I remember the lights and the little pond over there, by the gate, she even bought a piece of land for Rs 10,000. It was a walk through the bushes, impressions of nostalgia are a magical thing, little vignettes from here and there. This was around Diwali or Dusshera, and perhaps it was the evergreen autumn.

I was about ten and mother was in her thirties, there was a long way to go and maybe there still is.

The village that I talk of was of a different time, in the 70s when people were less heartless and more heart wrenched. We stayed with Mini and Mary Singh. She was from England somewhere and had the kindest eyes. He is a jolly, good fellow who likes his drink well on time. He likes a good steak, a little eye candy and big laugh but he is all right.

We have been back to Kangra, actually it is a district in Kangra, a place called Andretta, which is the haven for pottery in India — the birth of blue pottery and the seal of meditative practice.

Mini’s father was a grand, old man with a white flowing beard, truly glorious and a generous smile, the type they don’t make anymore. His mother was ‘aunty’ as we remember her, and his driver was Pitambar who I am told drives a truck somewhere. The sufis drove the people to a better life and Guru Nanak was the one who engineered many a show, but the followers have lost the plot on the road.

The pottery was behind the house on one Factory Road, now sold out as Blue Apartments from blue pottery I guess.

Pitambar and I went to the movies and I was a diehard Amitabh Bachchan fan, but the movie we saw was Kranti in the good old Novelty picture hall that has fallen apart. There was a wild jungle at the back. I have seen Delhi like that.

Aunty made the best homespun Punjabi food and cracking aloo kay pronthas, and we ate that on the finest blue pottery crockery that was just lying around. It would be worth a lot now at the front was the exhibition display of the genius of Gurcharan Das.

I revisited this world in the 2000s with my mother again. We went there three or four times always in the summer and that is when I recommend you go.

We never went there when it was winter they have a fireplace on one side. Everybody chips in with drinks and potluck food sometimes. There are always people there; student, foreigners and where gaiety abides.

Then we revisited, and it was this we saw:

The Norah Centre we passed by every day but it looked too gloomy to go in. Everything has a displaced charm with macabre in the dead centre in this old little hill towns of Himachal Pradesh.

Norah Richards was a teacher of drama in the 1940s at the time of partition. I was just told she taught the grand legend Prithvi Raj Kapoor who went on to tear the silver screen and 45-year-old walls with his loud voice. So the famous IPTA, which is the most prolific and oldest theatre group in our country was inadvertently routed from Irish blood.

She got into the Punjab DNA and trained nice strong and beautiful Punjabi boys in the art of drama and it must have been an interesting scene back then in the forties, when one side there was revolution and fireworks in the air, appropriate time for street theatre.

She was also an environmentalist. Well! In those days, we had the Maharaja of Patalia and others hot on the trail of the tigers and leopards and cheetahs. Wow! What a time it was to live in and what a way to die — you ventured into the forest for a stroll, you said goodbye.

She lived in the village for 30 years and no surprise she is a part of the culture, and again it was the Maharaja of Patalia who revived this tradition of theatre.

Now on the day she arrived on planet earth, October 29, there is a festival of the arts in her honour, and that is a good thing. More lassi, butter, paranthas and free spirited folk and acting. Fires in the evening and merry making youth and interactive outdoor opportunity.

A crafts shop and a terracotta museum put together by our friend Mini and Mary — selling products of Himachal Pradesh, “Himachali people don’t take alcohol or beer. They prefer fruit beer and pickles.”

But there were delicious pickles and juices apparently and I am a food junkie at heart. What I remember are the shawls and some clothes, some dust-laden postcards and tempting slippers that are Chamba chappals. I have eaten the curry pakora in Chamba in the early eighties and I remember Chadda when I am enjoying curry pakora. You know what I mean like the English would say. “Let’s get back to the shop. Clive Lloyd was here and was seen in one of Chadda’s Chamba chappals on the ground. He was so inspired by them that he forgot his cricket clothes and this is something interesting, he wore only his pads and the erstwhile Chadda Chamba chappals to the ground. He was banned for four games.

His socks are still lying at the back, where there is a garden that has one imagining Kashmir but it was not just exotic but a poetic town of tranquility. We stayed here in a clean white room overlooking the garden with cows and some animal I can’t recall. But more to the point aloo, dahi and pyaaz or sabzi, but everything delicious and grand like quantity and quality of the grub scene in the Punjab and Himachal lost brothers in the Kumbh Mela, some time.

In the evenings my mother and I would walk to Mini and Mary’s cottage or the other way into the unknown distance that was open and opened the cracks of the imagination a bit and wanderlust flew me to Norway, Finland or Sweden.

In any case the breeze was a beauty even in May and the sunsets were endless and stretched out into saffron fields and stunning images of grain flying around against the golden sun, most interesting cricket games of children and on the other side the grand hospitality and cozy evenings at the Singhs. I had the chance to meet BC Sanyal who called me tiger.

We had one cozy party in his earthenware cottage. He was in another world by then, but the heydays saw workshops for artists and artisans organised by the Sanyals, now his daughter Amba lives there.