Imagine our surprise one morning when we discovered that they [the tadpoles] had leapfrogged into the wilderness, at night, leaving their tails behind them! This amusing episode from a happy childhood spent near Simla in the 1940s could well serve as a metaphor for the British in India, who quit the country on Azadi -Independence Day - in 1947, leaving their tales, if not their tails, behind them... This particular tale is a very special, very happy one by a delightful storyteller who moves from the sun-baked Simla of her childhood to a cool, verdant and sparsely populated Sweden. It is an amusing record of cultural contrasts, strange journeys and even stranger links between two families in two vastly differing countries.