Pranab Mukherjee, who headed several key ministries before becoming the President, used to walk two kilometres barefoot while going to a village school in West Bengal's Birbhum district wearing a 'gamcha' (traditional towel) during the monsoon in the 1940s, his friend Prof Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay said.

Reminiscing his association with Mukherjee for nearly seven decades since they were admitted to a college in the district in 1952, the eminent academician rued that he could not fulfil his friend's wish to write a biography of him.