You understand these things from a distance.

When you are a child, there are many things that leave an impression on you. As you get older, you grow out of these things. But then one day, they would come back to you, with all the vividness and freshness of the one time experience.

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my father would often take me to the zoo or those places which hold dear values to an immature soul. We would take the train, and go through the stations. I remember how my father would suddenly disappear, while we are walking in the corridor. Naturally I would become desperate, and search for my protector. But I could not find my father. I go on the verge of crying, with water swelling in my eyes.

Precisely at that watershed moment, my father would appear from behind a column, smiling, teasing me, saying "did you think that I had gone somewhere?" and would hold my hands tightly. The warmth of the skin touch would invariably soothe me. I would stop short of crying out loud, having finished the ride on the emotional jet coaster.

I have been oblivious of these incidents for a long time. The enigma of the human mind is that you suddenly remember them out of the blue.

Looking back, I reflect on the state of mind of my father. Then, something extraordinary happens. Instead of reliving of my own trials, I sense as if in a delayed flash of realization the anxiety of my father. I think my father might have been projecting his own existential Angst upon me.

While teasing me by hiding behind the station columns, my father's heart must have been trembling. You understand these things from a distance.