The Shimla Mall Road - Thandi Sarak

 The Shimla Mall Road - Thandi Sarak

Let's go back to the turn of the century and look at how the Mall, Shimla's shopping promenade, was born. At about that time, the mall was a 14-foot-wide, non-metalized walkway specially built to allow two horse-drawn carriages to cross without bumping into one another. Shopping that was moved after the big fire on the ridge in 1876 went to two places. The Indian (native) population was allocated the southern side of the mountain and the British kept the mountain crest and northern side of the mountain. Horse drawn carriages travelled back and forth from time to time. Traffic increased when the Viceregal Lodge was finished in 1886/88 and the viceroy worked there for six months of summer. 

The uprooted shops from the Ridge now were distinctly segregated. The British built on this crest, just a few stores in the beginning. Indian shops, which provided everything, including the daily needs of the British and the Indians, were located about 500 feet below the crest line. Interestingly, the shops on the crest line were all built in the Tudor style as the abundance of trees were cut to make room. They faced the North against the sun. Indian merchants' shops were directly facing the sun. That had been regulated by the new Shimla municipality. 

You may ask why British shops faced the North, you have to go back to1886, in which the influential newspaper  correspondent Rudyard Kipling wrote his disgusting paper in which he expressed abhorrence to the poor natives “crowded rabbit warren ..... “ living quarters. He did not wish the rulers to look at it all the time. Hence, these crest line shops (later called The Mall) face the other way, away from the Sun. Absence of sun kept that side cool hence the name “Thandi Sarak” came into existence.

Once plans were made, construction commenced shortly thereafter. London's upper-class merchants, feeling good business, decided to set up shop there. Also high end merchants who catered to the British needs in Calcutta also located themselves in that area. It was a small area in 1885, from the Scandal Point to the current location of the Gaiety Theatre. Around that time, the Shimla municipal building was also completed. The major merchants were Barrett & co, Whiteaway, Laidlaw & Co, Hamilton & Co, Cooke & Kelvey, and Imrie & Lawrence etc. Not to be left behind jewellers like Goldsmith’s and Silversmith’s company and Gerrard & Co were also located on The Mall. The latter produced merchandise, mostly for the Indian market. Most of those stores had branches in other cities, so opening a new branch wasn't a big deal for them. They sourced from England and exhibited their products in showcases, just as the merchants did at Oxford Street in London. The stores I mention above did not sell their products to a common man instead sold to the upper echelons of society in London as well in India. 

The Mall, as it was called in 1890 (and now), required improvements. The path was widened from fourteen feet to forty feet. The colors make up of stores and showcases were upgraded to look modern. Soon the influx of Indian royalty (Rajahs) began. They came in droves. The money in their pockets was in any case no less than the British and they began to shop for almost any top-of-the-line products in Shimla. 

The shopping mall also, like a boardwalk soon was in need of expansion of merchandising. It began when Lord Curzon granted permission to high end tailors, shoemakers, dry cleaners, photographers, hairdressers, tea shop owners to set up clean displays and keep manufacturing if needed elsewhere. In the following 10 years, the two-way expansion of the shopping mall began. You ask yourself, when did the Chinese shoemakers get to the best places on the Mall. They were in Kolkata and were encouraged to settle in Shimla. They arrived in 1920s. They occupied stores vacated by others who left the city.

 Now the physical extension of the Mall was overdue. It happened very quickly after Lord Curzon’s decree. Until then (1910s) there was no Indian owned store on the Mall. Some were later allowed and then asked to store goods from Great Britain. On one side shops were added to reach the newly built telegraph office. On the other side, it reached the street which linked the water reservoir on the Ridge. 

After WWI, the Mall had a royal look. Displays matched Oxford Street, London and widened road presented an avenue for a fashionable stroll. 

My father remembered that they were forbidden to go to the Mall even for business. He also remembers that on a sunny summer day, crossing to the Lakkar Bazaar for business, he would see most of the “Sahibs” strolling along the promenade. It must have been a pleasure walk. 

In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi strolled the Mall to poke the British in the eye, then the Mall was reluctantly opened to the natives from 11am to 3pm only. Business activity on the Mall increased. Soon thereafter the walkway was metalled. To maintain the traffic-control metal dividers were installed in the middle. As a result, people going in one direction will not run into people going in the other direction. All this was well kept and maintained until WW2. Now the British knew that their days in India were numbered so all the nonsense regulations were set aside. Both sides of the road were connected with Lower Bazaar and the upscale shopping center, we know today came into existence. Then the British left and a bunch of highly trained Indian administrators held on to what the British left as is for at least another ten years.

In my high school days, my mother will dress me up every evening for a stroll on the Mall. There I will run into my friends for a decent walk on the Mall. That was a learning exercise to develop good manners.

All those British stores went out of business a year or two after 1947. They put the whole thing up for auction to the highest bidder. Some of the names remained or changed, but ownership underwent change. Thomas Cook, Spencer & Co, Janaki Dass & Co, B.Lal & Bros, Minerva Book Shop, Photo Studio, Band Box, Novax, Gainda Mull Hem Raj, Empire Store, Lok Nath, Comar etc. were the new occupants of the stores. They went on for several decades and gave way to the new occupants of today. 

It still is Thandi Sarak or The Mall, it does not have the same charm which my father saw it from the early nineteen hundreds till independence or what I saw in the fifties. The retailing is not high end anymore. It is everything a common man needs.

Cheers....