As a longtime resident of Shimla, I tend to regard her as an aristocratic prima donna whose beauty is now of the past, but some of the charms remain.For me, the main attraction on Mall Road is still Trishool, that cute little bakery next to Gaiety Theatre. In the metros, the standalone bakery is now a thing of the past; what you have are chains and their mass-produced stuff. You can no longer easily get an honest, simple pastry; you’ll instead be hawked a meringue, or a gateau, or a truffle at five times the price of the original thing. Cream roll is passe except in the slums. The simple, delicious patty is unrecognisable. The bun has metamorphosed into the croissant.For all of this, you pay humongous amounts through your e-nose. And that’s precisely why I keep going back to Trishool: the same chocolate pastries, fruit buns, cream rolls and patties that eased the white man of his burden a hundred years ago, and I can have the whole lot for the price of one meringue in Khan Market.Then there’s Dewan Chand Atma Ram (DCAR, to the oldies) just across the road. It has clothed me, my two sons, one wife, and many generations of Cottonians. You may spend your life ordering from Flipkart or Amazon, but you’ll never find anything to match the styles in DCAR. And the prices are so reasonable, you wonder why either Deepak or Dinesh (the burghers who preside over the garments) bother asking you for money at all!Moving from the man-made to the natural charms of this fading beauty, there’s Forest Hill Road, a 2-km stretch of sylvania that has somehow escaped the degradation and traffic chaos which have befallen all of the town’s roads. A walk along it in the evening can almost make you want to get married again — well, okay, that may be pushing it a bit. Since nobody walks in Shimla these days, the road is quiet and contemplative. If you’re unlucky, you will probably bump into Yogesh Khanna.One evening, he was walking down the road in the middle of a tempestuous storm, the rain coming down in buckets. Suddenly, he saw a procession of nuns coming towards him, brightly lit candles in their hands, chanting hymns. Yogesh stood aside, let the procession pass and continued on his way. Suddenly, he froze: how on earth were all the candles burning bright and steadily in the middle of this storm and rain? He looked back — the nuns had disappeared. Yogesh hurried home, not looking back even once, like the Ancient Mariner who “turns no more his head, for he doth know that close behind a fearful fiend doth tread…”Then there’s Annandale, that divinely picturesque glen cradled in the lap of majestic deodars. It is here that the Army trains day and night to clobber the Chinese — at golf. This golf course is one of the Army’s treasured possessions and they would sooner vacate Siachen than Annandale. I’ve played golf here for a few years, though “played” is a euphemism: I spent most of my time looking for the ball in the forests, because, for some strange reason, all my drives invariably went in the direction of Kasauli.After seven years on the course, I’ve never hit an eagle or birdie, though I have hit a cow (twice) and my good friend Yatish Sud (once). Annandale is a wonderful place, and I hope the Army never hands it over to the civilian administration, for then it will become another Sanjauli.One wouldn’t normally add the HP government Secretariat to Shimla’s list of charming memories, not even if Jattvibeny Leone became Chief Secretary and gyrated her sinuous way up that historic staircase. But I do retain fond memories of one small corner of the Secretariat: the dingy, refrigerated building behind Armsdale. We christened it Guru Nanak Niwas (GNN), because it was a kind of refuge-cum-exile for those out of favour with the rulers of the day.At one point in time in the mid-1980s, I was sentenced to serve time as Joint Secretary (Animal Husbandry). I was exiled because of a rumour that I had named my dog after the then Chief Secretary, ostensibly so that I could kick him around vicariously! The rumour was, of course, a canard: my dog was named Brutus.Quite unknown to the mandarins of the Secretariat Administration Department, it was actually a jolly fine place. No minister or senior officer ever visited GNN so we could do just about what we wished to. We usually strolled in at about 11 am, to find loud singing emanating from the bathrooms where all the Section officers were having a bath in order to save water at their residences. I worked till noon and then made my way up the hill behind the building to Raj Bhavan where my batchmate, the late JP Negi, was the Secretary to the Governor. The afternoons were spent in playing billiards and partaking of the fine food.At 5 pm, I would return to office, sign the couple of files that had mistakenly found their way to my table, pick up my squash kit and go to the Raj Bhavan court. It was a wonderful time but, like all good things in life, didn’t last very long. Someone conveyed to the Chief Secretary that my dog was named after a Roman statesman and not a Kinnaura worthy, and so I was shifted to Finance.There I learned, among other things, the similarity between a bikini and a budget — that what they conceal is much more interesting than what they reveal.Don’t grieve over the beauty that once was Shimla, but use your memories to bring back those charms. It doesn’t matter that Mary’s lamb has now become a mutton burger; remembering her other charms can still bring back the good times.— The writer is a retired IAS officer