Madhu Sarin recalls the years she spent growing up in Shimla and Chandigarh. Her parents were refugees from West Pakistan and had moved to Shimla, where she stayed till the age of nine. She describes her fond memories of growing up in Shimla and then disliking the sudden move to Chandigarh in 1955 and her first home there. She details her personal relationships with her immediate family members, and her observations about their individual careers and their impact on her career decision. She talks about her perspectives on the concept of arranged marriage and how she had narrowly avoided being pressured into one because she wasn’t in the country. Furthermore, she describes her experiences graduating with a degree in Architecture at the Chandigarh College of Architecture (CCA) as one of the only girls on campus. She recalls her fondest relationships with a few professors and her difficulties in studying. For her thesis, she describes her field visits to slums and squatter settlements. Once she started practicing, she soon began to pursue taking on more than just designer-building projects due to personal inclinations. In her practical study, she got the chance to train under B V Doshi in Ahmedabad, having to do basic drafting and so enjoying the experience of staying away from home. She speaks more about the experience at B V Doshi’s office, and about her inherent inclinations towards low-cost housing and developmental projects from when she was a student. On famous architects she looked up to during her study till recently, she talks of the pivotal practices of and brief interactions with Le Corbusier, Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, B P Mathur, Charles Correa, and B V Doshi, that made a mark on her life. Concluding with her impressions of Chandigarh’s city plan, she explains how the physical development of a city reflects the socio-economic structure of a society.