Human existence is the quest for an idyll. Of course, each of us defines that idyll individually and perceptions vary sharply, as do human beings themselves. For Dev Lahiri, the author of this slim and eminently readable memoir, the idyll meant escaping from the madness of the corporate rat race, away from the humdrum of urban life, into the woods and a sanctuary of his own.

In his younger days, before a heart condition intervened, he did it by running for miles, becoming a marathoner and cross-country practitioner of some repute and coming to see long-distance running, as a “meditative, almost spiritual exercise”. While the theme of sport, especially running and horse riding, is a constant throughout his rich life, there are four distinct phases that shape him — a childhood as the son of a proud and upstanding army officer, in the cocoon of a cantonment; St Stephen’s College in the 1970s, his first exposure to a big city; Oxford University, where he realised for the first time that it was possible for white and brown, and black for that matter, indeed men and women of every colour and ethnic type, to become friends; and finally, the boarding school in India, the last redoubt of another age.

Lahiri made it to Oxford in the mid-’70s on the strength of a Rhodes Scholarship. It was the first time he was leaving India. As he so disarmingly confesses, his family had been too ordinary and middle-class to afford too many trips, even within India. He arrived in Britain an awkward young man, unsure of how to negotiate the bus journey to his University. He left three years later as a complete product, not merely academically but as a social being, a student community leader and a young person enriched by many experiences.

A series of jobs in India — in companies as far apart as OUP and Hindustan Lever — was not enough to seduce Lahiri away from that ethereal calm that he felt only in the middle of a long run, or the magic of those three years in Oxford. He awaited his calling, and found it one day while walking inside the Doon School campus with his wife. This is where he wanted to be.

Lahiri did what only a few big-city dwellers of his generation would — migrate to a hill town and become a teacher and later, head of a boarding school. From Doon he moved south to Lawrence School, Lovedale, and later, after a short stint in Kolkata, back to Dehradun, at Welham Boys.

This should have been the happy ending: the marathoner finds his destination, the drifter discovers his calling, lives a fulfilling life, shapes remarkable pupils, builds boys and girls of character, writes a real-life, Indian Mr Chips. All the while his college mates are struggling in the so-called ‘real world’, surviving the minefield of the corporate sector, or perhaps the civil services. Yet, each of them had been prepared for his profession: at an academy in Mussoorie, a management school wherever. As Lahiri says in the book, nothing in India prepares you to be the head of a school, especially a residential school, indicating a huge gap in the country at a time when more and more schools are being set up.

The unlikely challenges of a humble, idealistic teacher who has just got his first break as the head of a school can be summarised by the reception that awaited Lahiri in 1991. As he arrived in Delhi for the final job interview, the education secretary of the government of India told him, “Young man, let me be very honest. Although I am the Chairman, I would not wish this school (Lawrence School) in its present state on my worst enemy. You may just find it too hot to handle …”

Lahiri took up the challenge. The contours became apparent soon enough. The faculty was factionalised, along Malayalee and Tamil lines. Indiscipline among the students was almost a cherished art form, with “scooters and cars (…) frequently vandalised, particularly if a teacher reported an act of indiscipline to the (school) authorities.”

In a school proud of its martial traditions, the biggest challenge was bullying, which was particularly vicious at Lawrence. This was the first battle Lahiri fought, and largely won. It was when he sought to taper the elaborate founder’s day events and parade, preparations for which took several months and clearly affected examination results, that Lahiri ran into the school’s equivalent of a religious orthodoxy: the powerful alumni body, which had romanticised the past and Lawrence School’s supposedly “manly” rigour.

An illustrious alumni group can become a school’s calling card. At Lawrence, to Lahiri’s mind, it became a tether that refused to let the institution evolve with the times and come to terms with new modes and methods of pedagogy and sensitive rearing of children. The result was a formidable coalition against Lahiri, shattering his idyll, and leaving him in a determined struggle for his ‘ Izzat aur Iqbal ’.

The struggle took a lot out of him, but eventually his honour was vindicated. Mr Chips said his goodbyes — and on his own terms. This book is the headmaster’s valediction.

Ashok Malik is senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

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