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The Church, the first in this region, had come up within a few years of John Malcolm establishing the garrison town of Mhow after the British gave a bit of a bloody nose to the Holkars in 1817 at Mehidpur.
Crossing this church on the Mall Road, (You can never get lost in an old cantt as there will always be a ’Mall Road’ to take you home.)
I have often admired its sky kissing lean spire, which gives the structure a haughty look as it stands with a Baobab or two for company.
On the walls inside, among the many plaques, there is one with the name of the first person to be killed by a tiger in Mhow. There are carved wooden arches in a row on the vaulted ceiling.
The original wooden pews with brackets, an addition after the mutiny of 1857, to hold the rifles of the soldiers are still there. The mutineers burnt the outhouse of the priest on their way to Indore but spared the main building.
Although, partly because of its name but mostly because of its setting- in a grove of old deodars with stain glass windows and a massive bell on the side, my all-time favourite is St John in the Wilderness Church near Dharamsala.
The other favourite is in Mhow- Standing alone in an expanse of brown overgrown grass, as if on a moor, without any adjoining drama. (If one doesn’t count the neighbouring hebejebeish cemetery!)
The small, dark stone structure has had various names at different times – St Andrew’s church, ’Kirk’ among others and is now known as the Scottish Church. In my mind it was always ‘Scottish’.
I have no idea why though, given I have never traveled to that part of the world much less been to a church there!
It was a chapel originally, dating back to the 1880s and still looks timeless, bubble wrapped, untouched by the changing neighbourhood on the Post Office Road.
To be continued......