Dehradun, March 16 -- Manoj Saili.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. We finished college, some grew wings and flew to distant lands; a few, like me, sprouted roots. Shuffling around the college office, I realised on that day that the dice had been cast: henceforth, Landour was where life for me was going to unfold. All I had to do was brace myself for the ride.

'New teacher?' Stubby, short and stout Jagdish Babu asked me my date of birth.

Taking my school-leaving certificate, he uttered a date, added sixty years, and like a soothsayer, said: 'That's the day you will retire.'

And he was right, as correct as a broken clock that gets the time right twice a day. Quietly, without fanfare, one day I found that age had snuck up on me....