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13/09/2002
MURREE (Part 2)
[Contd from Part 1: Speech at the book launching of MURREE: A Glimpse through the Forest by Virgil Miedema, Holiday Inn, Islamabad, 13 September 2002.]]

Let me supplement the observations Virgil has included in his book with the recollection of a British administrator, George Robert Elmslie, who was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Murree in 1863, soon after its establishment. In his book Thirty-Five Years in the Punjab , he recalled: ‘Early in the morning of the 11th [April] we arrived at Muree, having travelled overnight from Rawulpindi in doolies. The day was wet and miserable, and we had top put up in a wretched hotel our spirits were at the lowest. We went to look at the very small house called ‘Oak Knoll’ which…we had been obliged to take. It was destitute of all furniture, and we were unable to take possession of it until the 18th, by which time our carts had arrived from Lahore.’
The day after his arrival, Elmslie found himself being hectored by Sir Robert Montgomery (then Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab) on his duties as Murree’s Assistant Commissioner. Montgomery, Elsmlie wrote, ‘takes the greatest interest in the station, and is very anxious that European proprietors and residents should dwell peaceably together an not fight with the Assistant.’
Within less than a fortnight, Elmslie was to discover that keeping the peace between the European shopkeepers and their customers was not his only responsibility. ‘On the 27th April a somewhat unusual incident occurred. An urgent message was sent to me as Magistrate, begging me to proceed to a certain house in order to place a Mr. P. in restraint, who was vowing vengeance against his wife for unfaithful conduct. On my reaching the house I was informed that Mrs. P. had effected her escape, and had probably bolted down the hill to Rawulpindi. Having arranged for the safeguarding of Mr. P., I carried out a previously formed intention of riding down to Tret, a stage on the Rawulpindi road, on other business.
On approaching Tret I saw ahead of me a jampan being hurried along by four coolies. A lady was inside. She was quite alone, barring the men who carried her. I did not doubt that the traveller was the erring Mrs. P. who was escaping from her infuriated husband. I caught up with the jampan just as the lady was alighting at the Tret dak bungalow. I accosted her and demanded her name. She turned round indignantly saying, ‘I am Mrs. Pratt.’ The truth flashed upon me. The lady was the wife of the well-known Archdeacon Pratt of Calcutta’. (Despite this initial faux pas, Elmslie had a long and distinguished career in the Civil Service.)
On a more serious level, Elmslie’s memoirs are a good example of the concern British administrators felt for those whom they governed, a concern that over the years converted the forests of Murree and its neighbouring galis into a hill resort, a mini-England over 7,000 feet above sea level.
Elmslie remembered for example Montgomery’s varied instructions – to join him in an inspection of the havalat or police lockup and the Murree bazaar. Or to ascertain the damage an invasion of locusts had done or that coolies should be told not to throw earth on the roads as it makes them quite impassable. One memo from Montgomery deserves to be repeated. Writing to Elsmlie, Montgomery advised:
‘If you want to immortalize your name, you can do it at small cost with little expense. You know the place where the picnic was yesterday – the mound near where the band plays. Walks should be made through it, and a place made level for the band. It would be then the fashionable place of meeting of an evening. There is height, pure air, shade, and a beautiful view. I cannot conceive why such a spot in the centre of the station should have been left so long unimproved. […] Call it ‘Mount Pleasant’; the walks will cost in lining only a few rupees, and roughly made, perhaps fifty rupees. I should like you to begin at once, and I will go and meet you all, any time you fix.’ (Catch any modern administrator suggesting this!)
Despite these civic virtues, Montgomery shared a characteristic with his modern counterpart – he disapproved of theatricals and dancing in public. Elsmlie found a way of getting round both: ‘…we determined to ignore it, and impunity followed our audacity.’ A theatre was improvised out of a military barrack, the female roles were taken by a Mr Robert Low, while Elmslie himself gamely played the old or middle aged women, and amateur actors took the rest. In this makeshift way, six or seven plays were successfully presented.
Someone in Italy once described the bed as the poor man’s opera. In Pakistan, the dining table is the Pakistani’s opera. Murree may still not have a theatre, but it does have I think only one cinema but no end of eating places and hotels. Let me conclude with the names of the hotels and their tariffs as advertised in the first Autombile Association handbook issued in the 1930s. It mentions that the population of Murree is 1,980 with a large floating summer population. It recommends four hotels – Chamber’s Hotel where the rate was Rs 6/8 for a single room and Rs 11/8 for a double one, Cecil where the rate was Rs 10 for a single and Rs 18 for a double, Viewforth Hotel, and Brightlands.
The distance by road from Murree to Srinagar was 157 miles and to Lahore 210 miles. How odd its seems nowadays to realize that parts of Kashmir are closer to Murree than parts of the plains of Punjab. How much odder still to acknowledge that Virgil Miedema’s excellent book on Murree should have had to be published on the other side of the border, closer to Kashmir than to Murree.
For his tenacity in researching this book, for his diligence in discovering so much precious archival material, but mostly for restoring through the pages of his beautiful book, this overdue homage due to Murree – the ageing Queen of the Hills – we all owe Virgil Mediema our warmest and most generous gratitude.
 
13 September 2002
 
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