the sepia tinted pine

The other day I dreamt that I was in Woodstock School. I had randomly dropped in there with some of my friends one golden evening. Everyone talked in the common room while I went to talk to the head teacher.
I was telling her that I am writing a book and its idea and inspiration has come a lot from what I knew of Woodstock School, because mine was a similar one, set in the foothills of the Himalayas. She smiled and repeated the names of the places as I told her. She didn't share the same enthusiasm as I expected her to. Didn't she want her name and the name of her school in the acknowledgment page? It was going to be big, this story, this imaginary world that was in my head. I knew it. The world would love it. Many other stories would spin out of its richness and details. Wouldn't she be proud to have played some part in it, or her school?
The Principal came inside the room we were at. He wasn't enthusiastic about it either. Was my idea not new? Had someone else already shared a similar story with them? Or even many other people?
I told him about my story and he listened til I finished and then he shifted the question to asking why my brother was in Korea and why he was studying what he was studying.
I told myself I hated people like that, people who are too concerned about facts and reality too much. Too much so that it makes you think reality is all there is. That imaginations and dreams are just for the sleep when you have nothing else to do but lie between the sheets.
I promised myself as I watched the evening sun lit the window frames brown with wooden varnish and the sepia tinted pine laden silhouette outside (and the streets of Mussoorie) that Sirion Diaries is going to be big. Bigger than my dreams.