As he said often, he had always had the feeling he was “different”. He first wanted to be a poet. He also loved sketching and painting. And though he did not complete school education, he developed an enormous love for reading. He learnt and read English books the hard way, with the help of a dictionary. He read books by the American novelist John Steinbeck, the famous British writer George Orwell and the Irish writer Liam O’ Flaherty, and several other Western writers.