From Raj - 1 (Early Life)

Now all I know is according to what came out of dad's own mouth: he always loved school and loved learning new things and enjoyed reading all the good and great books of his times. Loved poetry and literature and praised many great writers and poets and recited famous works often. Loved reading and whenever found new
words, jotted them down in a list. This he did in all the languages he was learning at the time. Then he would learn their meanings and use those 10 words and write something that would fit those. That's how he improved his vocabulary.
I thought he was learning telugu on his own coz it was not part of the school. Yet I thought if iam not mistaken he talked about his telugu teacher who was extremely insulting and sarcastic to the children about their writng or performance in the class in general. Once when they had to write an essay which was very long on a topic i do not remember, he did tell me though, daddy wrote it as usual with a lot of interest and enjoyed every bit of that experience but had no guts or hated to face his criticism and gave his notebook to his friend and got it delivered to class and stayed back home. To his surprise the teacher loved his essay and showed it to the class and made some boy read it aloud and shouted at the others to learn to write like that and called it the best writing ever and missed him badly in class that day for not being able to congratulate him personally. This he repeated often whenever anybody spoke about how he got into journalism.
He was already actively writing for newspappers and magazines about current affairs and was seriously getting involved in the political developments and attending meetings and gatherings and getting to know big names personally in the field. To his advantage he was a tall boy and very knowledgeable, mature for his years and respectful and looked older than his age so could pass for an adult easily. All his teachers loved his shy and respectful nature and his enthusiasm for learning. His fellow students also respected him and looked up to
him a lot. He was absent often for a lot of reasons. The home front too was tough with his brother incharge of their finances so dad kept himself out of the house most of the time and went home only when it was inevitable. His mother was worried about his health coz he was so shy, picky with food and so lean that she didnt know how he would survive outside so much, but cooked for him with care as long as she could.