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Old Dec 17th, 2007, 02:55   #61
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Very well researched post, Raghu

I've browsed thru a lot of 'All the Way' and 'Winterline'. They are the usual Woodstock/Muss nostalgia trip of the mishs and kids. Winterline is espesh heavy on it, not really worth the read, other than a few interesting refs for those wanting to know more about Muss. Lots about Kharagpur and other places - what it is is the family story of the Brushes.
Alter's is pretty similar, the Alter family story and heavy on nostalgia, which is what partially put me off reading his other books as yet. U'll have noticed Van Rooy's site was full of it too - in fact he's managed in a few web-pages what the other two did in their books.
Still, if u like Alter's writings it shud be worth a read.

I think Tom must be Stephen's senior by a few months, becos Stephen mentions in his book as being 1950-born. So is Tom, as per google. I actaully thought it was the other way around re seniority.

Yep, Mussoorie is quite the writer's town! Bond, Aitken, Gantzers, Ganesh Saili, and now it looks as if Alter's initial 1-year Fulbright (for HP-related research! ) is becoming an indefinite affair, heheh. And Tom's written 2 books as well - fiction, no less.

Last edited by Dilliwala : Dec 18th, 2007 at 00:31. Reason: corrs
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Old Dec 17th, 2007, 08:47   #62
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I liked the Gantzer's style of writing much better than the Alter's which I found a bit laborious. Overloading of description (e.g. your last passage example from Sacred Waters, Nyraghu, tends to make me skip through passages - i pick up the names of the flowers only and skip to next interesting bit!) Gantzer's writing just flows so easily with description simplified to a necessary adjunct to the plot.
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Old Dec 17th, 2007, 17:33   #63
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dilliwala View Post
I've browsed thru a lot of 'All the Way' and 'Winterline'. They are the usual Woodstock/Muss nostalgia trip of the mishs and kids.
Thanks, Dilliwala, for the info. Since I like Stephen Alter's writing, I'll anyway try to get `All the Way to Heaven'.

Quote:
I think Tom must be Stephen's senior by a few months, becos Stephen mentions in his book as being 1950-born. So is Tom, as per google. I actaully thought it was the other way around re seniority.
It looks like Tom Alter was born in 1950, and Stephen in 1956. This agrees with one of the Woodstock pages, which says that Tom Alter left the school in 1968, and Stephen in 1974.

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I liked the Gantzer's style of writing much better than the Alter's which I found a bit laborious.
Thanks, Aishah, for the information about Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. I haven't read anything by them other than newspaper articles. I'll try to find some of their books here. I'd be particularly interested to know if they have written anything extensive, perhaps a book, about Garhwal.

Raghu.
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Old Dec 17th, 2007, 21:46   #64
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Nyraghu - don't know about extensive writing - I read a novel, but largely based on their early days, called The Year before Sunset.
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Old Dec 17th, 2007, 21:52   #65
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I forgot this in my earlier posting on Ruskin Bond.

Ruskin Bond and Ganesh Saili (ed.), The Landour Cookbook, Over Hundred Years of Hillside Cooking, 2001, Roli Books: A collection of recipes from Landour for Western food, with a self-confessed American bias. Here are some extracts:

Quote:
We stand convinced by some of the old timers on the hillside that the following customer-waiter exchanges were born there [at the Riviera eatery]:

Waiter, there's a dead fly in my soup.
Yes, sir, it's the heat that kills them.

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup.
They don't care what they eat, do they, sir?

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup.
Don't make a fuss, sir. They'll all want one.
-- The Landour Cookbook, p.12
Quote:
Coffee: 10 tbsp coffee powder, 1 egg, 30 cups hot water. Moisten the coffee with the egg. Add a little warm water, if necessary. Add water and boil the mixture for a few minutes.
-- The Landour Cookbook, p.26
Raghu.

Last edited by nyraghu : Dec 18th, 2007 at 00:56. Reason: Deleted unrelated merged post.
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Old Dec 18th, 2007, 00:37   #66
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Originally Posted by nyraghu View Post

It looks like Tom Alter was born in 1950, and Stephen in 1956. This agrees with one of the Woodstock pages, which says that Tom Alter left the school in 1968, and Stephen in 1974.


Raghu.
Ah thanks, seems I did some amalgamation. I recall the years 1950 and 1968 from the book, I thought they were the author's. Obviously he was referring to Tom - he wrote about him a little bit - e.g. his lengthy citizenship process.
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Old Dec 25th, 2007, 11:16   #67
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Pankaj Mishra on Garhwal

Season's greetings!

Just as with Stephen Alter's views on religion, spirituality and nature, I feel an affinity with the following passage about Garhwal from Pankaj Mishra's novel, The Romantics (2nd ed., 2001, Picador). To a fair extent, it describes my own sense of kinship with the region, the feeling of coming home whenever I return there. Mishra was born near Allahabad, and spent his formative years here.

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The same thought [that it would be nice to live there] had come to me; had, in fact, been with me from the time the bus left Mussoorie. It came out of the happiness I always felt among the Himalayas, a kind of private exhilaration that made the tensions of the previous days dissipate fast, made them seem part of another, not quite real or significant, life. It wasn't just the beauty of these snow-carpeted mountains and broad green valleys and surging rivers --- the beauty that could move even those with no aesthetic feeling. It was because so much of the landscape was marked for me; the peaks and valleys and rivers held so many associations. It was the first landscape I had known in my imagination, in the stories from the Mahabharata, where it was the setting for exile and renunciation. The Pandav brothers had walked on this ground, their presence commemorated by innumerable small temples across the ranges; great Hindu sages had made their home on the banks of its famous rivers. It was always oddly exalting to think that these secluded mountains and valleys were where, in unknown times, my own ancestors had wandered after long, fulfilled lives on the plains. They were linked to my vague but cherished sense of the past, my memories of Sunday mornings, rooms filled with the fragrant smoke of a sandalwood fire, my father meditating on his tiger-skin rug before a miniature temple, whose ascending spires, I knew even then, approximated the soaring peaks of the Himalayas.
-- Pankaj Mishra, The Romantics, pp. 123-124.
Raghu.
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Old Dec 25th, 2007, 15:58   #68
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Nice passage, Nyraghu - it brought to mind the emotions I felt when I first saw the mountains -Nanda Devi and the Himalayas -from a lookout point in Nainatal. Tears came to the eyes with the sight of them
and as the author says, it was a landscape long in my imagination, from the stories and accounts featuring these mountains, from childhood when I first began to read.
Now my daughter climbs them and leads expeditions there and I wonder were those genes handed down from me?
In a vicarious way I am reading about hill station life - this time set in a fictional place in the Western Ghats - but the life is very much based on the author's research in Simla. It's a great read - Coronation Talkies by Susan Kurosawa - and the author captures that late 1930's era extremely well. Can thoroughly recommend it.
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Old Dec 26th, 2007, 23:10   #69
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Aishah, I think I understand the feelings you describe, and I am glad you liked the passage. In another thread, I saw a posting about your daughter's expedition to Cho Oyu. In a sense you may have passed on your interest in mountains to her, perhaps by talking about them often, etc. In a similar vein, although my daughter sometimes finds it difficult during our treks to Garhwal, I hope that she will later look back at these journeys with fondness.

Thanks for the recommendation about `Coronation Talkies'. I'll make a note of that and the other book by the Gantzers.

Raghu.
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Old Dec 27th, 2007, 09:40   #70
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Also being born and brought up in New Zealand with the mountains, holidays in the Alps at Arthur's Pass, skiing mountains in both islands and then when I went to Australia, living in the Blue Mountains.. my daughter used to trek with us too, bit of moaning and groaning sometimes, but in the end it was to the mountains where her work takes her and she loves them. So yes, I'm sure your daughter will end up with the same feelings about them as you, Raghu!
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Old Dec 27th, 2007, 11:24   #71
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this is a lovely thread. A couple of books that I liked were Nanda Devi: A journey to the Last Sanctuary by Hugh Thomson which give a fascinating account of the expeditions to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary including the Shipton and Tilman climb.Another great read is the story of the amazing ascent on the West Wall of Changabang by Boardman and Tasker called The Shining Mountain.

Cheers.
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Old Dec 27th, 2007, 18:00   #72
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Eastern Himalayan reading

Here's an interesting thread I came across yesterday:

Books About Lepchas?
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Old Dec 27th, 2007, 22:54   #73
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Thanks for that link, Dilliwalla, and I wish I had read it before reading 'The Inheritance of Loss' recently posted on 'Who's reading what, when etc. link! I would have saved my time by NOT reading it and reading something else more worthwhile! Totally agreed with all the comments posted in this link re that book.
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Old Mar 12th, 2008, 17:00   #74
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Originally Posted by Dilliwala View Post
Natraj Publishers in Dehradun is a great bookshop for books on the Himalaya, its environment and wildlife, etc. Apart from reprinting some hard-to-find titles, being publishers, they also publish works on the above topics.
They also are 'official' stockists for Ruskin Bond's books.
Mr Arora, the owner, is a great guy - very knowledgeable and very helpful. They are also happy to ship books anywhere in India. I have put their contact details here.
Finally I got my copy of The Valley of Flowers from Natraj Publishers. None of the book stores in Mumbai were able to give me a copy & all it required was a call to Mr. Arora (Natraj Publishers) & he arranged to send the same by V.P.P. It costs Rs. 295 plus VPP charges (around Rs. 50.)

Dilliwala, you are right about Mr. Arora, very helpful & very knowledgeable. I have asked him to send his catalogue.

Thanks Dilliwala & Raghu for your help.

Ronak.
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Old Mar 12th, 2008, 17:06   #75
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Ronak in the next meet do get the catalog along ...
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