Mr Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night on the outskirts of the hill station of Shimla. The school was conducted on English public school lines and the boys - most of them from well-to-do Indian families - wore blazers, caps and ties. "Life" magazine, in a feature on India, had once called this school the Eton of the East . Mr Oliver had been teaching in this school for several years. He's no longer there. The Shimla Bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about two miles from the school; and Mr Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening returning after dark, when he would take a short cut through a pine forest. When there was a strong wind, the pine trees made sad, eerie sounds that kept most people to the main road. But Mr Oliver was not a nervous or imaginative man. He carried a torch - and on the night I write of, its pale gleam, the batteries were running down - moved fitfully over the narrow for...
Give me a pen and paper and watch as I paint your world.