This was once home. It will always be that!

I was 9 when my parents sent me to study at The Scindia School, an institution established as the Sardar School 123 years back.

My father was also an alum, and so, when Kolkata became a difficult place to live in, with the Naxalite movement, he decided that I would be better off at Scindia.?

I hated the first term. I was fat and was teased endlessly.?

Home for the first vacation, I refused to go back. Dad and I had a long chat, and it was decided to give it another shot.

There was no looking back.?

I was still fat. But I figured out how to overcome that.?

The easier way was to ‘get punished’ and be made to run rounds of the cricket field, to lose weight.

But I hated the thought.?

So, I decided that I would try and excel in areas where fat boys stood a chance.

Debating, dramatics, elocutions…in sports, as a goalkeeper, or fielding in the slips, or being an opening batsman, were methods I resorted to.

Fortunately, I excelled in those.

Having been recognized as someone who had talent, made the vacations bearable. I could not wait to get back to school.

I was the youngest school prefect. I was house captain when my residential house (Ranoji) won the General Efficiency Shield against all odds (raiding the tuck shop, having two boys expelled for ungentlemanly behavior and similar).

What made this achievement more special was that Ranoji House achieved this distinction in 1972. The only time before that was in 1944, when my father was the house captain of the same houseJ.

I graduated and the years passed by.?

I visited Scindia only once or twice in the next 30 years.

Then a call from an ex- Scindian changed all that.

Rajendra Pawar was the Vice President of the school’s Board of Governors and had got my number from another person.?

Mr Pawar, or Raji, as he is referred to, is also the Founder of NIIT Ltd – India’s first computer education company, which was set up close to 4 decades back. He is also the co-Founder of the non Profit NIIT University, located in Neemrana, and a Padma Bhushan.

“Will you help drive the marketing and communications for the school”,?he asked?

I said that I would love to. (You don't say no to a Padma Bhushan awardee:-)). And for almost the past two years, I have been visiting Scindia again.?

It has been an emotional experience for me, not just because the school, and the fort on which it is situated, is home to the #1 boys residential school in India – but it is also a place which is possibly safer than home, safer than any day school with superior online teaching, particularly in these trying times.

It has also been emotional because in many ways, I am back home as I write this.

As my mother says even now,?“Atul, I lost you when you were 9. You became independent and never asked us for any help or guidance in any decision you made.”

I would like to say this to her on a public platform.?“Ma, you and dad gave me not one but two homes. Scindia is one of them.”

At the time of writing this, I am at one of these homes. I am at Scindia.

It is a beautiful place, as the pictures will vouch for.

But these pictures will never tell the full story.?

Of the soul of Scindia, which resides deep within me.