Dehradun, Aug. 24 -- The Cantonement Quad in Landour

By: Ganesh Saili

Playing truant from school, four of us, fourteen-year-olds: Anmol, Dhruv, Prem, and I-whistled the Colonel Bogey March across the Mall. It was the theme song of that iconic war film, The Longest Day. Upsetting the old biddies walking along the Mall, who glared at us, disgusted by our stomping with our shoe studs showering sparks off the road.

A ten-anna ticket gave us a front-row view of the Normandy landings of the Second World War, where the Germans, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, failed to predict the coming assault. On D-Day, he packed up early to take a pair of shoes as a present for his wife's 50th birthday. Meanwhile, Hitler overslept in his lair; who woul...