I was born and brought up in the small town of Dhrangdhara in Gujarat. As a child I quite enjoyed being outdoors and indulged myself a lot. From playing in the river that flowed by our house, fishing, to taking a plunge in its cool waters, I did as I fancied. Childhood also brings to my mind days spent playing with friends from the neighbourhood and plucking fresh vegetables and fruits with my father.

From childhood to adulthood, the only constant element in my life has been my undying love and passion for clay modelling. I was an average student and often burned the midnight oil to secure decent grades in school. Studies never occupied pride of place on my list of priorities, but co-curricular and creative activities always did. Be it painting, sculpting, craft, music, dancing, making cartoons or caricatures or any other sporting activity, I excelled in the field of anything imaginative and stimulating.

The first school I attended was the primary Taluka School, where I studied till Class IV only to move on to Sheth Shree M. M. Shah School later on. In school I didn’t have too many friends, as I spent most of my spare time absorbed in clay modelling or some other similar preoccupation. Apart from painting and dabbling in all things creative, I enjoyed reading tremendously. From the heavy tomes by Leo Tolstoy and Socrates, the ones on the lives of Napoleon and Mahatma Gandhi to contemporary comics, I read everything. I also liked reading Munshi Premchand’s stories and those authored by Gujarati authors such as Meghani, Kanyalal Munshi, Jyotindra Dave and Bakul Tripathi. However, the most motivating book that I ever read was Orison Swett Marden’s Pushing to the Front.

As a child I loved travelling by camel or bullock carts with my family and neighbours to the regular melas (town fair). It felt wonderful to just pass by open farms, picking up fresh carrots, tomatoes, and fruits on our way to the crowded and colourful mela, and finally resting under a big tree at the mela grounds and having a picnic. These little snatches of memory make those bygone days all the more special, as the images are still etched deeply in my consciousness.