After four decades, I am still surprised at the ways in which my early childhood in Landour, Mussoorie India, shaped who I am and what I value today. Though I was barely out of diapers and my sister just toddling, our family trundled us along to spend the summer months from 1953 through 1956 in that amazingly beautiful Himayalan environment.

    Journeying with my father through the process of shaping his memoirs into a finished book have refreshed those early impressions much like a monsoon rain...washing away the dust of years, the haze of a faster, less sensitive culture and time.  

With my Mom, our fox terrier Indus, and my sister. 1955

 Because we moved back to the United States just after my 13th birthday, a natural end to girlhood, I was even more keenly aware and appreciative of my unique cross-cultural upbringing in a world that seemed to have little in common with Berkeley, CA in the “free-speech” political era of the mid-1960s. Though, in fact, a similar sentiment against American global policies was gathering momentum in Pakistan, too, where we had lived for ten years. Rifts that have deepened and widened over the intervening decades.

But my treasured memories like my father’s
are still sweet and rich in significance...

How does one measure the value
of gracious host cultures,
of a friendly and generous people,
of billowing monsoon thunderheads
and torrential downpours,
the terror of careening bus rides on narrow roads
etched into mountainsides,
the threat of spiders as big as one’s little hand,
scorpions hiding in the shadows
or leeches waiting in the verdant undergrowth,
wonderful English chocolate, thick fruited preserves,
sweet milky chai & pungent curries,
a frightening tumble down the hill
or running with the wind,
one’s very own tin lunchpail,
the percussioned cadence of rain on a tin roof,
murmured whispers of cool, fragrant pines,
the amazing hues of green...
train travel and kundi basket rides,
and of learning two languages, side by side?

    Spending a few years in the ancient cultures of the Indian subcontinent, one walks in the footsteps of great saints and world conquerors. My father weaves the historical & cultural context into the fabric of his tale, embellishing the value of my own decade in those lands.

Get the whole story! Read Stan Brush's Memoir of His Boyhood in India, "Farewell the Winterline"

    It has been a delightful honor to take this journey with him. The process has uncovered dormant talents, forged connections with his past and my future, and set the course for new journeys both personal and professional. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.