Written by: Prachi Sharma
I was born and raised among the hills of Arunachal Pradesh, in the small town of Lumla—and whatever I have become, it began there.
My father, Satya Prakash Sharma, came from a modest village and devoted his working life to Arunachal as a senior government teacher in a remote corner of the state, where good teachers are everything. Later, after we children had grown up, my mother, Manju Sharma, also taught there. Ours was a home of educators—and so, naturally, a home of books. They were never just objects on a shelf; they were how our family understood the world and how we passed ourselves on.
The schools of Arunachal shaped me in ways I still carry with me. I studied hard in those classrooms, and I was fortunate to become a Class 10 state topper—an achievement that belongs as much to the teachers and the place that raised me as it does to me.
That love of books became a family inheritance. My mother preserved our family’s old, unwritten vegetarian recipes in her book, The Lost Recipes, saving a generation’s flavours before they could be lost. I went on to write Manju, a tribute to her, and a children’s book, Paws Around the World, featuring our rescue dog, Oreo. My sister, Richa, wrote Finding Home Again. And the next generation didn’t wait—my son published two picture books at the age of six and even read one of them aloud at a public library, while my nephew wrote a superhero story at the age of eight.
Three generations. Seven books. One family—rooted in a childhood in Arunachal.
Today, I live in California, where I run The Sapling Press, helping other children become published authors of their own stories—carrying forward exactly what my teacher-parents gave me in Arunachal: the belief that every child has a story worth telling. Recently, India Currents, a respected Indian-American magazine in the US, featured our family’s journey.
Sometimes I think of those classrooms in Lumla, of my parents teaching in a far-flung corner of the country, and I realise that the whole journey began there—in the state that gave a young girl her foundation and then watched her carry it across the world.
Arunachal made me. Wherever the books travel, that is where they started.
Prachi Sharma is an Indian-born author, children’s writer, and publisher who grew up in Lumla, Arunachal Pradesh, and now lives in California. She is the founder of The Sapling Press, a publishing initiative that helps children write and publish their own books.