Chasing Butterflies

I was instantly cured the moment I set foot in Mussoorie. Sometimes moving on is better than giving a place a chance; Mussoorie is much more my style. I caught my first glimpse of the Himalayas today and they are breathtaking; they leave you feeling small, insignificant, and in total awe.

I visited the school, Woodstock, where my grandfather (whom I never met) studied and eventually taught. While on my tour of the school, the librarian, dressed in a beautiful sari asked me, "what has taken you so long to get here?" I just smiled and shrugged.

Woodstock is a boarding school, now for middle and high schoolers, in a gorgeous location at the top of a mountain overlooking basmati rice fields and countless peaks and valleys as far as you can see. The school is known for its music program and as you enter the main gate you are greeted with the song of violins, guitars and pianos - or at least I was lucky enough to have come at the right moment. It's an american school, so the students can take sciences along with humanities, which is often not allowed in India's 'streaming' programs that allow only science for science students and only humanities for humanities students (maybe that's why I'm so scatterbrained).

When in the alumni office, I met a girl who had graduated in '09 and missed the school so much, she came back to show a friend who she was now studying with at college in Mumbai. Kajoli, who was so enthusiastic about her time at Woodstock, could only go on and on about her days at Woodstock and how much she learned from her few short years there. We walked up to the spot where all the students hang out and had lunch while Richa joked that Woodstock was all Kajoli talked about. Kajoli countered with, "well did you disect a goat brain AND then write a thesis statement in the same day??" I can only hope that my grandfather was blessed with a student as eager and playful as Kajoli.

It was very emotional to walk down the streets wondering if he had been moved by the same view of the mountains when he lived there. Or whether he knew the parents and grand parents of the people I was meeting in the shops. And of course what he was like. His picture is on the wall of the brand new gym from 1941 when he taught baseball and hockey. The yearbook said he was 'good-natured and witty', although he looks very serious and pensive in every photo. It's very difficult to think of this man as my grandfather, as he is perpetually young in my mind.

A nice woman in the alumni office emailed some students who may have had him as a teacher. It would be really neat to hear more about him. But for now, I am moving on. Tonight I take a night train to Amritsar, but Mussoorie has moved me deeply. I now know why he chose this place.