What's that?

It’s whooshing by so fast…like a bullet train. Blink my eye and in the next scene Taufik is 15 and Inaaya 12. Well, I am exaggerating…a little bit.

We were walking home from the Be My Guest Restaurant in PC5 the other day, when Inaaya just stopped short. I was busy chatting loudly to my sister sounding as annoying and provocative as Stephen Sackur; basically too busy to notice the infant child. Suddenly she gave a most God awful high and piercing screech that penetrated through my obnoxious consciousness. “What the…” I trailed off as I eyed my daughter puzzled.

She was just standing there with her arms up in the air, indicating that she wanted me to carry her. But every movement she made, seemed to terrify her. I eyed the ground before her suspiciously. No stinging scorpions or slimy jing choks (lizards) lurking about. I studied Inaaya who was glued to the ground but making mewling sounds with lips that hardly moved when the thought hit me.

I looked at my sister, and she looked at me. We gave each other that look almost simultaneously. That ‘Aha!’ glint the eye, you know…but just a tad more cool.

It struck us both at the same time, the thing that was terrorizing Inaaya. Inaaya was paralyzingly (is there such a word?) terrified of her own shadow. She couldn’t move because every time she did, the ‘enemy’ did the same. I laughed my head off as I bent down to pick up my silly little daughter.

What a quirky little thing she was. Now how do I handle this very irrational fear?