Wild Daisies: At the destination of the Toy Train in the dying days of the Raj -- A North Pointer's recollections of The School on the Hill - Paperback

by Phillip Khan-Panni (Author)

This is a collection of episodes from boarding school days in Darjeeling, the queen of Indian hill stations, during the dying days of the British Raj. The author was born in Hong Kong during World War II, smuggled across to mainland China under the noses of the occupying Japanese forces, and later kidnapped by his mother and flown by US bomber into India, where he was deposited in a succession of boarding schools. Along the way he collected pre-war English values and attitudes which were missing from the England he eventually found when he emigrated there. More than a personal memoir, it's an account of how it was to live for nine months of each year in a cloistered boarding school in Darjeeling, 7,000 feet up in the eastern Himalayas, speaking only English, playing Cricket, Football and Hockey, learning how to multiply pounds, shillings and pence from Pendlebury's Arithmetic, debating in the parliamentary tradition, and going for runs in the pouring monsoon rain. The '40s and '50s are recalled with wistful affection, and there is an account of the three-train-plus-ferry journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling, including the world-famous Toy Train which is still chugging up the mountain behind tiny tank engines. The title derives from the author's childhood practice of lying on grassy banks on sunny days, picking wild daisies, plucking their petals and rubbing the cushioned centres to release their delicate scent. To him, daisies are happy reminders of those slow-moving idyllic days when life was lived from day to day, and nothing mattered very much.

Author Biography

Phillip Khan-Panni had a career in sales and direct marketing before starting a training business in 1994. Along the way he gained numerous distinctions in public speaking, placing second in the World Championship and co-founding the Professional Speaking Association. He is the author of eight business books and one of poetry. Born in Hong Kong during WW II, he was taken into mainland China, where he was almost starved to death. Kidnapped by his estranged mother, he was flown 'over the hump' to India in a US bomber, and placed in a succession of Himalayan boarding schools. His main school was St Joseph's College in Darjeeling, a Jesuit establishment widely known as North Point. The book recounts his time at those hill schools. Aged 18 he won the All India Inter-Collegiate Debate - the first of of his public speaking awards. Soon afterwards he emigrated to London in what he says was "an act of colonial revenge"! During his time in Fleet Street, he achieved the most dramatic spike in classified ad sales in the history of the Daily & Sunday Express newspapers, tripling revenue in less than a year. He published his own weekly newspaper, the London Entertainer, which sadly failed. Switching to Direct Mail, he was Senior Copywriter at Reader's Digest, London, for eight years, and started his own Direct Marketing agency, closing it down when his wife died tragically in 1991. Joining Toastmasters International, he won numerous awards for public speaking, including Anglo-Irish Champion three times, second in the World Championship and Inaugural UK Business Speaker of the Year. He launched a training consultancy, PKP Communicators, later co-founding 4C International, specialising in cross-cultural communication. In 1999, he also co-founded the Professional Speaking Association, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. He lives on the edge of London with his Irish second wife, Evelyn.