The journey took three hours in a red bus with no glass in the windows. There were hairpin bends, spectacular views

and frequent sightings of monkeys. We knew we were almost there when we caught sight of the landmark mountain Perumal, Silver Cascade, a lovely waterfall, the Sacred Heart Jesuit Convent and Natural History Museum, and the outskirts of Kodai itself. The first house we lived in was on Association Hill. Association Hill was called that because it was an estate for people who worked for the YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association. There were several houses and this shows our house.

They had their own gardens and they were all bungalows. At the bottom of the hill was a creek where the dhobis used to wash the clothes. We would see them beating sheets and shirts against the rocks to make them clean.

There was a tennis court where people rarely played tennis but which was the place where the families used to gather sometimes in the evening to have a bonfire and toast marshmallows. There were orange raspberries growing wild and something we called cotton leaves because they were as soft as cloth and had a pattern as if cut by pinking shears. There were pear trees and some acquired tree houses where we had the enjoyable experience of sitting with our friends eating not quite ripe pears plucked straight from the tree. There was a playground as well with swings, a chinese swing and a see-saw all made out of logs and roughly hewn, not painted and sanded like the playground equipment had been in London.

Every day we walked to school. Kodai, with its lovely scenery and mild climate was a popular place for schools. As well as The American Kodaikanal Missionary School which we attended , there was a Swedish Lutheran School and the Presentation Convent a school for English girls of all ages and English boys under seven. Our school had 12 grades plus a kindergarten. The 6 grade school classes were on the ground floor of the Quad and the six junior High and High school classes were appropriately upstairs.I remember that at either end of the quad was the Girls Sanitarium and the Boys Sanitarium, very polite words for toilets. I started off in 2nd Grade. Our teacher was Miss Hostetler. I remember just two things-one was reciting the Oath of Allegiance to the American flag and the 23rd psalm every morning and the other was learning to make heart shapes for valentine Cards by diagonally weaving two pieces of paper which were rectangles with semi circles at the end..

At the end of the school year in October, the school had its Christmas celebrations. One major part was that each class performed a short play. In 1955 the theme was "Christmas around the world". My brother John's class, 4th grade did a scene from Peer Gynt- the hall of the mountain king where John wore pyjamas dyed brown to be a gnome. Our class chose Christmas in England. It bore little resemblance to the real thing! It began with a group of children decorating a house and singing "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly". Then another group of children the strongest boys in the clas pulled in a yule log on a rope on which I the smallest girl in the class was seated. Then I dismounted from the yule log, sat in a chair and read aloud from Dicken's Christmas carol until all the members of the class who were not on stage started singing carols, to which I said " Hark, I hear the wassailers" and they came in dressed in scarves and hats to be regaled with pretend punch and edibles.After the celebrations we took the long train ride back to Calcutta to return in January 1956 when I entered the third grade.