India
McCluskieganj
A crumbling utopian Anglo-Indian settlement being slowly swallowed by the dense forests of Jharkhand.
The bungalow name reads 'Rose Villa', but the roses are gone, the walls are cracking, and sal trees push through the roof. In the 1930s this was supposed to be a homeland — a place where Anglo-Indians could live as themselves. Ninety years later, the jungle is winning.
McCluskieganj was founded in 1933, when Ernest Timothy McCluskie bought 10,000 acres from the Raja of Ratu to build a self-governing settlement for the Anglo-Indian community — a people of mixed British and Indian heritage who felt they belonged fully to neither nation. At its height there were hundreds of families, a church, a tennis club, and bungalows named The Retreat and Doreen Villa. Most left for Australia, Britain or the cities; the sal forest has been moving back in ever since, though a school now keeps some bungalows alive as hostels.
Solo
Walk the bungalow lanes with respect — people still live here — and take the station road at sunset.
- A community bought 10,000 acres in 1933 to build itself a homeland — the 'Mooluk' of the Anglo-Indians.
- Bungalows with English names rot gently under creeping sal forest.
- A handful of Anglo-Indian families remain, keepers of the story.
- A mosque, a temple and a gurudwara stand side by side here — the utopian streak outlived the founders.
Dhuska — rice-and-lentil batter fried puffed — comes with a fierce black-gram curry.
Railway mutton curry, the Anglo-Indian stew of mild spice and soft potato, is the community's own dish.
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