Dehradun, June 22 -- Author's Family album

Only one person could have named his son after the socialist writer Maxim Gorki, the Russian nominated five times for the Nobel Prize, and who gave us immortal lines like: 'Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.'

In the dying years of the 1960s, a visitor to Mussoorie witnessed the most unusual scene. At the mouth of the Kingcraig bus terminus stood the Mussoorie College, where a lot of folks from the Punjab came to do their masters. Their many-coloured turbans brightened the place.

I find myself back in time with my classmate Rajpal, who had joined our small class of twenty students studying English. He ha...