Shamik is waiting in line to pay for an item in a department-store, and he notices there is a closed circuit television monitor over the counter – one of the store’s measures against shoplifters. As he watches the jostling crowd of people on the monitor he realizes that the person on the left side of the screen in the overcoat carrying the large paper bag is having his pocket picked by the person behind him. Then, as he raises his hand to his mouth in astonishment, he notices that the victim’s hand is moving to his mouth in just the same way. Shamik Moitra suddenly realizes that he is the person whose pocket is being picked. This dramatic shift is a discovery. But before the shift he wasn’t entirely ignorant, of course; he was thinking about ” the person in the overcoat” and seeing that the person was being robbed, and since the person in the overcoat is himself, he was thinking about himself. But he wasn’t thinking about himself as himself; he wasn’t thinking about himself in the right way.

The perennial paradox of being Shamik.