Primrose Pazo points to herself in an old photograph projected on the screen. Picture by Pema Leyda Shangderpa

Gangtok, April 24: Wrinkled with age but with a sparkle in her eyes, 60-year-old Primrose Pazo looked at the screen closely with childlike awe. Then like a 13-year-old pigtailed teenager she squealed, “That’s me”.

In a moment Pazo was back at Paljor Namgyal Girls’ Senior Secondary School (PNGSS), not as a teacher who retired 10 years ago, but as a student of “Miss Sahab”.

“I never thought that I would see an old photograph of me with my friends and Miss Sahab,” said Pazo.

For the group of 15 old PNGites (that is how they call themselves), it was a walk down memory lane. The occasion was the visit of the grand niece of a former headmistress, Grace Patterson, or Miss Sahab as she was known among students.

Kathy Allan, along with husband Alan Tait, visited the school here this morning to research her grand-aunt Patterson’s mission in Sikkim for 12 long years — from 1948 to 1959 and in 1961. Sikkim was then a kingdom under the Chogyals. Kathy wants to pass the story back to her family and friends at home and also put up a website and probably write a book on “Miss Sahab”.

Patterson retired in 1959— she came back once in 1961— and returned to Wellington, New Zealand, her hometown. She was the only Westerner to have lived for 12 years in the kingdom (as it was then) where she had come as part of the Scottish Mission which offered its skills to meet social, educational and medical needs in India.

The Chogyals had entrusted the school set up in 1924 to the Scottish Mission. It was later renamed Maharaj Kumar Paljor Namgyal after the crown prince of Sikkim, a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force who was killed during the Second World War.

It was during her stint that many VIPs like then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with daughter Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Tenzing Norgay, Edmund Hillary and Padmaja Naidu visited the school.

Kathy Allan at the school. Picture by Pema Leyda Shangderpa

Alan had brought along a short footage of a New Zealand television show on Patterson. He also had old photographs taken by Patterson during her stay in Sikkim. These were part of a presentation that he had put together for Patterson’s former students at the school hall today.

Sisters Liza and Bulu Guruama, who were from Kurseong and came to PNGSS on Patterson’s request, fondly remembered their mentor as a “mother-like” figure. “She sent us for training to Darjeeling and later wrote to me to come to Sikkim. I tasted pancake for the first time from her,” Liza said. Bulu remembers how proud she was when Patterson said kati gyani ankha (What intelligent eyes you have). “It made me look in the mirror for days.”

A year before her death in 1996, Patterson had posted a column for Further Flashback, the school magazine. She had written about the games — netball, badminton and tenniquoit — that she had introduced. It was during her time that Yuthok Shield, the prestigious academics-cum-sports competition, was started and the school got its first magazine.