Prakash, nicknamed ‘Titi’ by his dadi and called ‘PC’ by his friends was born in Alwar, a constituent Princely State of the Rajputana Agency since 1832, on June 1, 1940 in diasporic family of civil service Kayasthas drenched in the Mughal-Muslim culture of Old Delhi. He is a University of Rajasthan faculty pensioner with a continuing passion for academic activity ‘To see Rajasthan better, To make Rajasthan better.’ He lives in Jaipur with his wife Shashi, and his daughter Sfoorti works in Gurgaon.
Getting there
When I was young, my father, a civil servant, was often transferred from one town to another in Rajasthan.
In 1953, when I was in Class 8, I took a State-level Board examination, and scored very good marks. Before this, I had studied in three different schools in three different towns (Alwar, Bharatpur and Jhalawar). I had two separate stints in the Happy School located at Alwar. This school still occupies a soft corner in my web of memories because it was a pioneer in adopting the world-famous Montessori method of teaching young children. More importantly, it provided a green ambience with plenty of trees to climb whose height was not a deterrent and their branches were low and strong enough to bear the weight of young primary-class students.
