The Two Copper Coins!

Life is mysterious, unfolding in ways we often can't predict. Yet, there's an undeniable rhythm to it all - a hidden pattern that connects the dots. Some say there are no coincidences, only purpose in disguise. Wherever you are - or were - it's exactly where you were meant to be!

- Rachna Singh

In that context, I am going to be talking about 70-year-old Om-prakash Sharma, alias Kukki the one who created a niche segment and lent Bundi in Hadoti region its quintessential identity among the tourism circuits in Rajasthan. His story on how ordinary citizens can play an extraordinary role in preserving our heritage is remarkable.

His journey is not just interesting - it's inspiring. At the tender age of 10, he stumbled upon two copper coins in the forest. “My instant reaction was, if I sold them, I would fend annas and perhaps be able to buy a good meal. I was so excited at the prospectus of finding the two coins that I ran back home and showed them to my father. When he learned that I got them from the Bundi hill he slapped me and took away the coins,” recalls Kukki.

But nevertheless, it set the seeds of an explorer and self-styled archaeologist. Just two copper coins found in the Bundi forest ignited in him an insatiable curiosity for vestiges of the past and changed the entire course of his life!

With the family’s fraught relationship with money and his father’s ill health, Kuki had to drop out of school in class 8 to take care of his father’s sweet shop. But alongside he continued exploring the forests of Bundi.