Dehradun, March 9 -- The Bandstand at Library is still moving courtesy Rahul Kohli

Nineteen square miles! That's all one has to offer. Nothing more or nothing less. As for the rest, we depend upon the fun and frolic, chatter, and chatterboxes to fill our lives. Of course, I am guilty as charged, for being a bearer of the gossip picked over the years I have spent here on this hill trawling the narrow alleys.

I have been forewarned by the hill folk about the perils of gossiping: 'The mouth of a hundred pitchers can be closed but not one man's mouth.'

If you were to plant your feet anywhere along the ridge to the north, you would find the prospect of the serrated ridges of the mighty ranges of the Himalaya. On your east lie the hills of T...