"Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it" ~ Rabindranath Tagore

One fine morning the ring of the telephone connected me to Mr.McNamara. I had lost touch with him since my six month stay in Paris way back in 1993. He was with the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris dealing with various World Heritage sites. We had met many times both socially and professionally. He was quite excited and informed me that UNESCO had received a proposal to place the toy train to Darjeeling among the World Heritage list and that UNESCO's reaction was positive. He said that it was only a matter of time before the final approval came through. He also told me that Discovery Channel had made a documentary of the Toy Train that was likely to be beamed to viewers world wide in August 1999. He felt, and correctly so, that being a native of Darjeeling, I would receive these tidings with great joy.

Suddenly, my memories flashed back six decades to the hills of Darjeeling where I spent my childhood. The toy train was then known as the Darjeeling Himalayan Railways or by its short form, the DHR. My family were the leading merchants of Darjeeling with a monopoly on supplies to the entire districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri and, to a lesser extent, Calcutta. Darjeeling's elite were either the British ruling class of the time, who visited Darjeeling every summer, affluent Indians who maintained properties there like Maharajas and land-owning Zamindars - many of whom conveniently usurped the prefix of "His Highness" to elevate themselves to the ranks of Maharajas - or some well-known Barristers of the Calcutta High Court.

The General Manager of DHR, an Englishman named Cunningham approached my father through the ADC to the Governor of Bengal ,one Col. Johnston. The introduction of trucks to carry goods from Siliguri Junction to Darjeeling, and on the return journey carry tea chests and timber, would be disastrous as the DHR would have had to wind up as a result. Cunningham therefore implored my father not to introduce trucks but to continue using the DHR. My father acquiesced. Later, Cunningham personally met my father to deliver him a Complimentary First Class Railway Pass with the provison to take 2 personal servants in the III class and 2 maunds of luggage, as a token of DHR's appreciation. However, my father hardly used the Railways pass as it was more convenient and time saving to use a car.

DHR was one of the most romantic railways winding its way up the hills. It carried soldiers, planters, holiday-makers escaping the heat and dust of the plains of Bengal and collieries of the Chota Nagpur plateau, and European parents visiting their boarding-school children in Darjeeling. Among the famous schools were the Queen's Hill Girls School that was unfortunately razed in a fire that killed several students. St. Michael's School for girls and St.Paul's School for boys were Anglican Church Schools catering primarily to those belonging to Church of England who would not have wanted to send their children to the excellent Catholic schools like St. Joseph's (North Point), run by Jesuits and Loreto Convent by Irish nuns. The Queen's Hill School which was so tragically destroyed by fire was later shifted to the present day Mount Hermon School.

My grand father would love to narrate the story of how the toy train had to wait for hours on the narrow guage track in the Sukna jungle because a tigress with grown cubs was lying on the tracks. Sukna jungle at that time was densely forested and was the habitat of several tigers and other large animals. Alas, none of these majestic beasts have survived the relentless expansion of human habitation. Wildlife has ceased to exist in the Darjeeling hills!