I was born and brought up close to the holy river Ganga, in one of the oldest cities of the world, Banaras, now known as Varanasi. I was admitted to an ordinary school, known as Gautam Junior High School, which was quite nearby to our house, in the mohalla of Bhadaini close to the Assi Ghat. My father was a scholarly person, always immersed in his literary works in Prakrit and Sanskrit, also the source of family sustenance. I passed out from the Gautam school in class 8th, where I got a First division and also stood first, something very unusual for that school. At that time and age, I did not know what is First division and asked my friend, son of a boatman and laggard in the class, if I have passed or failed!
My father's acquaintances prodded him to think about my future as I seem to be good in studies and encouraged him admit me to one of the good schools for further studies. I was eventually taken to the Children's School on the campus of the Banaras Hindu University. The Principal of the school refused to admit me; the school was full of children from the families of university professors and the teachers did not consider me fit to sit with them. My father then approached his friend, Pandit Vasudev Sharan Agrawal, who lived next to the school and was a well known scholar and senior professor at the university. He wrote a recommendation for me and sent it to the Principal. Eventually, I was given admission in this prestigious school, where we were reminded many times in our science class that Dr. Jayant Narlikar passed out from here only. I was very keen to study science and physics like him. But there was nobody to guide me and I had to guide myself in this totally unknown terrain. The science teacher in the school did not like me and refused to give me the science stream. The story of my getting the science stream is a long one and I reserve it for a future post.
Since Children's School belonged to BHU, it gave me certain advantages in admission to BHU. After passing out my high school (Class X), I could easily get admitted to the Science College for a Pre-University Course, equivalent to Grade 11. My university exposure thus started quite early with a big problem. All the science education in the university was in english language and I barely knew to speak or, write english. I could read it but mostly without understanding it. I remember my first exposure to university teaching in a class taken by Dr. V.S. Mathur of the Physics Department. He was very young and smart at that time and spoke fluent english in the class. I sat numbed without grasping anything. I felt like a dumb person. My learning of english was a self learning and long drawn process and is long story in itself.
Eventually I learned english, did my my B.Sc., and M.Sc. from BHU. I then enrolled for a Ph.D., choosing to work with the well known nuclear physicist (Padma Shri) Prof. P.C. Sood. After my Ph.D., and a brief stint as a Research Associate at BHU, I joined University of Roorkee as a Lecturer in 1979. I remained at Roorkee for whole of my career, which became an Indian Institute of Technology (an institution of national importance), until I retired in 2015 and remained there an Emeritus until 2018. I have been working at the Amity University, Noida as a part-time Advisor to the Amity Institute of Nuclear Science & Technology.