Complete disconnect from the real world

Dileep Padgaonkar, when he was posted in Paris, was once visited by Sham Lal. Dileep and his wife had to go out briefly to fetch some grocery, and requested Sham Lal to look after their little child who was asleep then.
When they returned a little later, they could hear Sham Lal’s voice saying hello, hello, hello. And when they entered the house, they saw Lal pacing up and down the living room repeating those words, while the baby cried in the adjacent room.This showed his almost complete disconnect from the real world.
But in his world, he was well-grounded.
Asked once to write on religion for the popular spiritual column The Speaking Tree, Sham Lal said: “Who am I to question the Shankaracharya? I can do a critique on Rabindra Nath Tagore. But not on Shankaracharya”.