I don’t remember who I was ten years ago, even though a friend told me once that all those memories could be easily recovered through hypnosis. I don’t trust people who use hypnosis, I told him. There is a sort of perversity in the use of hypnosis. Then he told me that I don’t need to know who I was ten years ago because that information is frivolous. Yes, I was frivolous ten years ago. That information is lost in a series of sunny mornings and hot afternoons. Then there is autumn, school, winter, and summer again. Back to those sunny mornings, hot afternoons, and that ice-cream thirst. That cold pang in the middle of your forehead when you eat your ice-cream too fast. Pink girls and blue boys playing outside in the shadow of a red roof house. But what about me, I asked this friend of mine. He said that there was no ‘me’ ten years ago. Yes, I was not there ten years ago. I was not there because I was somewhere else. And that ‘somewhere else’ was not mine, it belonged to somebody else.

Even today, you belong to somebody else, my friend told me.

You may say that this friend of mine is a very intelligent creature. There were many times when I believed this to be so. Who do I belong to, I asked him. I couldn’t tell, he said.

Today, as it was ten years ago, my memories belong to somebody else.