WITHIN one or two blinks I realised I had lost my parents. I was alone, among many, many people I didn’t know on the platform of Shwedagon Pagoda – the place Rudyard Kipling described as “a beautiful, winking wonder that blazed in the sun” in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches – Letters of Travel (1899). Shwedagon’s beauty was lost on me this time, however. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I began to cry out loud. The strangers around me appeared to get even bigger. I could hardly see anything through my tears but felt a man catch hold of me with his giant hands. I struggled to escape but so forceful were his squeezes that all my efforts to escape were in vain. “Hey... don’t be afraid. Where’re your parents?” More people crowded around us and everyone comforted me. The man took me, the child who uttered no word but only cried, to the pagoda trustees office. In front of the office was a pandal being used as a donation counter, inside the office was a lady with glasses inviting well-wishe