A sure sign of growing old is that you start developing an interest in the past. You wish you had paid better attention to all those stories, those reminiscences, that your parents repeated countless times over; you find yourself turning into your parents, pushing past the rolled eyes and glazed expressions as you tell your own children, yet again and only minimally embellished, about how hard you had it as a child and how your great-aunt’s father-in-law brought glory to the family by securing the 57th rank in the ICS examinations; there is a longing that begins to stir awake, to thaw to life from the cavernous deep freeze of the brain’s memory vault, to visit old childhood haunts. By these standards, I am assuredly on the path to doddering dotage.