Picture: 1981 January, Changi Apirport Singapore. I met the two gentlemen on the left in Singapore. The third from left is Professor PP Thomas from India, an English Professor who worked at that time at the Mar Thoma College, Thiruvalla, Kerala. He was a fellow-student of journalism at Singapore training.Aalmost all my fellow students were much senior to me. The minimum age for admission was 35, but I was given special admission though I was not yet 28

The first creative work done by a person has great importance for him. This includes the first win in a major sports/game, the first successful lecture, the first article, or the first book. My first article was published when I was in 10th standard, and that had such a great impact upon me that eventually I decided to dedicate my entire life to bless others through my writings.

This desire led me to join a journalism course when I was in MSc, and I even won a scholarship after that to go to Singapore to attend an intense writers training program. All these trainings focused mainly on writing articles, but I always had a desire to write books in addition to articles. The desire started in me when I was in the eighth but by the time I underwent my first journalism course it became clear to me that writing articles and publishing them is one thing, but writing a book with several chapters, all integrated to  a single theme, is a different matter altogether. Thus my desire to write books was kept on hold for some time.

However, the sponsored trip to Singapore to study journalism once again kindled the desire to write a book because one of the assignments they gave me was to prepare a book proposal. I had to present a coherent outline of a book and I had to present the first chapter of this proposed book for critique. The journalism professor was so thrilled by reading the outline and the first chapter that she encouraged me to go go forward and write the complete book as soon as possible.

My desire to go ahead and write a book was kindled by another development. All 40 of the participants were required to give a one-hour presentation of their book. I was the junior-most among them, but my presentation received the greatest positive response. People kept discussing the subject with me for several days after my oral presentation was over. This gave me great confidence that I might be able to write a book. The book outline I presented at Singapore was about the Theory of Evolution, but my greatest desire was to write a book on Bible and Science.