Jayaprakash Narayan in words of Yusuf Meherally
He stayed in America for nearly eight years and studied at five different Universities. He started as a student of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and then devoted years to the study of Biology, Psychology, Economics and Sociology. He had several times interrupted his studies in order to earn enough to carry on at his University for a term or two. He had worked as a farm labourer for ten hours a day, as a packer in a jam factory, as a mechanic in an iron concern, as a waiter in a restaurant. He had tried his hand as a salesman. When, therefore, he returned to India in 1929, it was not as a raw student looking forward to a comfortable life, but as one who had seen life at close quarters and was fully determined to devote himself to public life.
