Erick Avari

Erick Avari: We saw at least two films a week in English, at my father's theaters, the Capitol and the Rink. If we wanted, there were Hindi and Bengali movies as well. My family always knew I'd be in the film industry, but I don't think that this is what they imagined.

Erick Avari: My father had been Chief Game Warden of the West Bengal Forests as a young man and his cronies came from all over the world to visit the jungles around us. Canadian and Belgian Jesuits staffed the schools I went to. It was as international a place as New York or Los Angeles, although on a much more intimate scale.

Erick Avari: In Darjeeling, it was necessary to learn several languages to be able to communicate with the limitless variety of people we met - from the Dalai Lama, when he fled Tibet to the royal families of Bhutan and Sikkim. My primary language is obviously English, but I learned Nepali, Bengali, Hindi and Gujerati as a child, and with them the customs of a polyglot nation. Tenzing Norgay, who surmounted Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary, lived around the corner.