Dehradun, April 21 -- Courtesy author's Collection

'There was a lady in an ankle-length tartan skirt selling fudge outside our school gates,' remembers Sam Matthew, a schoolmate of old, and wonders who she could have been. You have to be lucky to have schooled in times that turned them into happy memories. Granted that this sideways view of the world prevents you from forgetting how we spent a childhood trying to run away from school, and today, ironically, we seem to spend a lifetime trying to get back in, if just to catch the magic of those days.

Looking for an answer, I knock on the doors of Sikandar Hall. I turn to Sandra Skinner, the daughter of the late Colonel Michael Skinner, who is winding up her father's affairs as Sikander Ha...