All that Sen gets to contend with now is lots of din and bustle, a hectic schedule that sees him delivering lectures by the dozen and the brush with the privacy of his home.

For the first time, Sen is hit by the odds of being a Nobel awardee. Getting down to reality is not very easy. ``I don't think I will be able to ride a bicycle this time, though I so badly wanted to,'' he says with resignation.Talking about his favourite leisure activity, a gleam slowly creeps into his eyes. How he would love to go back and chat with friends in the tea-shop over a cup of piping hot tea.

There was a time when Pratichi, Sen's home, was full of tranquil when he came down on his holidays. It provided the perfect foil for his frayed nerves.

Now it is the hottest place for tourists and the agile press, and a policepicket has been posted to keep intruders at bay.

All his sojourns are in the suffocating confines of a security vehicle, and that too for attending programmes and delivering lectures, something he admits, he is tired of.

``I am very tired. I had to deliver about 100 lectures in the past few weeks in Bangladesh and elsewhere and I hardly had any time to rest'', Sen said.The cynosure of all eyes after landing in India, he has been mobbed and followed by the public and press alike. How does the philosopher-economist, guided by tagorean thoughts, look at it?

At one of his recent comments, he said, ``It all happens only when you attach much to the Nobel Prize, which I think does not place me above the others who have not got it. ``The craze that you see will cease when you start realising that the Nobel is not the sole criterion for judging one's achievement''.