The first thing you learn at MIS is that the weather has opinions. It rolls up the valley at ten in the morning, sits on the ridge for two hours, and leaves before assembly ends.

The second thing is that you can hear the deodars at night. The wind comes through them the way it used to come through the neem behind my grandmother's house in Lucknow, only slower, and colder, and older.

The third thing is that you're never alone in the way you used to be. There is always someone humming in the corridor, someone reading in the window seat, someone waiting outside the housemistress's door with a form to sign. You get used to it. You start to like it.