Rao was initiated into astrology by his late mother, K. Saraswani Devi, at the age of twelve in 1943. He regards her as the best astrologer he has known in two areas, marriage and children and prashna (horary). Rao was a lecturer in English before joining the government service through an all-India competition in 1957. He joined the Indian Audit and Accounts Service from which he retired as Director General in November 1990. More interested in games and sports than in astrology in his youth, Rao won brilliancy prizes in chess competitions and two state championships in bridge competitions. He played ten other games which is why in his astrological writings also there are references to games often. During his service career, he was the planner, organizer and teacher of three international courses on Audit of Receipts as a joint director once and director twice. His interactions with foreigners have been both on professional and astrological levels for more than two decades which is why he has, as an astrologer, a large international network of friends. He went on doing all his fundamental researches in astrology during his service career because of which, he went on collecting horoscopes systematically in thousands. He has in his possession more than 50,000 horoscopes with ten important events of each individual noted with him. It is perhaps, the largest individual collection of horoscopes any astrologer perhaps has. The strain of doing astrology as a mission, not charging any fee, almost made him give up astrology many times. But in December 1981, he was forced out of his shell to participate in a three-day seminar on astrology in Delhi. After this ground breaking speech, there has been a persistent demand for his astrological articles. From then onwards he has been sharing with his readers his original researches for which he has won worldwide praise. - from Amzon