text: &#x200B; It had been many years since he had walked down these streets. Everything seemed familiar yet unfamiliar at once. The old buildings still looked the same, with paint peeling off and the air of gloom hanging around them, the roads were still narrow and crooked, the street-lights still didn’t work. But the people had changed. The old man who sold ice-cream had disappeared and the old aunt who often scolded the children for being noisy but would unfailingly appear with lemonade at regular intervals to distribute it among them was no were to be seen and he himself was no longer that young and innocent child who had considered the entire world a magical land to be explored. Indeed the passage of time was cruel and though he had gained many things, he had lost as much in the process. As he trod down the well-remembered road, he absent mindedly took out a cigarette and lighted it, a bad habit he picked up in his youth and one he found difficult to completely cast off even now, it had become a part of him, an action that he did subconsciously whenever he was deep in thought. Blowing out the smoke he rounded a corner and suddenly stopped, in front of him was a dilapidated playground just like the one he remembered, the same rusty swings and creaky slides...perhaps the difference would be that now a small fence surrounded the playground, perhaps the result of some mandatory maintenance project, but what caught his attention was the old tree near the swing, it was an unremarkable tree, short and crooked, he didn’t even know what species it was but he felt an unexplainable attraction to it. With large strides he walked over to it and kneeled down beneath the shade it cast. He reached out a well manicured hand and felt around its trunk, his hand stopping when it discovered some deep indentations that time couldn’t completely cover up. With an almost maniacal urgency he roughly ran his hands over the spot a few times till the marks left in the trunk became more visible. As his eyes ran over those marks, an old memory resurfaced in his mind, a summer afternoon and a couple of boys fooling around without a care in the world, a sharp knife one had snuck out of his father’s drawer and a spur of the moment decision to etch their names on to the tree under which they spend their time. Of course they had realized that to carve their names completely would be a tad bit difficult but unwilling to give up they had compromised by deciding to only leave their initials on the tree. As he revisited that particular memory he found himself smiling for some reason. It wasn’t the kind of polite smile he usually had but a real one which came from the bottom of his heart. Even though he realized that the sight of a thirty something man in a three-piece suit kneeling down and smiling in an empty playground might make people think him a creep he couldn’t care less, he couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled without any hidden intentions, smiled simply because his emotions dictated he had to, smiled just because he felt like it. Walking out of the playground he ran into an aging man in a police uniform stretched tight over a rather plentiful belly. He was shocked to realize that he knew that man, it was the same police officer who had chased those young boys around for causing ruckus after ruckus and handed them over to their parents after a stern warning time and time again. Even though time had stripped the man of his vigour and turned him into a fragile shadow of his former self he still recognized him. In front of him, the man had a frown on his face, perhaps he was wondering why a guy in an expensive albeit soiled suit would be hanging around these parts. Perhaps the man would remember him if he talked but he didn’t feel like it. It was curious, the feelings he had for this place and it’s people, all he knew was that despite everything he had never hated it, as for feelings like love or nostalgia...he had no idea. It was strange really, he didn’t understand why after coming out of yet another boring meeting he would have a sudden urge to revisit this place. But he had never been one to leave something for later when he wanted to do it, and thus he had come.Why? He didn’t know. Wasn’t “I felt like it” reason enough? He was shaken out of his inner thoughts and monologuing by the sound of a car behind him. He turned around to see a sleek and expensive car that was awfully familiar to him...it was after all his own.The car came to a stop near him and a man got out, it was his secretary. The man cast a disapproving look at the state of his clothes but switched focus and said “ Sir, I just received a call, the representatives hope you will be willing to have a video conference with them tonight” he felt a familiar stifling feeling rise in his chest but still nodded curtly and flashed the policeman a polite smile before getting into the car. As the car pulled away from the place he hadn’t seen in so long he glanced at the rear view mirror and saw the policeman watching the car speeding away, he still had a frown on his face but the next moment the car rounded a corner and he could no longer see the policeman. He felt a wave exhaustion wash over him and leaned back in his seat before slowly closing his eyes.