Looking back

Spent a lot of yesterday and today trying to find pictures of where I used to live in India. The two places I remember a lot about are:

Shimla - we lived in Summerhill, in Sanjauli and the Oberoi hotel on the other side. I used to go to school near The Mall. I remember spending Sundays on the Mall, running around, falling and grazing myself countless times. My grandfather worked for the LIC of India and we used to walk together in the morning, him to his office and me to my school. In the afternoon, when I finished, I would walk to his office and play there or work (doing maths!), sipping sweet tea or coke brought by the chaprassi. Some amazing pictures of Shimla. They look so familiar.

I saw the BBC film about the Kalka - Shimla rail journey on youtube. I remember doing that as a child. Even more frightening was doing it on a bus driving far too fast along a poor road with a drop of several hundred (or thousand!) feet on one side.

Ambala - we lived here from 1963 on. I went to the Convent of Jesus and Mary School till 1968. I had to leave then. I don't think the nuns could cope with boys once we reached puberty..... Nowadays it's a girls only school. I showed pictures of the school from google images to Adam, explaining how the kites used to dive bomb us, snatching food from the hands of unwary children. After CJM I went to the Air Force School but that seems to have changed. A very nice young man has set up a facebook about the city and he may upload some pictures for me!

I also found some pictures uploaded by a man called R. Bhatnagar who, as I had hoped, turned out to be Atul's (one of my childhood friends) eldest brother. What a small world........ I am waiting to hear from Atul.


Update: Just reading the history of Ambala. I didn't realise how important it was militarily. I do remember reading a bit about Ambala in Rudyard Kipling's "Kim"

(i) Official Ambala website
(ii) Air Force
(iii) St. Paul's Church