I stepped out of the car this morning at the car park of Kingsway Hospital, and in that infinitesimally short space between blinks, when the world goes dark and when you could be anywhere, I felt that I was in Kerala. It wasn't the sounds, it wasn't the sights. The smell was just right, the right combination of heat, humidity, greenery, smoke (from cars and otherwise) that made me lose my bearings for that infinitesimally short space between blinks. I was instantly transformed to a humid morning on Tiruvankulam in a shirt and a mundu, just coming out of a temple. A quietness and stillness in the air that you can only sense at dawn in an Indian temple, a quietness and stillness in a throng of humanity all around you, all seeking solace, blessings and yearning for hope. An apt feeling for where I was.
And then my eyes opened and I was glad that I came to help a friend. Perhaps it was an unconscious prayer, or it was a sense of self reassurance that the world is right again. Or it was me retreating subconsciously to a safer place driven in no small measure by my own fears of my parents' mortality. And with my open eyes came a fleeting realization that all shall be well. Fleeting, because then life happens again after that infinitesimally short space between blinks.
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