Finding an epicentre to tell my story of Dehradun 2025 is not particularly hard. It is wrapped in various shades of pink and red chunnis and is said to be made of a single piece of wood running up to 100 feet. That is the spot where Baba Ram Rai fixed his jhanda in 1675 to set up his dera (camp), thus giving the city its name — Dehra (from dera) Doon (valley).
Right behind the draped flagpole, I enter my details in the guard’s register on a cold winter evening. She lets me enter with my guitar. Inside, a dozen or so people are gathered for the evening’s aarti, in this gurdwara/temple that looks like a mosque.
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Whose dera is it anyway? A rebel’s? Baba Ram Rai did something at Aurangzeb’s court that led his father, the seventh Sikh Guru, Har Rai, to shun him. Later, Aurangzeb asked the king of Garhwal to grant the Baba a jagir in the wilds of the Doon valley.
I sit in a corner soaking in some peace served with the whispery hymn, contrasting the bustle of Jhanda Mohalla outside. The jhanda is ceremonially washed and re-adorned with new fabric every year on the fifth day after Holi to mark the beginning of the dera.
In the 350 years since, many new dera beginnings added to the city’s character. Each of them marked by their own ceremonies — Christmas in churches started by the British and adopted by many; Eid; the Durga Puja of Bengalis; Losar, the Tibetan Buddhist new year; the Chhath Puja of Biharis; the Dasain of Gorkhalis and, of course, the Harela and Bagwal of the Pahadis.
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A fertile valley is a bowl to which human aspirations naturally gravitate. Since 2000, a quaint little town has become a state capital, turning into a giant magnet for these aspirations, facilitating massive migration. I negotiate thick traffic on Chakrata Road, paying tribute to this post-millennial phenomenon while listening to George Harrison’s song ‘Dehradun’ on my earphones. “Dehra Dehra dun, Dehra dun dun Dehra Dehra dun.”
On another evening, in a different part of the city, the pub management abruptly cuts off the sound for an ongoing hip-hop performance. “Leke rahenge Bhu-kanoon (we’ll ensure the land law is passed)” is the chant responsible for this. “This was not meant to be political,” a nervous manager says before asking the young rappers to pay for their colas and leave. They burst into a group song: “Vartaman ankhon ka dhoka hai (the present is an illusion)”.
Flanked by the Himalayas in the northeast and contained by thick forests in the southwest, with rivers running throughout, the valley is fortified and blessed with nature’s abundance. There are abundant riverbeds that have become sand fields to be perpetually harvested. Drive by any one to see dumper trucks and JCBs tirelessly at work.
Heavy machinery sucks the sand and mixes it with cement to be sculpted into a towering new apartment complex next to an old colonial bungalow. Migrant labour arrives by the busload for each cycle, with some inevitably setting up their own deras where they can.
The same developmental riyaz has been on the loop for two-and-a-half decades since Uttarakhand’s formation…and boom! A real estate miracle brings in wealth like never before. Spawning disposable income, car showrooms, cafes, 24×7 luxury liquor shops, road accidents…like never before.
CEIC data for 2024 shows that upwards of 7,000 vehicles were being registered every month in the valley, adding convenience, parking issues and decibels. I step out of my house to confront the constant honking.
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Walking in central Dehradun with my guitar informs my idea of access to the city. Can I sit somewhere and strum peacefully? If you have a scooter, kilometres of still-virgin forests or the curvy Mussoorie road are ideal choices. On days you don’t, you find that everywhere is private property now. What are your options? The shades of trees that await the chainsaw of road-widening plans are a fast-dwindling choice. Luckily, there’s another option — Gandhi Park near the city Clock Tower. It’s the only public space around where you can exist freely. I enter and hunt for a bench. Drunks, the elderly and lovers are some of my colleagues and competitors for sitting space here. Somebody mentions that the city administration is planning to privatise the park and charge a fee. I rush the next morning for a quickly put-together protest only to discover it’s a false alarm, for now.
On yet another day, a bhu-kanoon rally makes a temporary dera at the entrance of the park. They want to stop more deras being set up by outsiders out of fear of being buried like first-comer nails stuck to this giant magnet by all the other nails it is pulling the attention of.
Some days later, a Dehradun real-estate ad pops up in a Delhi newspaper: “We have one life, choose wisely. Decide now!” reads the tagline, morbidly urging Delhiites to move to Dehradun.
The writer is a musician
