Today I'll tell you how I fell in love with the pen. My father, as I told you earlier, was an intelligence officer. He would do a lot of writing work. He would bring his office works home. He would have with him a lot of blank papers and a pen. He would then go on writing and filling up page after page after page in English language of course. I was a small boy who would keep watching him writing and filling up pages. I too tried to do the same. I took a paper and pen and started writing. After that paper and pen became my best companion. I would simply enjoy writing whatever I could on the paper. My dad should get the credit for instilling in me the love for writing. I was in Goa when I fell in love with paper and pen. Near the place where we were residing. there used to be Marathi stage plays taking place very often. I could see and hear the whole play just by standing in the balcony. I saw many plays and after that I tried to write my own plays. Guess in which language I would write the plays? I would write in Marathi. The Goan school, viz. St Theresa's Convent (Vasco), didn't have Marathi subject. But I had Hindi as one of my subjects. Since the alphabets of Hindi and Marathi are almost the same I learnt to write in Marathi too with the help of Hindi alphabets. In fact, I learnt to read Marathi too by using my knowledge of Hindi alphabets that I had learnt in school. Thus I would write stories, poems and plays in English as well as Marathi. When my dad got transferred to Mumbai in 1970 I found myself among the neighbours (at Bandra) who hardly knew Marathi and who all the time talked in English. It was after I came to Mumbai that I just stopped writing in Marathi but continued to write in English. This love for writing has made me today land in a small newspaper office (Newsband) in a small city (Navi Mumbai) where I'm working as a writer and journalist. I find my knowledge of Marathi too very useful since I come across many Marathi news items which I have to translate into English. I can do that with ease. I've been working for Newsband for more than six years now and during this period I've written much more than 10 lakhs words which are published under my name. I feel great for having performed this feat (if you call it a feat) and I owe this success of mine to my dad who inspired me to weild the pen.
Now my dad was in Intelligence department. People generally are under the impression the Intelligence department consists of physically tough people who hardly do any kind of writing. That's not true. Intelligence department consist of two types of people. One type is physically strong. The other type is very intelligent. The department requires the services of both types of people. My dad belonged to the intelligent type. He was physically quite tough too. He would do lot of writing work. In fact, he would solve cases by writing on the paper. I'm sure that as an intelligence officer he must have done record amount of writing. He wrote mostly on legal matters since he had a powerful legal mind. Whenever he was not writing I would see him reading legal books. In my home there was a cupboard which was full of his legal books and files of his writings. Even in his office, he had legal books kept close to him and the cupboard over there used to be full of his files. I feel he should have become an eminent journalist rather than an unknown intelligence officer. Had he been a journalist, he would have broken all records of writing. He was that powerful a writer. Had he not inspired me to be a writer I would not have become even a small time writer which I am today. I once again say that this little success that I've got as a writer, I owe it to my dad whose name, for your information, is Keshav Vaman Kamath. Bye!
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