Sister India, a documentary produced by Irish film-maker Myles O’Reilly and currently being screened at a number of film festivals in Ireland and India, is the story of an Irish Presentation nun who has spent 70 years teaching in India.

Sr Loreto Houlihan, born Peg Houlihan in Ireland’s Co Tipperary in 1927, reached India in 1944. Recently she celebrated her 91st birthday at St Joseph’s Anglo-Indian School in Perambur in north Chennai where she has spent most of her life as a primary school teacher.

O’Reilly said that he is not very religious but was invited to follow Sr Loreto Houlihan, and found her deep love of India and its people absolutely heart- warming and deeply resonant. “I learned from her that India and its culture retains more of the life she left 70 years ago in Ireland than the country of her birth today, and so she chooses to live the rest of her days in India for that natural famili- arity,” he said.

The idea for the film was sparked by another Irish woman, Áine Edwards, who has been living in India since 2003 where she runs a business consultancy service. “The adults I meet nowadays who attended schools, where Irish brothers and sisters were teachers, talk fondly of them and their education. The late chief minister of Tamil, Nadu Jayalalitha, has spoken of her school days at Church Park as being the happiest of her life,” she added.