In Kerala, teacher waits for Roll No. 166, V-P Dhankhar

“That evening, I called to inform him why I couldn’t attend, and gave him my heartfelt congratulations. Jagdeep told me it doesn’t matter, and that he would come to meet me during his next Kerala visit. Then, I said I am telling his excellency, the

V-P of India, my congratulations; it is not with any ill-feeling that I called him Jagdeep. He told me, ‘Madam, to you, I am Jagdeep, not the V-P of India. You are my teacher. It is your right to call (me by my name)’. I told him I have to differentiate between my duty and my right. As a citizen of the country, duty comes first,’’ she recalls.

She says she would like to give Dhankar a gift and cook a meal for him, but realises everything has to be according to protocol.

Dhankhar joined the school in 1962 in class 6 while Nair joined a year later. He cleared class 12 in 1968. While most students opted for uniformed services, Dhankhar forayed into the legal profession, a path less taken by students of Sainik schools.

The duo have never met in person for the last 55 years, though Nair watched her student’s ascent from a distance – from a lawyer to legislator to Lok Sabha member to Union minister. It was when Dhankhar became the governor of West Bengal in 2019 that the two reconnected.

After realising he had been picked for the post, Nair made a call from her village home to Raj Bhavan in Kolkata and introduced herself. Ten minutes later, she got a call back and was connected to Dhankar. “When he was informed that a woman from Kerala had called, he was certain it was Ratna Nair,” she recalls, adding that he also shared his personal number with her.

“In a residential school, children are with us for around nine months in a year. We teachers are exclusively responsible for bringing them up. Students like Jagdeep believe that their alma mater and its teachers are responsible for what they are now. Jagdeep has a strong feeling that his school groomed him,” she says.

Recalling his time at the school, she says, “He was an outstanding, well-disciplined student, a regular winner in debates. I had taught his elder brother too. His father used to come to the school every month and ask how his sons were doing.”

Nair, a postgraduate, taught at the Chittorgarh school for 30 years and later served as the principal of Navodaya school in Kochi for eight. In 2002, she retired from Navodaya school in Kannur, where she had worked as principal for three years.

Living 50 metres away from a bus shelter erected in memory of the Kargil martyrs, Nair says she has many high-ranking officials in the defence forces as her students.