Dehradun, April 6 -- The night smog over the Doon courtesy Manish John

By: Ganesh Saili

Winter brings a reign of quiet in the hill station. Slowly, wildlife begins to visit the place to reclaim what originally belonged to them. I saw a CCTV grab of our hostelries, with a leopard loping around Camel's Back Road.

I guess it's that kind of season - one could believe almost anything.

When I last wrote of leopards lurking in Landour, I remembered our battered hundred-year-old burial register (since reported to have gone missing) of the Landour Cantonment Cemetery. It has but a single entry alluding to death caused by a man-animal conflict. 'Clarence Thomas Wyatt, died in January 1949, aged 33 years.' It records that he was 'accidentally ma...