"He's dead! He's dead!" I shouted!My mother's head whipped towards me, "Who's dead?""Pushkin! He died""Oh?""Why are you not upset? Why is no one upset?""Honey, that was a very long time ago. We've known about it for hundreds of years.""Not me.""I thought you knew."At five years old, I had only just discovered that Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin – poet, playwright, novelist, and author of countless childhood folktales – was dead. I was utterly distraught… I'm still not quite over it.Nestled into the navy, faux-leather cushions of our living room sofa, I was deeply engrossed in a 4 A.M. retrospective on the life and work of Pushkin, courtesy of the Russian 'Kultura' channel. Morning television wasn't typically permitted, a minor complication, which, after some trial and error, I naturally devised a way of circumventing. I discovered if I woke up before five in the morning to pestered my parents while they were half-asleep, they were more inclined to a lenient perspective about pre-established household screen-time regulations. To this day, my parents and I have varying memories as to the efficacy of this technique.Yet, there I was: shocked still by horror as some noted historian described the untimely demise of one of Russia's greatest writers on the 10-inch screen of our Samsung VCR-Combo. I took it upon myself to alert everyone. Indeed, they too would feel the immense loss of such a beloved storyteller… except they already knew. Worse – not only did they already know, they didn't seem particularly bothered.I still feel the smouldering indignation of that five-year-old: How dare they not care? How could they remain so unmoved? Pushkin, whose words single-handedly rescued me from the daily threat of napping tedium, whose stories consoled me during inescapable trials of childhood boredom, whose life's work continues to inspire mine: for his life to be cut short by a duel with a cheating Frenchman… I couldn't accept it. The worlds, the rhythms of his poetry and prose, jostled with a liveliness my little five-year-old brain couldn't reconcile with the stillness of death.According to my mother, that’s when I started writing. I guess I never stopped.