I am going to write you short accounts of the story of our earth and the many countries, great and small, into which it is divided…I hope [these] will make you think of the world as a whole and of other people in it as our brothers and sisters . . .' —Jawaharlal Nehru
When Indira Gandhi was a little girl of ten, she spent the summer in Mussoorie, while her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was busy working in Allahabad. Over the summer, Nehru wrote her a series of letters in which he told her the story of how and when the earth was made, how human and animal life began, and how civilizations and societies evolved all over the world. Written in 1928, these letters remain fresh and vibrant, and capture Nehru's love for people and for nature, whose story was for him `more interesting than any other story or novel that you may have read'.