First time in Roorkee

I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.She has the beauty of a village belle and the charm of a princess.She gave me a place when I had nowhere else to go.My Roorkee, Iam in eternal love with you.
Like my discovery of Khasak,my discovery of Malgudi, my discovery of Kittur, I have been discovering Roorkee. Only but,  this time the place turned out to be more fictional.

After a four hour airplane journey and after allowing myself a glimpse of Delhi I set out to Roorkee, the gateway to Himalayas.As the Shatabdi moved towards the mountains leaving behind Yamuna ,the cantonment station of Meerut and the green sugar cane fields I could feel the chill in the air.At the railway station when I first saw the cycle rickshaws, the only vehicle that can be hired for a short distance travel, I felt  I have moved backwards in time.

Roorkee is a young town.Progress has not gone to her heads.She has maintained her looks.The green serene campus of IIT Roorkee may make you want to stay here the rest of your life.She values her heritage and the adminstrative building stands as a monument to this.

Roorkee has been mentioned in Ain-i-Akbari, the 16th century document on Akbar's administration.It has been headquarters to a paragana. When  the 19th century  English engineer Sir Proby Cautley was thinking of building a canal by diverting the waters of river Ganga, Roorkee was just a hamlet on the banks of Solani.The  governor of North West province of British India decided to build an engineering college in Roorkee for the natives so that the construction of the canal goes unhindered.Later Roorkee became headquarters of the Bengal Sappers and Miners as well.The engineering college of 1847 evolved into the modern Indian Institute of Technology.

Roorkee has compensated for its relatively short history by refusing to part away with whatever old buildings it has.The red bricked methodist churches and the instrument weather station are not the only things that mark Roorkee.The proportion of people living in dialipidated old grand houses as compared to the new ones should be higher than in any other town I have ever visited.

Roorkee has its own sense of time.It has carefully set to move itself at a  leisure pace.