Dehradun, May 8 -- Safer, I guess, to plead guilty of dangling with the departed. Rest assured, dear Reader, that though I do rattle old bones (my own!), but rarely do I hold comune with those resting in peace in our Cities of Silence.

This rejig of memory was forced upon me courtesy a friend (whom we call SP) who was staying at Savoy and teased us: 'Stephen Alter, Ruskin Bond and you are the only living writers on the Writers Wall in the Writers' Bar! The rest are dead. or have you three come back from the dead?'

This is the story of how we ended up nailed to the wall. It begins almost fifty years ago, when Anand Jauhar, who at the time owned the place, while holidaying in Singapore chanced upon some plaques in the Raffles' Bar celebra...