Sir: Realism is the best word to eulogize the literary flare of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work. Garcia left this world on April 17. His stories and novels were woven around the realities of life. What he learned from the stories told to him by his grandfather in childhood added significantly to his story telling talent. But it was his grandmothers’ lore that gave his stories the gripping plot that stands out to date. One wonders how his superb novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude came to life — Garcia isolated and locked himself in a room for months with papers, pens and cigarettes. Seclusion of eighteen months produced this great work of literature of which more than twenty million copies have been sold while it has been translated into 30 languages. His novels highlighted the cultural and political realities and contradictions in South America — rise and fall of generals, violence in his home country, Colombia, the underworld of drug cartels, and wayward policies of left wingers. A closing quote from Garcia: “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” Masood Khan Jubail, Saudi Arabia