ABSTRACT
My formal education as usual was completely neglected. I was sent to the convent in Chandernagore [possibly St Joseph’s Convent], but what I studied there was negligible. I read English with my father in the evenings which meant a lot to me and I had a tutor for Bengali. Father had bought for me a Rachals upright piano, an instrument with a deep mellow tone and it became very precious to me. I was being given piano lessons at the Chandernagore convent. Father had taken six months’ leave and my parents went abroad for a holiday. It was decided that I should be sent to the Darjeeling convent [possibly Loreto Convent] as a boarder, and though the nuns and girls of my age group were very kind to me, I could not adjust myself to a boarder’s life. I was unhappy and homesick. My father came up to Darjeeling to bid me goodbye before leaving for Europe; seeing me unsettled and unhappy he was distressed. Col. N.P. Sinha 43 with his younger daughter, Mrs. Amar Sen and her two sons were living in a rented house in Darjeeling. Father knew him well and asked if he would have me stay with them for six months. He readily agreed, so I became another member of his family and 78attended the convent as a day scholar. It was at the convent that I first met Mother Germaine, and though a brilliant pianist and teacher, she was mistress of schools, and taught the piano to only a few selected pupils.
