Pujya Gurudev, Swami Chinmayananda's early life is featured in this book through his own writings, his letters to his mother and sister, and through the recollections of his friends and family. Hitherto unpublished notes in his own handwriting give us a glimpse of his student days with Swami Tapovan Maharaj. The detailed family tree of Pujya Gurudev's premonastic life is another very interesting presentation here.

There is a shower of letters on almost all aspects of life - marriage, parenting, administration, running Balvihars and CHYK groups, organizing Jnana yajnas, personal sadhana, to mention only a few. In and through it all runs an irrepressible vein of wit and humour that makes it difficult to put the book down.

How many of us know that Pujya Gurudev was good at sketching? His vast knowledge of arts and architecture, gardening and landscaping, his amazing grasp of the common problems faced by us in daily life - this book brings out all this and much more about the brilliant and scintillating personality of Swami Chinmayananda, whom most of us have known only as a great spiritual teacher.