This chaiwala at Delhi's busy ITO junction is an accomplished writer

Long before Narendra Modi had shown the world how far a determined chaiwallah could go, there was Laxman Rao, the tea-seller litterateur. Starting with his first tome, Nai Duniya Ki Nai Kahaani in 1979, Rao has written 24 books — novels, biographies, plays, political and philosophical discourses.

The son of a marginal farmer from Tadegaon in Maharashtra, Rao came to Delhi in 1977. He'd studied in his village and books by popular Hindi novelist Gulshan Nanda inspired him. "I too wanted to write books that would be read as far away as 1,500 km," laughs the 62-year-old.

In Delhi, Rao started by selling "paan-beedi" near the ITO crossing — he continues to be on the same stretch of road. "I would get books from the Sunday book bazaar in Daryagunj and read in the morning," says Rao. Soon he enrolled in an open school and finished class XI and XII. "I did my BA when I was 50 and this June, I sat for the MA finals." Next up, is a PhD.

When publishers turned down his first book, Rao decided to publish it himself. It was hard going initially, but Rao kept at it — ploughing in the money he earned from his tea stall into printing books, then cycling 30km every day to far off suburbs of the capital, marketing his books to schools and libraries.

He's come a long way since Ramdas, his best-known book, has sold 4,000 copies and is also on Kindle. This year alone, Rao has earned Rs 80,000 in royalties from e-versions of his books on NewsHunt. "My literature has the touch of the soil — the people I see around me. I don't write about sensational events that might have sold better. This is why I will never allow my books to be made into films," Rao says.