Nikolai, a famous Kalmyk writer, talks about how he became a writer: In the autumn of 1973, after finishing school, I was driving a tractor in my native village to prepare the field for the spring sowing when I saw the agronomist from our village waving his hand from inside his car urging me to stop. I stopped the tractor and got out. I was scared, I thought something must have happened at home. But the agronomist says, ‘Let’s go quickly, famous writers and poets have arrived in the village.’ ‘I cannot go in this state, covered in oil,’ I answered. He insists, ‘Let's go, thank them on behalf of our village, and read your poems for them. The director is calling you! When you take to the stage, I guarantee that all the guests will be amazed that a simple tractor driver can write such verses’. When I came to the club it was already full of people, including the chairman of our village, the guests and locals. After the meeting, the chairman steps onto the stage and announces, ‘From our village, in gratitude to you, our young poet will now read his poems’. When I started reading, all the guests were surprised and asked me to read more and more. Finally when I finished, everyone began to applaud, some jumping up from their seats. Sanji Kalyaev and Konstatin Erendzhenov, together with Professor Kichikov, asked me why despite my talents I was not studying at the Language Department of Kalmyk State University. I answered, ‘The state farm wants to send me to the Volgograd Agricultural Institute to study’. But they say, ‘No, you will go to Elista and study at our university!’ They called the director of the state farm, talked to him, and decided to ask my parents to send me to Elista. Although it was October and the terms had already started, they wanted me to start my course immediately. I declined their offer and told them I would go first to the army and then decide what to do next. In the army I started writing in Russian as well because I was responsible for a military wall-newspaper. After the army, I went to Kalmyk State University where I wrote in Kalmyk. I started writing children's poems after becoming the editor-in-chief of Bair magazine. Today there are about 30 children’s songs with lyrics taken from my poems.