The Ridge Shimla

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The Ridge is not only a flat portion of land in Shimla, it contains its lifeline. The water reservoir beneath it has a storage of ten lakh gallons of water. The reservoir was constructed without using even ounce of cement in the eighteen eighties and only lime mortar has been used. A major port on of the flat land consist of the debris and has resulted into so called sinking zone.  The Church on the Ridge has been a witness to numerous historical moments.  The Ridge used to be a sacred place and that may be the reason that the then Municipals Engineer Mr. Fletcher had the temerity to lay before the vehicle of the Viceroy so as to stop him from crossing the Ridge.

Poor Engineers must be having a night mare in his grave since even the air outlet of the Ridge reservoir stands removed! Mahatma Gandhi’s statue of the Ridge must have been a logical fall out of the Indian Independence, but the Ridge is now adorned by more statues prompting old timers to term it as “Butt Kadan” i.e. house of statues.  The rainfall on the Ridge results water taking two separate courses, one leads t the Bay of Bengal and other to the Arabian Seas. Some rationalists point out that were even water gets divided the opinion are seldom likely to be one, it is but natural that even before the Shimla summit concluded its obituary had been splashed by the media! The Ridge continues to evoke different opinions and definitely the same would be the fate of 24^th March rally!