In Deora, a remote village near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Shiva Balak walked 24 kilometres to and back from his school each day, only to be left wondering why there were no schools in his own village. A brilliant student, he struggled through extreme hardships, and achieved laurels by winning a scholarship to fund his post-graduate degree in geology in Canada. 'This book chronicles the journey of an extraordinary Indian who has the courage to be ordinary. I went to his village and came away humbled. Dr Misra turned his back on what the affluent West had to offer him, and returned to his country to serve the people of rural India. His is an underdog story of a young scientist from an Indian village whose credit as a discoverer was snatched by his Western colleagues . who had to honour him decades later. This book is a must read for every Indian.' - Mahesh Bhatt, Filmmaker S.B. Misra became a star in the scientific community when he discovered 565-million-year-old fossils that were the oldest records of multicellular life on earth. However, he pondered over the long walk to school each day, which thousands of children were still making in his rural backyard. Abandoning a promising world of fame and recognition, he returned to India to realize his dream - a dream of education for young children in his village. This is an inspiring story of an ordinary Indian in rural India, where class barriers and gender discrimination still exist. This is a story of courage, determination, faith and the will to dream big and fulfill those dreams in the face of adversity.

Dr S.B. Misra was born in 1939 in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, from where he inched his way, armed with brilliant academic credentials, to faraway Canada where he discovered 565-million-years-old fossils that plugged questions in Darwin's theory of evolution and made him an overnight star in academia. Four years on though, on the verge of fame and fortune, he quit that life and returned to his village where, soon accompanied by his newly wedded wife Nirmala, he set up a school that changed thousands of lives. He has since worked as a geologist and taught students in Lucknow and Nanital. He now lives as a retired professor in Lucknow with his wife. Both still run the school.