Kannur: Ratna Nair (83) met Jagdeep Dhankar after 55 years. But everything about the "bright boy" is vividly etched in her memory. "He has not changed at all. Just the same bright and humble boy who left our school in 1969," she said. Nair even remembers his roll number: 166. "There was no air of the vice-president around him," she told Onmanorama.
On Monday, second citizen Dhankar and his wife Dr Sudesh Dhankar travelled all the way to Chambad, a village in Kerala's northern district of Kannur to meet his old mathematics teacher from Sainik School at Rajasthan's Chittorgarh. He was keeping a promise he made to his teacher when he was sworn in as the 14th vice-president of India on August 11, 2022. "He invited me for the swearing-in ceremony but I could not go because of health reasons," she said.
But after the ceremony, Nair sent him a congratulatory message. "He replied saying he will meet me whenever he comes to Kerala. I think he is coming to Kerala for the first time after that," she said. "He kept his word," Nair said.
The Vice-President and his wife flew down to Kannur International Airport and travelled 30km by road to Nair's house at Kargil Stop in Chambad village. As soon as he got out of the car, Dhankar, who turned 72 years on May 18, touched his teacher's feet and introduced his wife Dr Sudeesh Dhankar to her.
Nair took his student and his wife in and served them tender coconut water and banana chips. Kerala Assembly Speaker and Thalassery MLA A N Shamsheer accompanied the Vice-President.
Dhankar was born to a farmer couple Gokal Chand and Kesari Devi at Kithana, a small village in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district in 1951.
In 1961, the Union government set up five Sainik Schools, including one at Chittorgarh. Jagdeep Dhankar joined class VI the next year, and Ratna Nair, who is R Nair to the students, joined the school as a mathematics teacher in 1963. "Since it is a residential school, teachers and students have close bonding. I vividly remember Jagdeep and his elder brother Kuldeep," said Nair. (Kuldeep Dhankar joined the school in 1961.)
Even after students leave the school, they stay in touch with their teachers. "Dalbir Singh Suhag who was the chief of the army from 2014 to 2016 was our student. Several other students from our school are top brass in the armed forces," she said.
But she remembers Jagdeep because "he was too good at studies and better at extra-curricular activities". He went on to become an ace lawyer in Rajasthan. In July 2019, he was made the governor of West Bengal.
After teaching at Chittorgarh school for 30 years, Nair was selected as the principal of Navodaya School in Ernakulam. But she always stayed in touch with her students from the Sainik School. "Jagdeep's visit is the biggest guru dakshina a teacher can get," Ratna Nair said.