Dehradun, Sept. 20 -- The Books from My Shelves

I have spent a lifetime in schools, as a student, a teacher, a Principal, and a Director. If there is one thing that classroom, staffroom, and a Principal's office taught me, it is that a book read at the right age never really leaves you. It moves in, quietly, and rearranges the furniture of your mind.

"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier was not my discovery but my inheritance. My father loved it, and he pressed it into my hands when I was still a boy, too young, perhaps, to understand everything in it. But I understood the mystique- the unseen first wife whose presence filled every room of Manderley, the haunting beauty of a house that seemed to breathe its own secrets. Ironically, whenever I...