The following is snipped from http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030215/windows/above.htm ** I think the word 'honour' in the quoted portion is a typo - a misprint. It should be 'humour'. ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India Quote: Saturday, February 15, 2003 Love in times of war Khushwant Singh IN Kasauli there is an old British cemetery dating back to the 1840s when the English built a line of cantonments on the Shivalik ranges to billet troops in the event of a war which seemed imminent against the Sikh kingdom. This cemetery is a good way down the hill from the military hospital, few people bother to visit it. In my younger days, I went there thrice to see which was the oldest grave. I could not find it as many marble tombstones had been stolen and the inscriptions on others became illegible. Even in broad daylight pine and yew trees cast eerie shadows; the place looked haunted. However, I found one epitaph on a grave which I found to be a good example of the sort of macabre honour** (sic) only the British have. I memorised the lines: Halt stranger, do not go by, As you are now, so once was I; Prepare therefore to follow me, As I am, so will you be. Later I discovered this epitaph was by no means unique: it had been used elsewhere and is found in many quotations books. I was reminded of it because of a novel I've just finished reading, A Twisted Cue by Rohit Handa (Ravi Dayal). It begins with its chief character, an Anglo-Indian officer in the Indian Army, trying to discover the identity of his English forefathers who had fought campaigns against Tipu Sultan and the Marathas. The cemetery yielded no clues; nor did the author notice the epitaph I had quoted. Perhaps by then it had been stolen or obliterated by the passage of years. [snip] Unquote