When I first met Anand Jauhar (better known as ‘Nandu’ to his friends) in the early 1980s, he had finally come home to his roots in Mussoorie, having spent his youth running an Indian restaurant in London’s Marble Arch.

Little did any of us, my friends and I, have an inkling then that a chance meeting would for two decades and more, change our lives forever.

Nothing would ever to be the same again. For be it summer or winter, the old Savoy was a great watering-hole. This was where author Ruskin Bond and I, met a whole gamut of characters: film stars, rogues, politicians, business tycoons, fly-by night operators and some fast fading beauty queens.

Of course, you could still find their flourishes in the visitor’s book. I last saw it on the front desk to the left of Chatter Singh Negi, an old employee in his 80s, (when he retired three years ago, it was rumoured that he had gone through two wives and 70 years in the hotel).

Between its green-and-gold covers was a veritable Who’s Who of Mussoorie’s early history: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Panchem Lama, Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, Prince Norodum Sihanouk and even the Nehrus — from Motilal, Jawaharlal, Indira and down to Rajiv.

All guests at the hotel could waken at dawn to see from their window, the long line of Himalayas spanning the horizon to the north, and to watch the peaks catch fire, one after another, as the sun came up.

While lower down to the south stretched the Doon valley enshrouded in haze, where the winter line showed up so clearly a blue haze, where the line joined the sky it was brilliant red.

Rich patrons

In the 1960s, if you could not find a room at the Savoy, you had a choice between the imperial Charleville Hotel in Happy Valley, which turned into the National Academy of Administration; followed by the Hakman’s Grand Hotel, in the middle of the Mall Road, which lamentably has gone to seed, and the Stiffles, briefly re-incarnated as a roller-skating rink, caught fire and was reduced to ashes. The Savoy, like a lost tusker, in a changing world, stumbled on.

Like other sprawling hotels, this too once had a life of its own. There were rich patrons; usually the ex-rulers and landed gentry who, with their retinues, occupied whole wings of the hotel. After them came the civil and military officers on furlough who partied the day away.

On my first visit, I found a whiff of the era still lingering in the air. Breakfast, lunches and dinners were served with personal attention to individual tastes. There was nightly dancing in the ballroom. Cabaret artists of varied backgrounds chased the night away with their repertoire of song, dance and striptease.

There was frolic and fun: lawn tennis and squash; snooker and skittles; card tables and chess games, and fancy dress balls. Close by was the library to satisfy the guests’ fondness for reading.

The only constant in a sea of visitors was the hotel staff. It had a firm pecking order, a sort of totem pole, if you like, starting from the manager, down to the stewards, reception counter clerks, chefs, waiters, down to the night-chowkidar, the room boys, and the sweepers — each one claimed to be privy to some secret or the other.

Often Nandu too would get caught up in the game. He had his own plans for a grand future. We discovered this when he got it into his head to christen the old Savoy bar.

After all, what was a bar without a name? It had dawned upon him after a visit to the historic Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where he had seen a Writers’ Bar. Brass plaques on the walls proclaimed that Somerset Maugham had been there, as had Conrad and Graham Greene. One day he asked us why couldn’t the Savoy too have its very own Writers’ Bar. “Writers’ Bar! Where on earth would you get writers from?” I asked.

“Well! Just for starters you are here! Aren’t you a writer Ruskin Bond?” he exclaimed in triumph, adding: “Don’t you know some other writer types, Ruskin?”

“None! I’m afraid... the Fitzgerald’s ‘Lost Weekend’ variety is out of fashion!” exclaimed Ruskin. “Why not just call it the Horizontal Bar instead?” But Nandu would have none of it. He gave us a withering look, careening on: “They don’t have to be the heavy boozer types only!”Who could argue with that?

Finally, after much dithering and tippling, Ruskin and I simply capitulated. After all, a hotel with a 100 years of history behind it, there was no telling who could not have dropped by for a drink even if it were just plain nimbu-paani! Soon, the deed was done.

Over the weekend, the plaques were made in wood by the local coffin-maker and hammered on to the walls. They celebrate, the often, tenuous link with writers like John Lang, the Australian-born novelist (in the 1850s, he could possibly have been a judge at the old Mussoorie School Inter House Debate!

Who's to tell!); Jim Corbett, the shikari- turned-naturalist (whose parents married in Mussoorie); John Masters, who spent time with the Gurkhas in the Doon; and even Pearl S Buck, the Nobel laureate, though she never wrote a word about our hill-station! But she did stay at the hotel.

Though it was not writers only who strayed into the old Savoy. To appreciate what the hotel was all about, you will have to travel back in time, and get a feel of the origins of the hill station.

As they say in fairy tales, once upon a time, Mussoorie too was “the queen of resorts and the resort of kings,” a sort of meeting place for the rich and the powerful.

But the town was never really anything officious or stuffy. It was where you could find yourself sailing into a ‘fishing-fleet’ of young girls looking for eligible bachelors, or meet rakish bachelors’ once-whispered sweet nothings into the ears of grass widows under the eaves.

And if you think, the husbands had run away or were absconding, you’re wrong! Poor things thought they had better things to do — like minding the affairs of the state in an Indian summer in the sultry plains!

Mussoorie was, and to a limited extent, still is, a place where you can let your hair down without inviting social censure.

With the passage of time, the need arose for a place of quiet luxury. Cecil D Lincoln, a barrister from Lucknow, took over the lands of the old Mussoorie School, pulled down the school and built a hotel in its stead, naming it after the Fayrest Manor in Europe.

To his credit goes the English Gothic architecture, its fine proportions, its lancet-shaped narrow windows along the corridors and the verandahs. You can still find the original school emblem, a four-leafed clover, peeping out from amongst the eaves.

Two simple spires, without any parapet, surmount the corners of the main building —rearing their heads in pride constituting the main facade. If you consider the fact that the first motorcar came to the hill station in 1920, you can only admire the sheer ingenuity and dogged perseverance of the early settlers.

Men and materials came up the bridle path from Rajpur. Everything came up this winding serpentine trail by bullock-cart. Massive Victorian and Edwardian furniture, billiard-tables, grand pianos, Burmese teak for the ballroom floors, rotund barrels of beer and cases of champagne and cognac — all the requirements of a fine hotel trundled up the hill on lumbering bullock carts.

Launched in 1902, the hotel was — ‘like a phoenix rising from the ashes of a school’ gushed a local scribe. Royalty trooped to town when four years later, Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales — later, Queen Mary — attended a garden party in the Savoy grounds. No soon had she left, a severe earthquake hit Mussoorie. Many buildings were flattened and the hotel had to be closed for a year. But by 1907, it was up and about and ready to go.

In between the two Great Wars, in the “gay twenties”, Mussoorie entered its days of wine and roses. In its heydays, the Savoy orchestra played every night, and the ballroom was full of couples dancing the night away. You could do the fox trot or waltz to the happy numbers or do your own thing.

On a visit in 1926, Lowell Thomas, in The Land of the Black Pagoda, wrote: “There is a hotel in Mussoorie where they ring a bell just before dawn so that the pious may say their prayers and the impious get back to their own beds.” When I asked Nandu, he confirmed: “We employed an old, short sighted chowkidar to ring the separation bell at four every morning... It guaranteed absolute privacy to the guests!”

During the Second World War, the British and the American military officers, on leave, sought amusement in the hills and flocked to the place. Legend has us believe that the sale of whisky used to be so high that Lincoln would have all the empty bottles from the previous day’s sale, collected and brought down to the cellar.

Gently he would coax every last drop of scotch from each bottle. Miraculously, he would have two full bottles ready for house guests the next day!

It was not about tippling alone. Sometimes guests would be staggered by the size of the luxury suites. I was told that one day, when the hotel was full, an elderly couple was shown the bridal suite. “What will we do with this?” the old man exclaimed. “Sir! If you’re shown the ballroom, you don’t have to dance!” said the ever-resourceful Negi.

Anand Jauhar’s father holidaying in the hills bought the complex in 1946. Till just three years ago, it was still a family-run hotel, when due to a bout of ill-health, Nandu gave up his shares to the new owners.

What’s happening now? We are often asked. Well! They are trying to update it with some modern-day creature comforts, without changing the character of this fine heritage hotel. One wishes them luck in their endeavours!

On my last visit there, as I had finished taking pictures, I bid farewell to the charming old billiards room (where in 1900, a leopard was found hiding under the rosewood table), I try to catch some of the spirit of the heydays of the Raj. I remind myself that the history of Mussoorie must have wandered through its vast spaces.

I walk down the rambling corridors, the empty sun-drenched lounge, lost in the memory of happy times, Nandu catches up with me. Together we walk through the deserted dining room. He jokes: “This hotel is so big that by the time you get from the reception to the room, we could have charged you for a day!”

Going past the Writers’ Bar, a wave of nostalgia washes over me, I tear myself away, rushing down the steps those familiar 20 steps, one last time. How well I know things will never be the same again. Suddenly, I hear a shuffling behind me. Is it the ghosts of the past come to bid one last goodbye? Or is it the wind playing in the gables? Who knows?

I move on from door to door, from transept to transept, from corridor to lounge, from ballroom to balcony, tracing a century here and a generation there, in pillar and arch, vault and buttress. And I will probably end where I began: at the rosewood entrance which throws its massive arch into a work-a-day world, and inside, hoards a treasure trove of memories. Brimming over with the sheer loveliness that comes from wood and stone!

And for over a 100 years, emperor and clown have walked up these very steps, through this very same arch into a magnificent doorway to history!

The Savoy still appears at the time of one last farewell like a shimmering mirage in the memories of those who resonated to its poignant beauty years ago.