I could walk miles at ease with myself.
I could gather pine cones from the hills of Almora.
I could dip my feet in the Pacific.
I could taste the rains of Sohra.
I could admire the parijat, mogra, and kaner in bloom.
I could tell tulsi, mint, and ajwain apart by scent alone.
I could weep reading Shafaq and Shivani.
I could lose myself wandering through Ishiguro.
I could appreciate love through Amrita's letters.
I could stand for hours before a Husain or a Sher-Gil.
I could sit in silence for hours under Arvind's tamarind tree.
This is the range of being human my teachers opened me to — and it is this range I now want to open in others. If I have held onto all this alongside a demanding career, it is only because my teachers introduced me — with care — to the many dimensions of life, of this earth, and of being human. My school lives in every fibre of my being; in every fibre, I carry gratitude for my teachers, and thankfulness to whatever higher force there is.
The influence ran so deep that, from childhood, whenever anyone asked what I wanted to become, I answered without hesitation: a teacher. It was a dream fused with my will to live. Twelve years of school in Saharanpur shaped the foundation; four years of undergraduate study in Patiala and a postgraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, shaped the discipline. Then came thirteen years as a banker at Goldman Sachs — in Hong Kong, Japan, London, the United States — wherever I went, the dream kept ripening: sometimes quietly, sometimes restlessly, year after year.
My father did not want me to teach. He reasoned with me, tried to dissuade me — but I could not be dissuaded either. So I did what I could on my own terms: two months teaching at my alma mater in Saharanpur; three years teaching the children of non-teaching college staff, building a small tuition-cum-school system; three years teaching law and management aspirants at Career Launcher, Bangalore; nine years as guest faculty at Mount Carmel College. I kept myself as close to being a teacher as circumstances allowed — and that has given me deep joy, deep peace, deep pride.
Now I want to take the next step: to become a teacher fully and completely, in the spirit this Foundation holds dear — not to fill young minds with answers, but to walk alongside them as they question, observe, and come to know themselves. Whether through literature, statistics, or the social sciences, I want to teach not as one who has arrived, but still on the way — using the classroom itself as a place to continue my own inward journey even as I help a curious mind find hers. I still hold the hope that even in a world of AI and gyms, teachers who truly pay attention can help human beings stay in touch with the flame of their own humanity — mine included.
