I was one of the few day scholars at PPCG. Most of the girls were boarders from wealthy families in Madras, Madurai and Coimbatore. They weren’t allowed out of the compound unless it was for authorised walks, or if a family member came to visit. Newspapers, films and magazines were banned, and if you were caught with cigarettes or alcohol, you faced certain expulsion. For birthdays, girls were allowed to have a supervised outing, providing their parents sent enough money. And in the eleventh and twelfth standard, you were allowed to attend the much-anticipated annual dance with the international school, which was exciting primarily because it involved boys.

As we lived just five minutes down the road, the sisters allowed me the privilege of going back home at the end of each day, but it was always cited as the main reason for my many perceived shortcomings. ‘Grace Marisola,’ they’d admonish, ‘just because no one disciplines you at home, don’t think you can come here and corrupt the other girls.’

Papi was the only truly happy one among us. He was a different person from the father in Madras. Jovial, relaxed. The climate in Kodai suited him, the trees and flowers were familiar to him, and there was finally some quiet and calm. Every weekend he went off on a trek with the local hiking club, and in this way made Indian acquaintances without my mother’s intervention. He continued to work as a consultant for Eni on a part-time basis, forced to make site visits every few months, but otherwise allowed to work from home. The company would send him large dossiers, which he’d go through in his studio – a shed at the end of the garden. Here he’d work from ten to six every day, spreading sheets of paper on the table in front of him, fountain pen in hand, equations and formulas scribbled on notepaper and stuck on the walls around him. For lunch he would come into the kitchen and make himself a sandwich and an espresso, smoke a cigarette on the front lawn in the sun and then return to his desk. At four he’d take a break to pick me up from school. My father’s hands were soft and stubby. Walking home, I would put my hand in his until our palms became sweaty, after which I’d draw away.

Once a week I’d be dispatched to the post office in the bazaar to make sure that a dossier was couriered to Madras or Rome. And in this way, a kind of communication existed between him and the outside world. Our wealth must have been greatly diminished, but as with many things at that age, I had no understanding of relativity. I never felt anything but richness in those early years. We lived in a beautiful house, we had our health, my parents battled frequently but always made their peace, and I had only the nuns to mar my contentment.

When I think of my parents now, I try to think of them in happier times. In those days before I entered their lives – the languid year they spent in Tranquebar after their marriage, the excitement of those first years in the house on Gilchrist Avenue in Madras.