Farrukh Dhondy was born in 1944, in a Parsi family to Anita Shireen and Lieutenant Colonel Jamshed Dhondy, who worked in the British Indian Army. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Nowrosjee Wadia College, Poona, and got a scholarship to study Natural Sciences at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. After getting his master’s degree at Leicester University, he worked as a teacher at Leicester College of Further Education and Temple School in London.