In Nainital, a raging fire, an old house and memories of a lost time

The city’s traffic-choked roads and crammed lanes have been attributed to the sluggish response of the authorities in reaching the spot on time. The overcrowded bada bazaar, where the Old London House stood, had given the fire ample time to engulf the deodar frames and panels with which it was built back in the Victorian era.

Dr Ajay Rawat, a former professor of history whose father was a tenant and later the owner of the property, says that the house was established to meet the needs of the British officials in 1863, a year after Nainital was declared the summer capital of the Northwestern Provinces and Awadh. A secretariat came up in the city, where six months of work would ensue.

The Old London House came up to cater to the undersecretaries travelling to the city. They would stay in the massive four-storied building with five flats, while one of the floors was allotted to their staff, Rawat says.

The selection of Nainital as the summer capital was an easy choice, as the city was untouched by the 1857 revolts, and the British took refuge in the hill town. After 1862, Nainital became a hub for educational institutions: St. Joseph’s and Sherwood College for boys, and St. Mary’s Convent and All Saints’ College for girls.

“After the independence, the property came into the hands of the Sah community, the traders of Kumaon. My father, DS Rawat, purchased it and handed it over to my sister, Swarnlata Rawat, in 1971. This was later given to Shanta Bisht and her son Nikhil Singh as Swarnlata died unmarried,” he says.

Rawat says his sister could have been saved had it not been for the “lackadaisical approach and lack of coordination” by the authorities. “This place is hardly five minutes’ drive from the fire station. It took the authorities more than five hours to douse the fire,” he says. The property housed 10 shops, but the quarters where Bisht stayed were affected.

Made out of timber, the building carrying the memory of the British town had become a “dilapidated old structure”, says Pradeep Tewari, who runs Narain Bookstore, set up 96 years ago.

He attributes the loss of the structure to urban expansion and austere maintenance. He remembers the time when Bisht and her sister Rawat would take a stroll on the Mall Road along the lake. Growing up in Mallital — where the bazaar stands — along with the city’s signature mosque, gurdwara, and temple, Tewari was brought up on the stories of the buildings. “After being unseated by the new London House by cloth merchants, it was rechristened as Old London House,” he says.

The district administration said that in the firefighting operation, the local police force, fire teams, the Air Force fire team, along with additional fire tenders requisitioned from Bhawali, Bhimtal, Ramnagar, Haldwani, and other districts, were actively engaged. An enquiry has been ordered into the incident to probe allegations of a lack of hydrants and possible lacunae.

Earlier this year, another historic building in the hill town — the Metropole Hotel, which had earlier been declared enemy property — was made into a parking lot. The building had also been gutted by a fire in 2019.

According to another historian, Ritesh Sah, the house provided lodging for five bachelor undersecretaries, each with single occupancy quarters and shared service spaces. Its multi-storeyed deodar timber construction was typical of mid-19th Century hill stations, featuring a timber frame, steep roof, wide verandahs, and high ceilings designed to suit the summer lifestyle of British officials. The ground floor was used by servants who attended to the British officers.