assured, very soon there shall be newer tricks to chronicle, dreams to stir, money to bankroll mischief. Yes! This will be another resort with its roguish winners, forgotten losers with unlearned lessons.

But that shall be someone else's gupp and gossip for another time. May both their tribes prosper!