As you grow older, the speed at which your thoughts are expressed in words diminishes. I have been writing hundred-odd pages over the past few weeks. But I can blame my age and memory for it. It's been four odd decades since the time we shifted to Shantiniketan. Time seemed to be going faster as the children grew older. Lata loved her work as a teacher and she was immensely respected by her students. Apart from our children, many of her students flocked regularly to our home. Lata was the headmaster of her school in the last twelve years of her service and even when the children choose their own paths and shifted to bigger cities, our house would still welcome a lot of the children whom Lata treated as her own. She urged me often to sponsor the education of some of the underprivileged children from the nearby villages and I would often be invited by the school for some cultural programme. Often in the summer vacation, we would travel to wherever Narayan was posted for some change ...