Echoes in an old ballroom

In the early 1990s, I spent a month living on one of the old, and very grand, houseboats on Lake Dal in Kashmir, Northern India. These houseboats were built by the British during the days of the Raj, because the local Maharaja wouldn't allow them to own land. One day, I hired a driver and went up into the foothills of the Himalayas. The driver was old (as was his car), in his seventies at least. He took me to an old British colonial station in the Himalayan foothills called Gulmarg. There was a semi derelict building, probably dating from the late 19th century, with a green, corrugated iron roof. The place was a disused time capsule. The driver became quite emotional and started to tell stories of what he remembered of this place as a boy. He told of standing outside, peering in through the windows at a huge, brightly lit room. At one end was an orchestra playing music while 'the English' swirled and twirled around the dance floor, the ladies all in beautiful dresses and the gentlemen in their finest. I've never forgotten that place, and the elderly gentleman who told me his stories. The building was empty and a faded relic out of its time but resolutely, if oddly, in its place. While the ghosts of those ladies and gentlemen probably still swirl and twirl on a Saturday night, to echoes of the orchestra.