I had written a novel “They don’t kiss in the movies“.  It talks of my first two weeks at BCS in 1948.  The book is self-published and is available only through me.

Here is chapter I. The book is a love story, set in India in the early 1950s. It was a time of innocence and the newly-independent country was young. Most of the action occurs in Solan – there is the romance and there is much discussion of God and the scriptures, both pro and con.

Some of the chapters are autobiographical, such as the 1947 riots and chapter I, and some are biographical, such as the war in Burma. The rest is fiction with a big dose
of wishful thinking. The book is a serious attempt at tackling God and atheism.

Gurdip S. Sidhu, MD

[Editor: Gurdip Sidhu (Sidhu II) was at BCS 1948-1951 in Lefroy House. A pathologist, he lives in Harrington Park USA]

1
Hoisting skis to shoulders, we walked back the five hundred odd yards to the inn. Yesterday’s storm and today’s warm sun had conjured up a skier’s dream – two tired bodies now reveled in the most desirable languor. Showered, dressed, they sat an hour later in a dimly lit, hospitable, warm dining room. Outside, the neon sign glowed in the lowering fog. “The Inn At whiteface Mountain,’ it said. Red, green, empty wine bottles shone dimly along the windows, logs crackled in the fireplace, and soft voices drifted across from other tables. Love and magic hung in the air. My gaze drifted past red liquid in wine glasses, losing itself in limpid, brown womanly eyes casting irresistible spells from across the table . . . she was an apsara, I was sure – one of those heavenly nymphs who entertain the gods – or a houri straight from Paradise. I had chased her all day down the snowy slopes and would follow her again soon to the room. But she had other plans . . . slowly, hypnotically, such are the ways of apsaras and houris and the cruel lure of the past, I was drawn ever back in time, back back back, tumbling through memories long forgotten, to a time when life was melancholy, and I was just a boy in India. Red wine, evening magic, limpid brown eyes, crackling firelogs, drifting voices, they all conspired and I yielded: memories arose from the depths, unfolding relentlessly. More wine, more eyes, more magic, and . . . I was revisiting history. Continue reading →