Hugh and Colleen Gantzer added a new dimension to Indian travel writing (original) (raw)

This year’s list of Padma Shri awardees delighted me when I came across the names of Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. This Anglo-Indian writer-couple along with Ruskin Bond, Irwin Allan Sealy, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Tom Alter, Stephen Alter, Ganesh Saili and Bill Aitken have been featured in Neela Venkatraman’s Hill, Vale & Many a Tale, a documentary on renowned Mussoorie storytellers.

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A decade ago, I read their novel The Year before Sunset (2012), while working on my PhD thesis Anxiety of Representation in Select Anglo-Indian Writers. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of pre-Independence communal violence in 1946-India, it describes the fears and anxieties of Philip Brandon, a 16-year-old Anglo-Indian boy. At that time, the Anglo-Indian community was pro-British. Due to their genealogical and cultural affiliations with the West, the community members were apprehensive about their future in a post-colonial Indian society. A unique aspect of this novel is that it presents the political complexities of the period from an Anglo-Indian point of view, which is but a minority perspective in our multicultural mosaic of communities.

Hugh and Colleen co-authored 30 books and 3,000 articles, of which the Intriguing India series, Looking Beyond and Mussoorie’s Mythistory are significant contributions to Indian travel literature. They also hosted the 1980s’ travel documentary show Looking Beyond with Hugh and Colleen Gantzer on Doordarshan. Though marital matches, they say, are made in heaven, it is rare to find life-partners passionately engaged in co-authoring books and articles for over five decades. Hugh, 93, a retired naval commander, was born in Patna and Colleen, his wife, hailed from Godhra in Gujarat. The two met in Bombay and got married in 1960. Reminiscing their journey of life in The Tribune, Hugh remarked, “I had done a lot of travelling and wanted to write; Colleen, on the other hand, did not like writing but wanted to travel. A compromise was reached. I resumed travelling, Colleen agreed to write and that’s how we became travel writers.”

Pioneers in the field of Indian travel writing, the Gantzers contributed regularly as columnists in The Illustrated Weekly and The Indian Express during the 1970s. In 1974, they were commissioned to write a book on Kerala by the Indian Tourism Development Corporation. Taking their four-year-old son, they set out on a Vespa scooter to explore the notable sites in “God’s own country”. In those days, they faced several challenges as travel journalists, for travel and tourism were viewed synonymously by people and the media. Distinguishing between travel journalism and tourism journalism, Hugh observes that while the latter highlights the arrangement of logistics and comforts provided by the hospitality industry, the former is solely concerned with satisfying the “wanderlust gene”.

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The Intriguing India series published by Niyogi Books covers four distinct regions of the Subcontinent under the following titles: The Alluring North, The Historical South, The Vibrant West and The Colourful East. In “Preface” to The Alluring North, the duo observes, “One of us was born in the East of our land, the other in the West. We had lived for many wonderful years in the South and have made our home in the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas.” The statement underlines their wide range of experience of living across the Indian landscape and their deep-rooted attachment to its variegated culturescape. The stories of their expeditions to remote places like Nubra, a thinly-populated district in Ladakh, Mana, the last village in North India, Patal Bhubaneshwar, an underground shrine, and Gangotri-Yamunotri are marked by facts, popular myths and socio-cultural history.

They have an intricate style of dealing with a place that emphasises wider representation of commoners, particularly the lesser-known groups. The chapter “Matriocracy in the Terai” narrates the story of Thaaru women who serve food to their husbands by kicking the plate to the men. Through this unusual custom, they carry on the tradition of maintaining superiority of women in their community. Hugh and Colleen’s keenness on projecting the merit of the working class is revealed in their article on Mumbai’s dabbawallahs or the famed lunch box carriers. In it, they describe the punctuality of the dabbawallahs in supplying home-cooked food to office-goers for more than 100 years. It mentions that the efficiency of this homegrown service industry has received acclaim from reputed universities offering international degrees on business administration. Recently, this article has been incorporated in the syllabus of Kerala’s curriculum for secondary education.

Their innovativeness lies in their skill to combine traits of travelogue, guide book and folklore in their narratives. The travel books as well as Mussoorie Mythistory, the collection of supernatural short stories, focus on presenting the perspectives of the local people for interpreting the microhistory of places and select ethnic communities. The word “mythistory” has oxymoronic intonations, but here, it stands out as a post-colonial device that uses local beliefs and customs to review the story of a city, which served as a holiday-home to European missionaries and British officials during the days of the Raj.

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Instead of surveying the places superficially, they sought to explore the spiritual heritage of India. Not only the shrines, but also the dress code of local residents — a grandmother, mother and little son on the Silk Road — helped them to map the cultural history of the region. In the words of the Gantzers, “Boulders carrying the beautifully chiselled mantra Om Mane Padme Hum reminded passers-by of their ancient eclectic faith. It had been brought to Kashmir and Ladakh by the greatly revered Indian Buddhist missionary Padmasambhava. Here it had merged with the spirit worshipping Bon faith to evolve into present-day Tibetan Buddhism.” The excerpt highlights their transcendental experience. At the same time, it subtly interrogates the politics behind drawing conflictual borderlines across the Asian map, thereby separating indigenous groups and sects with a shared spiritual vocation.

Hugh and Colleen added a new dimension to Indian travel writing by upholding a panoramic vision. Their notion of Indianness, as reflected in their works, promotes inclusivity. With age, they slowed down but they did not stop. The ideal that kept them going for so many years was their determination “to wear out than rust out”. On January 26, they were awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, in the category of journalism. While Hugh received the honour, it was conferred posthumously on Colleen, who passed away in November 2024.

The writer is an Assistant Professor in English at Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal