Copper, Soldier, Doctor, Spy

 Sim's Park Remains a Treasure in Need of Some TLC

 

Sim's Park  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Nina Varghese

 

Many years ago, as part of a press delegation, I visited Shanghai and we were taken to see a beautiful garden and house of a long-forgotten Chinese nobleman. I was overcome with a feeling of déjà vu. I had been here before. Then I realized where I had seen the pagoda, the koi pond, the bridges and the palm trees… an identical replica at Sim's Park.

 

Sim's Park is Coonoor's best-known tourist attraction. The beautiful park was the brainchild of James Duncan Sim, a British civil servant who was a member of the Madras Legislative Council. In 1874. Sim along with Major Murphy of the Madras Forest Department planned and developed the park along the natural contours of the land.

 

The park is set in a deep ravine covering 12 hectares which are planted with trees, shrubs and creepers brought from all over the world. The small lake at the bottom of the garden had a Chinese pagoda with a koi pond and small wooden bridges across the narrower parts of the lake.

 

Today everything has changed.

 

More than 60 years ago, I was a frequent visitor. My cousin, Sam, and I would be taken to play in the park. Many children from the neighbourhood would also come to play. I loved to lie face down on the wooden boards of the bridge over the artificial lake and peer through the gaps in the boards to see the golden koi dart about. Sam, in the meantime, was devising methods to catch the fish. He would suspend a length of twine through the gaps in the fond hope that the fish would bite. It never did. We would spend a considerable amount of time rolling down the slopes on the first tier till the sun started its descent and the chill set in. Invariably, I would have a leaky nose by the time we got home and by midnight, a fever would rage. Unfortunately, Doc George was not yet a medical man;  years later he diagnosed it as a pollen allergy.

 

Over the years, the number of visitors to Sim's Park has increased. A ballpark figure of the number of visitors to Sim's Park would be half the visitors to the Botanical Garden in Ooty, which in 2023 stood at 28 lakh *.

 

Though large numbers continue to visit the park, it sadly lacks basic utilities such as working toilets. Today, the public roads on either side of the park are used as toilets. During the peak tourist season, the stench is unbelievable. This is a major health hazard.

 

 The neighbourhood children no longer come to play in the park. They cannot. The park has been appropriated for the tourist. There is an entry fee of Rs 40 for adults, Rs 20 for children between the ages of three and 12, Rs 50 for a still camera and Rs 100 for a video camera. The evergreen hedge that ran around the circumference of the park has been replaced by concrete. A new utilitarian entry point has been opened at the beginning of the Figure-of-Eight Road. During peak tourist times, people milling around the entrance obstruct the traffic, causing jams. 

Photo credit: Samantha Iyanna

The front of the park is occupied by vendors selling local fruits and not-so-local miscellany.

 

Two things Sim’s Park needs urgently. One is, clean public toilets that can be used by everyone. The second is, regularisation of the vendors  and providing them booths to sell their wares.

*Source: The Hindu