Dehradun, April 19 -- Author_s Collection

By: Ganesh Saili

There was a time, two hundred years ago in the life of this station, when it found itself at a fork in the road. Of course, the trees were younger then, the mists still hung around much longer, and the town was not yet sure what it wished to become. Just like the traveller in Robert Frost's poem, it saw two roads; one led towards scholarship and serenity, and the other towards a livelier, bustling future. It was a time when everyone, except the locals, seemed to have the two proverbial pennies to rub together.

This story begins, as many of our hill stations' stories do, with a Scotsman. In this instance, it all began with a certain John Mackinnon, who arrived from Meerut, bring...