About Me

FORENOTE

I was born and raised in a deeply spiritual family, immersed in an atmosphere vibrant with concern for the nation, its people, and its children. Intellectually charged conversations frequently revolved around the purpose of life, service to humanity and the nation, the stewardship of resources, integral education, social structures, culture, economics. As a child, I absorbed these discussions like a sponge, and by the time I reached high school, I could clearly recognise that a commitment to quality education formed an essential part of my family’s legacy. I observed that the senior members of my family were profoundly anchored in the values and cultural richness that such an education had bestowed upon them. Their major life choices as well as their everyday conduct were consistently shaped by these positive cultural and educational influences. A child-centric ethos was deeply woven into my family’s cultural heritage, an unwavering value that guided every significant decision

Coming from a long line of accomplished elders for whom continuous, lifelong learning was a natural way of being, I grew inspired to observe how people’s educational and cultural experiences shaped their decisions and conduct. I discovered within myself an innate curiosity to explore the domain of quality education and its profound influence on human lives. My parents drew their inspiration from the teachings of great masters such as Sri Aurobindo, Swami Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda, and Jiddu Krishnamurthy, among others. Their guidance created for me an effortlessly accessible wealth of educational and spiritual nourishment. I believe that the seeds of what would eventually become my vocation and passion were sown quietly and deeply in my childhood.

MY FAMILY

I come from a lineage that stretches back over nine millennia—a heritage of farmers, landlords, and warriors. In the modern era, these ancestral qualities have found expression in distinguished service to the nation, particularly in roles demanding courage, discipline, and resolve. In the recent generations most of the member of the family have held distinguished services records in government services such as the I.P.S, I.R.S, Indian Army, Sales Tax, Judiciary. Owing to the meticulous efforts of my father, uncles and enthusiastic family members, my paternal family records have been preserved from as early as 1753 CE. Yet, to situate my own life more meaningfully within this legacy, I begin my narrative from the era of my great-grandparents.

My great-grandfather, was a respected zamindar. Upon his passing, my great-grandmother assumed the mantle of family matriarch. She was known as a woman of uncommon strength, gifted in administration and remarkably adept with weaponry, a trait, perhaps, carried through the generations and manifest in my own journey as a national shooting champion.

My paternal grandfather, who hailed from Delhi-NCR region, embodied discipline, devotion to duty, and unwavering commitment to family. A distinguished officer of the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC), he was instrumental in securing due recognition for the Corps and championed the establishment of the rank of Major General for its officers, a goal he achieved, though he retired shortly before the reforms took effect. His pioneering work in developing life-saving vaccines for horses earned him international acclaim, drawing experts and institutions from around the world to seek his counsel. Educated in veterinary sciences at the Lahore Veterinary College, University of Lahore, he later completed a Master’s degree in Nutrition from the University of Kentucky, USA. His wife, my grandmother, was an exemplary army spouse who chaired numerous committees, particularly those dedicated to women’s entrepreneurial advancement.

On my maternal side, my grandfather hailed from an Industrialist family in Punjab and graduated from Hindu College, University of Delhi. He later inherited and ran his family’s cotton and ginning mills. My maternal grandmother, a scholar of Hindi Sahitya and daughter of a distinguished IAS officer, worked alongside her husband to manage the family’s industries and cinemas. Her life profoundly shaped my understanding of women’s leadership. At a time when most grandmothers remained confined to domestic spaces, she navigated public and commercial spheres with grace and authority, offering me an early model of feminine strength and entrepreneurial spirit.

With the blessings of my ancestors and the divine, my parents brought me into this world. My mother, remains the most formative influence in my life—my first guru. She instilled in me the value of life, lifelong learning, discipline, rigour, organisation, and unwavering hard work. She taught me to trust myself and to move forward with courage. A postgraduate in History and Political Science from Punjab University, she later pursued her spiritual calling, becoming a Reiki and Pranic healer and a trained Transcendental Meditation (TM) teacher. Deeply devoted to service, she found her greatest peace in helping those in need.

My father, served with distinction in the Indian Police Service, retiring as Director General of Police. His lifelong passion for the soil led him to practise organic farming on an extensive scale. Throughout my life, he encouraged each of his children—including me—to pursue our passions and honour our unique callings. Not once do I recall being questioned or doubted for my academic choices. Educated initially at the prestigious Mayo College, Ajmer, under the ICSE curriculum, he later completed his A Level (Cambridge) education at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, Hertfordshire, England, in 1965. He proceeded to the University of Sussex, where he studied Sociology and Social Anthropology. After several years in England, longing for his family and homeland, he renounced British citizenship and reclaimed Indian citizenship, joining the Indian Police Service in 1975. A deeply spiritual man, he completed his Transcendental Meditation Teacher’s Training in 1980 and has practised TM every single day since.

My husband is a passionate lawyer, he approaches his work with unwavering honesty and integrity. His own educational journey has been rich and varied, from conventional and regimented school environments to the progressive learning spaces of the KFI School, Chennai, and the schools of Auroville. These diverse experiences have shaped him into a globally minded, and internationally spirited individual. Together, we strive to cultivate a home that is lively, enriching, value based, and nurturing for ourselves and our child. My father-in-law, a retired I.A.S officer, and my mother-in-law, strive to live a contended and simple retired life amidst the quiet and peace of nature. They have also left an indelible impression on me. I see in them remarkable examples of grit, tenacity, and fearless independence, qualities they embody gracefully even in their late seventies. Each member of our extended family carries a distinct personality and unique expression, yet we remain united by a shared foundation of human values that keep us rooted and deeply connected.

I am equally fortunate to have siblings and cousins who have contributed to the expansion of my family. Furthermore, I am deeply grateful to my friends, colleagues, and associates, whose unwavering support and engaging interactions have had a profound impact on my life. These individuals, accomplished in their respective domains as renowned experts, astute business professionals, creative artists, and esteemed professionals, consistently provide intellectual stimulation and embody the values of mutual support and growth, as we collectively navigate the journey of personal and professional evolution.

WHO AM I

As a high-school student, I was instinctively drawn to Economics, Hindi, and Fine Arts, subjects I genuinely enjoyed. At the time, I barely understood the concept of “aptitude,” yet in retrospect, I recognise that I naturally possessed one for these fields. As an adult, I came to see another decisive factor in my affinity for them: my teachers. They made these subjects accessible, meaningful, and intimately connected to daily life, which is why I thrived in them. This realisation laid the earliest foundation for one of my own experiential principles of integral education, that no subject is inherently superior or inferior; it is the teacher who awakens the learner’s innate potential. Perhaps I might have excelled in Biology or Physics as well, had those subjects been made equally tangible and relatable.

My passion for quality learning led me to pursue Economics at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, an institution that offered the unparalleled privilege of engaging with some of the brightest minds in the country. The college environment encouraged rigorous intellectual exchange, vibrant extracurricular participation, and dynamic social interactions. Our professors were remarkable individuals whose personalities shaped the academic culture of the institution. I was active in class discussions, sports, tutorials, and the wider rhythms of college life. Yet, there existed a dissonance between my enthusiasm, the nature of the content, and the assessment practices; the synchrony required for meaningful academic success felt absent. In hindsight, this became a deeply instructive experience. I understood the helplessness of an eager and capable learner unable to navigate an assessment system misaligned with her strengths. This reinforced another core tenet of integral education: that educational systems must be student-centric, responsive to diverse learning needs, and designed so that assessments diagnose learning gaps rather than alienate learners or elevate only a select few. The failure was systemic, not individual. Buoyed by my family’s unwavering support, I continued my academic journey and completed an MSc in Economics from Cardiff University, U.K.

Despite promising opportunities abroad, including a valid UK work visa, my heart remained anchored in India. I returned, driven by a desire to understand my country at the grassroots. I wanted to study the educational realities of rural India, explore vocational training, and understand how it could empower young people to become self-reliant. My interests were moving away from the mainstream applications of economics, which seemed increasingly centred on money and markets. I no longer wished to become a banker; I wished to understand life, society, and learning.

Since 2009, I have been pursuing my passion for education across diverse settings—research institutions, classrooms, vocational training organisations, and corporate knowledge systems. My professional journey began at CSR arm of Anand Automotive, SNS Foundation, Gurgaon, where I worked as a trainee in the vocational training department and later as a Research Associate in Integral Education at the Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry. Later, I joined the corporate arm of SNS Foundation—Anand Automotive—as a Knowledge Management Manager and Expert, tasked with curating the organisation’s history to help future generations of managers draw wisdom from the past to shape the future.

In 2015, I stepped formally into classroom teaching during my teacher-training period at the Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) School, Chennai. Then I moved to The Shri Ram School as an Economics teacher, where I taught Economics across the ICSE, ISC, NIOS, and IB curricula, always striving to make the subject accessible and engaging for every learner. Committed to lifelong learning, I pursued several high-quality teacher training programmes post 2017 through institutions such as ShriEducare, B.Ed. from Maharishi Dayanand University, Haryana, and IB Educator Certificates (IBEC) from University of Windsor, Canada. Currently, I serve as a Business and Economics educator at APL Global School, Chennai, a Cambridge-affiliated institution focused on personalised and differentiated learning. Here I teach IGCSE, AS, A Level, and NIOS curricula. These roles collectively represent the key milestones of my educational career.

The birth of my child expanded my horizons further, steering me towards the world of early childhood and holistic education. It is at that juncture that I discovered my voice as a writer and began reaching a wider audience through my columns in newspapers and magazines, primarily centred on educational thought. Writing became an act of advocacy, an inner urge to share ideas and principles that I believed could deepen collective conversations around education. I have successfully published over seventy articles in mainstream publications. I believe that my combined endeavours, teaching, writing, speaking, and training, embody the essence of a holistic educator anchored in lived experience.

Reflecting on my own journey as an educator in the making, I draw two key conclusions. First, the tools and philosophy of integral education became instinctive to me because of my upbringing; they became the lens through which I began to view people, learning, and the world. Second, my deep, enduring curiosity about the effectiveness of educational systems has guided every professional step I have taken. It has led me to fieldwork, research, classroom teaching, policy examination, textbook analysis, and close observation of children in varied learning contexts. Over time, this curiosity evolved into a core value, an inner volition. I feel naturally motivated to work for children, to contribute to the improvement of educational systems, and to make learning rich, meaningful, and humane.

If I can contribute towards making education stress-free, trauma-free, culturally grounded, locally relevant, accessible, and affordable, I will feel fulfilled in the pursuit of my life’s purpose.

MY VIEWS ON THE CURRENT EDUCATION ATMOSPHERE IN INDIA

I believe that contemporary India is shaped by an educational landscape in which students are often subjected to repetitive information cycles and rote learning, while genuine subject exploration remains largely illusory. National boards such as ICSE, CBSE, and NIOS appear constrained by a lack of vision, structural stagnation, and an evident inability to reinvent themselves. In the absence of a robust, indigenous curriculum capable of meeting the needs of the 21st-century learner, India has increasingly leaned on imported curricular models and international educational collaborations. At the school level, there is a clear and accelerating shift towards international boards such as IB and IGCSE, often at the expense of indigenous boards like CBSE, ICSE, and the State Boards.

In my view, the single most significant factor driving the rise in popularity of international curricula is the failure of Indian curricular structures to evolve in alignment with contemporary educational demands. While it is entirely within the rights of those who can afford it to access globally reputed international boards, one must acknowledge that their inherently elite nature renders them an inadequate or inequitable solution to the systemic deterioration of Indian education.

It is widely recognised that local culture profoundly enriches learning, shaping cognitive development, identity, and the meaning that students derive from their educational experiences. Meaningful and effective education therefore requires that international curricula adapt thoughtfully to local contexts, rather than displace them. This raises several questions that occupy my thinking: How much of our Indianness must we relinquish to become truly global citizens? Or is it possible to embrace global perspectives without diluting our cultural essence? Can Indian schools genuinely “think global and act local”? Can they evolve into GLOCAL institutions—harmonising the global and the local—rather than merely global ones?

These paradigms, I believe, merit open-minded interrogation. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is both necessary and beneficial to examine global best practices and adapt those that resonate with our needs. My intention is not to diminish the value of international curricula; rather, it is to emphasise that local sensibilities, cultural identity, and national educational heritage must not be compromised in the pursuit of global alignment. There are undeniable strengths within foreign curricular frameworks that we would do well to incorporate, just as there are clear shortcomings in modern Indian educational systems that urgently require reform.