He was an average, unremarkable student, well behaved and polite to his elders in his small village in the mountains of western Nepal.
Now, four decades later, his first teacher suggests his former pupil should learn to play better with others - and stop destroying the country.
The elusive "Prachanda" - loosely, "awesome" or "majestically terrible" - who leads Nepal's Maoist revolutionaries learned to read and write at the age of nine in the harsh Kaski area below the Himalayas here in western Nepal.
"He was just a normal child for his age - not particularly bright or particularly lazy," says Ananta Nath Sharma, now 69 and retired. "He was just an ordinary village boy."
The boy Sharma knew as Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the son of poor peasants, is now the country's most wanted man for leading a brutal eight-year "People's War" to topple the constitutional monarchy, that has killed 9,250 people, mainly rebels.
"His ideology and my ideology are different," says Sharma. "His policies don't augur well for the country and I think it would be best if he doesn't do this."
Prachanda has taken the Maoists, mainly by force, from a splinter group facing oblivion in mainstream politics in the mid-1990s to Nepal's third power, after King Gyanendra and the major parties.
"The Maoists are strong in military strength, though they are not a popular force, they do not have the support of the people," says Madhav Kumar Nepal, head of the Communist Unified-Marxist-Leninist (UML) party and leader of an alliance of Nepal's five main opposition parties.
"They are well organised, they can even capture a district headquarters and the government is helpless," he added, referring to the bloodiest battle of the war when Maoists over-ran a district capital, Beni, near here in March.
Rural poor: The guerrillas' strength is hard to gauge, and fluid. Analysts and diplomats estimate there about 15,000-20,000 hard-core fighters, including many women, backed by 50,000 "militia", villagers who chop down trees to block roads, act as runners or carry dead and wounded fighters from battle.
Although Prachanda and other key leaders are from the same Brahmin and Chettri upper castes that control the world's only Hindu kingdom, most of the rebels come from dirt-poor rural areas where revolution is seen as the only way to a better life.
Diplomats say the Maoists also bolster their forces by indoctrinating schoolchildren in areas they control and kidnapping villagers to use as soldiers, charges the rebels deny.
In their remote strongholds, they collect taxes and have set up civil administrations, and "people's courts" to settle rows. They also raise money by raiding banks, blackmailing business in return for protection and "taxing" foreign trekkers and climbers, although they have pledged not to hurt tourists.
Fearsome and fanatic fighters, the rebels specialise in night attacks and hit-and-run raids, often calling in fighters from surrounding areas through forced marches and dragooning local villagers to ensure they can overwhelm their target.
"They are tough," says a senior government official, nodding in admiration. "What an ordinary villager might take a day, or two days to walk, they can do in a few hours."
A typical "pack" for an attack includes a walking stick, dry biscuits, a tin drinking cup, a bandage, some balm, soap and a toothbrush. Often, they wear simple dark blue clothes, with a red scarf or cap. Their preferred footwear, villagers and journalists say, is lightweight Chinese Goldstar walking shoes.
Dead rebels are carried off from a battle and often buried in shallow graves in the mountains or on the banks of a nearby river to try to disguise casualty numbers. If they are senior, their heads might be cut off and taken away to avoid identification.
In Nepal's rugged mountains, thick forests and deep ravines, perfect guerrilla territory, the 150,000 government soldiers and police are simply not enough. But both sides admit that while they can inflict heavy losses on each other they cannot win by force.
Inspired by 'shining path': The Maoists say they draw their inspiration from the Chinese revolutionary, but Beijing denies any involvement or support and their tactics more closely resemble Peru's "Shining Path".
The rebels fight with a mix of home-made guns, crude bombs, weapons captured from soldiers or police and arms smuggled in through countries such as India and Bangladesh.
Senior Nepali army officers say they are also backed by international militant groups, hoping to destabilise the country and turn it into a new Afghanistan.
Indian security officials also say there is some low-level co-operation with Indian rebels operating across the porous border and Nepali guerrillas routinely cross between the two nations, sometimes hiding out in India or seeking medical treatment.
In late March, Indian police acting on a tip-off captured Mohan Vaidya, the Maoists' number three after Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, the group's public front and political leader.
The war is not rooted in any history of ethnic, religious or caste oppression. In late 1995, the Maoists, a faction of the Communist party facing a falling role in parliament, issued a list of demands, including land reform and ending the monarchy.
When these were not met, they took up arms a few months later.
Now, as the war drags on, ordinary Nepalis are growing more and more disillusioned with the rebels and with the government forces, both accused by human rights groups of widespread abuses.
"Innocent people are being taken and killed by both sides. It's difficult to say who is worse," says Som Raj Thapa, from the Nepali human rights group INSEC. "Both sides are in competition as far as killing and violations of human rights are concerned."
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