"Ugliness is a both a learned concept and skin deep," said Khambatta, one of my teachers while I grew up in London.

I'd reached the ripe age of 11 and had started writing on a typewriter as yet another milestone of being serious about the writing vice.

Admittedly, I started off with the idea of wanting to be a writer from an old UK TV series called Jason King, now clearly seen as a wild fantasy of the writer's luxurious lifestyle. Writers who wanted their work to be seriously-considered were told to focus on the grit in life.

"Yes, the grit is there, but so is the beauty within the grit. Grit, after all, is a creation of the divine. Crap is what man reduces creation to," said Khambatta. He even ended with a preposition just show how ugly prose can be.

Khambatta continued, "Beauty is the essence behind all things because it derives from the creative principle...call it God, Divine Mother or a trillion other names used in the galaxies."

Wow, I said. Come back to planet Earth.

"True.The word "god" is dynamite enough for the meagre levels at which we think," he said.

At the time of course like most kids I shared this view of humankind. I saw things in black and white with greater confidence, back then.

Greatness, expertly hidden

"Much as that may be true on many levels, humanity has greatness hidden expertly away in millenia of laziness, and selfishness. Selfishness is laziness," Khambatta told me.

His phrases had a way of infiltrating themselves into my brain cells.

He continued, "If everything that exists is from the creator - then everything is beautiful. From where did the idea of ugliness come?

"From the idea that there is separation. Beauty is oneness. We are vitally connected to every manifest and unmanifest aspect of everything that is, ever was, every will be."

Ugliness is a lie

When I see someone maimed from an accident, when I see someone with his brains living outside his skull from birth, I have to say my mind thinks yuck! But I of course never voice this. With that attitude, it naturally took me a while to realise that interesting writing needed to be bold and honest.