Under the Pipal Tree – How the story began
Most stories begin in childhood. They appear in our first drawings, our childish patter and crucially the make-believe world we weave when playing with dolls, paper airplanes or invisible friends. These are the beginnings of a creative project. As we grow up, life steers us in other practical directions until those first imaginative steps are erased from our consciousness. But if we take time to connect with our creative soul, that world can be recreated with simple tools: paper and pen. Writers are usually avid readers and it’s a great place to start. Books feed our imagination, teach us our craft, inspire and uplift. But some books take us further when the characters leap out of the pages and populate our world, hovering over us like invisible, benign spirits like Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Moliere’s Alceste. Some like Meursault in The Outsider can have a lasting effect on a young reader’s mind. When I first read the novel at the age of fourteen, the emotional detachment of this ch...
