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Article: India's Green and Pleasant Land; In the Himalayan town of Simla, empire-building English-men constructed a cure for their homesickness
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- September 26, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Anarchy is to the porters of New Delhi station what order is to
the clerks of the Credit Suisse, Geneva: Without it they would be
lost.
In the pre-dawn glimmer, Platform 7 buzzed like a kicked beehive.
Red-jacketed coolies staggered toward first class under a mountain of
packing cases and trunks. Lower down the platform, near third class,
solitary peasant women sat stranded amid seas of more ungainly
luggage: cages and boxes, ambiguous parcels done up with rope. Fleets
of vendors trawled the platform selling trays of tea in red clay cups
or the latest Bombay film magazine. In the middle of it all, the