“My grandson’s in the fifth standard,” he said. “He’s turning out to be a real smart chhokra.” Suddenly a look came to his eyes, not the kind of look he’d had when he was calling for the waiter, but an untranslatable look, something I’d rarely seen in his eyes, something that went to the very depths of his being.

“You know,” he said, looking at his soup, “you’ve surprised us all. I never thought, when you were a child, that…” I shook my head, not knowing what to say. There are some things human beings are still not articulate about; not even I, although my profession’s connected with words.

At first, I didn’t quite know. I didn’t know why people were nice to me, why they came and shook my hand and wanted to listen to my every word. I was interviewed by various newspapers; sometimes I’d be woken out of sleep by the sound of the phone ringing, not knowing, in my semi-awake startlement, what it all meant, as if my mind were still reluctant to emerge from the dream it was having, or had begun, without effort, to confuse dream and reality. In my daytime world, I was invited everywhere; everyone recognised me as soon as I walked in, and their voices took on a different kind of tone, their faces hovered between awe and inscrutability. Consuls and ambassadors invited me to their houses; they fed me the best food; when I went to a new city, I was kept in the most elegant hotels. Gradually, one day, or in the course of a number of days, it dawned on me—I don’t remember who told me—that I was being prepared for the sacrifice, that I’d become involved with something much bigger than I could understand, that my life had become, in some way, connected to the nebulous common good and its continuing life.

I am truly privileged. Over the centuries known to man, right from time’s consciousness, from the dawning of light on rudimentary societies, there were a few who were chosen. They didn’t lead the life that “normal” people do; they were set apart from others, pampered, worshipped. Their long preparation was always a mystery. Their clan’s, or tribe’s, dreams and hopes—something more than dreams and hopes, something I still find difficult to express—became theirs; their passing and return were celebrated in shrines, as they are now in newspapers. So it was then; so it is now.