​Three of my closest friends in high school decided to end their virginity by having a fun night at a local brothel. They saved some money doing odd jobs, and then pooled their money for the grand adventure.
 
They had checked with savvier acquaintances and settled on a bordello that was neither too expensive nor too lowly, catering to middle class clients. They avoided the weekend when they might encounter, who knows, someone from the family or community who knew them. They dressed well, took their money and turned up together, nervous but determined, at a house of ill repute.
 
The initiation was easy. Even before they entered the place, a person outside offered his help, took them straight to the madam, and, after she had placed a bill in his hand, departed without a word. The madam, a middle-aged corpulent woman, sized them up instantly, asked them to sit, and sent another woman to fetch the three women she named.

​The moment the three women entered the room, the three friends felt a strong tension. The die had been cast. Now was the moment of choice. The youngest and smallest of the friends, Pete, saw that, of the three women one was petite, and he simply got up and followed her out of the room. Jack, the largest, a football player, liked the tall, slender woman, and she beckoned him to come with her. Ben, with a slight hesitation, got up too and walked up to the last woman, ready. Without a word or sign, she started the short walk to a private room.
 
Pete had been the most enthusiastic about the adventure, but the moment he entered her room with the petite woman a switch seemed to go off in him. The small room with its false coziness, dim light and sickly-sweet aroma of flowers did not seem right for what he had in mind. Then the woman put out her hand, and even as he placed the agreed sum on her hand, he knew he did not plan to keep the bargain. He asked if he could have a drink. When the drink came, he sipped it thoughtfully and finally told the woman he would have the drink and then leave, and wait for his friends downstairs. He felt relieved when he went out. He was not nervous; he had simply realized it would not please him.
 
Jack walked into another small room, but with the French window opening on a terrace it did not seem cramped. He liked its quiet and neatness, and the attractive person who was talking softly to him as she slowly took off her clothes. Jack felt warm and excited. When she came to him, he took her hand, she smiled and sat very close to him, and he felt comfortable and reassured. When she removed his shirt and signaled for him to lie next to her, it seemed very inviting. As she touched him, he responded and felt wonderful.

​When an hour later, Jack met Pete downstairs as agreed, he was glowing with joy and eager to speak of his amazing experience, but Pete said they should wait for Ben to join them before they talked at length. Ben came down a few minutes later, but one look at him told his friends that something had gone very wrong. He was flushed in the face, and wanted to return home immediately.
 
In the taxi, Pete and Jack coaxed Ben to tell them what had happened, but he kept steadfastly mute. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. He never could, not even in the many subsequent years that we urged him to tell us what had troubled him. It was a trauma he could neither describe nor explain.
 
Jack went on to marry and have two children. Pete married too, but his marriage fell apart after six years. Ben did not marry. To the best of our knowledge, he did not have any affairs either. He just lived alone after his parents died. Forever he carried the hapless burden of a murky night that started as a lark and ended as an unspeakable wound. 

​One touch of destruction, as Shakespeare might have said, makes the whole world kin.

Every year my Japanese friend, Mitsuo, visits a son that lives and works in my US neighborhood. He recounted how his mother drummed it into him each morning as he left for school that he should be attentive. Of course, he needed to be attentive in his class; but, much more, he needed to be attentive outside. 

Those were the forties, World War II years, and allied bombers were pounding Tokyo and its suburbs virtually every day. The flimsy wooden houses collapsed and burned easily, scores lay dead and wounded every day. Mitsuo’s mother simply didn’t want her son to be literally what his name meant in Japanese, a “shining man.” So she repeatedly admonished him to pay attention to the warning siren, to find some protective cover like a desk and to crouch below instantly.

​The advice paid dividends. Mitsuo survived the war and later worked his whole life for the multinational company whose US branch his son now served.

With a little hesitation, I responded by telling Mitsuo of a singular experience I had had in 1943. I was visiting my uncle with my mother twenty blocks from our home in Kolkata, when the piercing wail of a siren struck terror. We knew what it meant, for we had been told in school that an attack was imminent by the Japanese army, which was already at the frontier of Burma, now Myanmar, and that the land invasion was likely to be preceded by bombardment. 

​We rushed to the basement and crouched under a bed, our ears shut tight by our palms, carrying a bag containing petroleum jelly and bandages. We could hear the bombs fall and the earth shake, but mercifully the bombardment was short-lived. Though I had heard about shortages in town and famine in the countryside, now I was experiencing the war first-hand.
 
A half-hour later, as the All Clear sounded, we walked back home. Six blocks down I saw what mother didn’t want me to see: three flattened tenements, two dead cows, and next to that the grotesquely crumpled body of the local milkman, who supplied us milk every morning. Apparently he wasn’t paying attention and had chosen to stay with his cows instead of going down to the air-raid shelter.

​The car has become, said Marshall McLuhan, an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete.

I grew up in an eastern Indian city which had few cars. My parents never had one; they were average middle-class educators. I do not remember ever feeling deprived: I went everywhere in public buses and trams. The ticket cost less than a US cent.

When I came out of the university, a large European company recruited me and within two years I was a well-heeled executive. I still patronized public transport. It was only when I started dating regularly, I began to feel less well-equipped than other executives who had cars. I longed for the privacy and easy mobility of a private car. So I saved and bought, for what seemed a princely sum, a previously owned Fiat. It had occasional problems, but on the whole it served me well.
​
Yet, in a short while, my sights changed. I longed for the proud ownership of a new car. Within a couple of years, I had saved enough to afford a brand-new Fiat. Fiat was one of the only two brands made in India then, and I didn't care for the other. I chose a striking new color the manufacturer had introduced that year, and it pleased me that others immediately recognized its newness.

When I immigrated to the US and joined an international organization in Washington, D.C., I impulsively bought a new Mercedes. The very smell of the interior felt captivating the first day. I kept buying Mercedes models for several years, till I switched to BMW. I noticed, however, that, after the first momentary lift of spirits, the new possession seemed to do less for me than earlier purchases. I really couldn’t get excited about an acquisition that appeared only to excite others.
​
The next time around I disregarded the importunings of my friends at the Mercedes and BMW dealerships. I went ahead and bought a previously owned modest compact Japanese car.

​Khan, Neel and I, long-standing friends, attended the same high school and college for six years. We spent long evenings together, talking about books, girls, games and, most of all, what we wanted to do in life.
 
We weren’t sure about choosing professions, because people we knew in familiar professions – doctors or attorneys – clearly had both privileges and problems. But we were, all three, quite sure we wanted independence, to choose our home, work, friends and how we wanted to live. We also wanted to find meaning in what we did, so we could feel good we were doing something of service to others.
 
We kept in touch after college. There were times when we made few contacts or didn’t answer letters, but soon we picked up the thread again. As we went to work in different cities, we rarely met any longer, and when we did it was only in pairs, but we dreamed of getting the trio together again.

​It finally happened after twenty-seven years.
 
Khan came for a conference to my town and Neel graciously took two days of vacation to visit us. We agreed to meet in the college cafeteria for old time’s sake and sip tea together as in old days. For weeks we corresponded and planned the meeting, raising our own expectations in the process.
 
I felt a bit nervous and arrived early, and found Neel already there. I recognized him all right, but was a bit shocked to find him looking so tired and frayed. Khan was a bigger surprise: he was heavier, seemed older than his age, and would have been unidentifiable if he hadn’t come toward us with a familiar smile.
 
Even after so many years we retained a vibrant link, and we spoke happily about our days together. Then I asked if we were living the life we had dreamed about. Neel was a successful surgeon, but he seemed to find little joy in his success. He said his work had become just a “business,” and his reputation served to attract the wealthiest to his door, not the neediest.
 
Khan was a celebrity, a politician admired for ingenuity and affability, a true success. He was known for his integrity and outspokenness. He saw it differently: at every step he had had to compromise, sacrifice principles he valued to achieve results he thought important. He said he began by thinking that he was helping people, but now he knew better. 
 
I didn’t have their kind of success. I had simply worked in an office and over the years gained the modest reputation of a helpful, friendly person. I liked that people came to me for assistance. Now, listening to my friends, I had a precious moment of self-introspection. I wondered how many little principles I had quietly abandoned, how many causes, once cherished, I had gently let fall by the wayside.

Sam was a large man who dressed flamboyantly and wore an oversize Rolex and ornate sunglasses. A friend who heard of his plan to help poor students develop commercial skills introduced us. He requested that I help Sam.

Sam needed assistance with the project’s technical aspects. I told him I was quite busy, but would be glad to see him during the weekend.

He turned up Saturday in my home at six in the morning and woke me up. Annoyed, but impressed by his enthusiasm, I told him I had studied the papers and concluded that, though well-intentioned, the project design was inept and needed complete overhaul. Not the least daunted, he asked who could fix it. No name came readily to mind. He urged me to join with him and redesign the whole project. I had misgivings about a partner so different in style or personality, but agreed reluctantly.
​
What followed was a whirlwind of activity. Any idea I broached, Sam would convert immediately into a huge set of activities, all pursued with unrelenting vigor. No point telling him something needed to be reworked; he would instantly press ahead with any half-baked notion I broached. No matter if the idea proved wrong or impractical; he would glowingly tell me of the new pointers he had gained from discussing it with government officials.

My work hours were long, but he knew when to turn up in my office just as it was closing and suggest a cocktail, or to ingeniously gain entry into a party he knew I would attend. With Sam around, there could be no discussion that did not turn soon to his project. He would find a way to involve everyone and pump the unlikeliest person for ideas. The puzzling part was he did pick up new ideas and found new friends to help.

Speed was his hallmark. He was the only person I knew who carried official stationery in his briefcase, and, if a written request was needed, produced it instantly – handwritten. If a form demanded statistics, he would concoct the best he could muster on the spot and later send a letter of correction. What could be done the next week or month, he wanted done that very day, in fact immediately, and would gladly run to the end of town to do it. “Now is the best time,” was his favorite phrase. 

I gave up complaining of his hasty commitments and ill-phrased letters, much as I realized the futility of suggesting that we think through a problem before we rush into action. Sam would act before I could blink, and the only way was to anticipate a strategy or instantly devise one.

Our project took off earlier than expected and produced results better than our fondest hopes. His astounding drive had partly infected our staff and associates. I knew it well, because I had begun waking up at night with new ideas. That added to Sam’s enthusiasm and his determination to accomplish everything at lightning pace. He would gulp his drink, smoke through his cigarette in record time and rush to the next meeting with a briefcase loaded with talking points.

Doctors started warning him of telltale signs. I counseled caution and snatched the perennial cigarette from his lips. Friends urged him to settle down and enjoy the striking success of our project. But Sam dreamed of building a new office, getting new staff and enlarging the project tenfold.

I was accidentally at the project office window one afternoon when I observed the strange arc of Sam’s car as he dashed typically to another downtown appointment. Sam was an excellent driver, and that reckless curve was bizarre. I rushed out and found the car stalled on the sidewalk, Sam’s large frame sprawled on the steering wheel, motionless. Ominously, even the Rolex on his drooping wrist was still. My good friend, always in a hurry, had finally slowed down.

When Pogo says, “We have met the enemy, it is us,” he hints at our myriad skills to under­mine ourselves. Of course, nobody is better at undercutting us than us.

One interesting way we depreciate the quality of our life is to acquire, retain and store junk. You visit anybody who has lived in a house five, ten and fifteen years, and you can be sure of the enormous amount of junk in their attic or basement. Even their bedroom may look like a storage room. There are things enshrined the owners have not used in years. And they hardly intend to use them. They may not even know that they have them.

At long intervals the owners say to themselves, “I really need to clear up the basement. There is a lot of stuff I don’t need.” There the matter rests, a pious wish too troublesome to act on. At best they pull out an old toy and a broken CD and place the former with a neighbor’s child and the latter in the trash can. But the vast inventory remains untouched.

Why? Why is it so very difficult to get rid of things, even things we don’t use? Partly it is our acquisitive instinct. We love to acquire things. It makes us feel more powerful and successful. To get rid of things is to feel denuded and weaker. Partly it is our attachment to things around us. Even when those are of no earthly use to us, we are invested in them and cannot bear to part from them. Like Professor Higgins complaining of a missing face to which he has grown accustomed, we miss whatever has once crossed our threshold and occupied a space in our universe.

I grew up in a city where there were few decent libraries and I didn’t have the money to buy many books. I was perpetually short of books I wanted to read. I borrowed books from more affluent friends and found ways to use libraries I wasn’t entitled to use. So the moment I could afford more books, I filled my house with them. I started reading more on the internet and retained my habit of borrowing heavily from libraries. Yet the books on my shelves grew – and the number of unread books. The simple truth that books were for reading, and not for hoarding, slipped from my mind.

Growing up in the east, I had clearly seen how scarcity compromised the quality of life. Living in the west, I have now slowly begun to see how the reverse, abundance, also compromised the quality of life.  Plenitude, instead of adding to your well-being, can choke you. With so many books, I forgot what books I had. If I knew the books I had, I had a tough time finding the one I needed. I wasn’t going to waste time sorting, arranging and cataloguing books instead of reading them. The answer was keeping a few, passing the rest on to friends, libraries and charities.
​
Books are the tip of the iceberg. We are choking on the profusion of clothes, shoes, watches, jewelry, computers and every other kind of possession. Traveling frequently, I learned to maintain two of every thing, one for my home and the other for use overseas. Now my epitaph can read, “Here lies one who had four of every thing he needed.” I have friends who have ten of everything they need.

I had a revelation in the diplomatic service when I arrived in a new country with just three suitcases and never felt wanting for anything. On the contrary, there was a strange sense of liberation. While dressing for office, I had to choose from five shirts and six ties instead of thirty, and life suddenly seemed simpler. In three to five weeks, however, the airfreight arrived, with more shirts and ties, and life went back to its accustomed complexity. In two to three months, arrived the rest of my things by ship and, once again, my house was full to the gills. My life had reverted to its copious, cluttered, junk-laden status.

One does not have to be a believer in Feng Shui to realize that a balance is easier to achieve between us and our environment if we make that environment, often our home, less complicated, less burdened by multiple, meaningless objects. The great architect Mies van der Rohe chose the simple motto: less is more.
​
The Beatles sang:
Buy buy says the sign in the shop window
Why why says the junk in the yard.

​Churchill’s soldiers had emptied the granaries of eastern India and a man-made famine was slowly killing two million people in Bengal. Dilip, 18, a lawyer’s son and a science graduate, decided that, instead of starving in his village in Barisal, he would venture to the capital city of Kolkata for a living. He put his meager possessions in a small bag, the two dollars his family could spare in his pocket, and bought a train ticket.
 
He had never traveled before, and, when the train entered the large Kolkata rail station, he wondered why the train had entered a building. The only address he carried was that of a pharmacy, whose owner was his village chum’s uncle. He walked to the pharmacy and told the bemused owner that he had come to look for a job.  The man took pity on the naïve lanky village boy and allowed him to sleep in a corner of the tiny room he rented near the pharmacy.
 
Dilip knew his two precious dollars wouldn’t last long and he had to find work quickly. What could he do? What would anybody trust a country yokel to do?
 
World War II had entered a new, uncertain stage and the Japanese army was surging through Southeast Asia, threatening Burma, now Myanmar. Dilip had seen two large signs seeking recruits for the British army. He checked with people on the street and did the five-mile trek to the army recruitment center in Kidderpore.
 
There was a long line of job seekers. All seemed better dressed than him, given his village tailored madras shirt, never ironed and now soiled by sweat. An hour later he stood before the English recruiter.
 
“Why do you want to work for the army?”
 
“I need a job,” he replied candidly.
 
“Have you had any education,” a skeptical query, doubtless prompted by his unkempt look.
 
“I have a bachelor’s degree in science.”
 
“Good Heavens!” Clearly the recruiter hadn’t expected the response. “Listen,” he quickly added, “we desperately need people who know some science. You will join tomorrow, and, after a week’s training we will send you to Burma, our radar station there.”
 
Dilip was thrilled. He would earn the princely sum of twenty dollar every two weeks, have free uniforms and shoes, buy food at concessional rates and earn some hazard pay.

​“Dilip!” Some one hollered his name as wound his way out of the recruitment center.
 
Surprise. He turned to face another village acquaintance, apparently now an army employee in the recruitment center. When Dilip told him what had just transpired, the man's eyebrows arched in concern.
 
“Burma! You’d be crazy to go there. The Japanese are just about to overrun the place. Believe me, you don’t want to be a prisoner of war with the Japanese. A skinny kid like you will never survive.”
 
“But I need a job,” Dilip remonstrated, “immediately. Otherwise, I’ll starve to death.”
 
“Wait a minute. I know of a tire factory thirty miles from here. It is making truck and plane tires for the war. I know somebody there. Maybe you could be of use there.”
 
Within a week Dilip had a job at the plant. Within a year he had a decent job in the Technical Department as a lab technician.
 
Twenty years later, he was still in the factory, now a senior manager, when I joined the company as an intern. Despite the difference in age, we struck an immediate friendship. A city boy, I felt a misfit in the company town’s unique culture. A village boy, Dilip had done well in the company, but somehow maintained a psyche quite independent of the culture. That strange alienation helped us build a bridge of understanding.

​Lonely in my company apartment, I had earlier played strenuous sets of tennis in the afternoon sun to overcome my disconnection from my colleagues. Now I had someone to talk to. Someone who understood me, my abiding love of ideas and literature,  and encouraged me to look for new ideas in the plant too. I found, to my surprise, an able executive with time-tested skills, to whom my feelings resonated and made sense.
 
Our paths later diverged. A technologist, Dilip became a successful administrator, and later a skilled lawyer. I went abroad and joined an international organization. Our friendship endured nonetheless. From the other end of the world I can still talk to him and know I have a friend.

Jahmir Majid, a hotshot in his country and a friend of a friend of a friend of our family, came to stay with us for two weeks. Two memorable weeks.
 
Father was a friendly person and had the habit of inviting virtual strangers over for dinner. Sometimes he went a step further and would invite the person to stay with us for a few days. That is how Uncle Majid, as we were instructed to call him,  entered our life.
 
Uncle Majid was a tall, dark-haired man, with a rugged face and a strong build. He was remarkably polite, almost formal, even with the children, and mother audibly wondered why we could not be as courteous as him. He was an Iraqi scholar, whose research project kept him busy at the local university during the day, but in the evening he would go for long walks to explore the streets of Kolkata. Invariably he would encounter interesting people, from shopkeepers to rickshaw pullers to sidewalk vendors, and over dinner he would tell us their stories and put us to shame that a stranger had found in our backyard fascinating people we never knew existed.
 
One evening he mentioned that the following Sunday was his son’s birthday and he would like to cook a special celebratory meal for our family. We enthusiastically agreed. Mother and a maid cleaned the kitchen scrupulously on Saturday and Uncle Majid returned from the market with several bags of provisions.

Curious, I woke early Sunday morning and found Uncle Majid already furiously at work in the kitchen. He said he had started at six and expected to be ready by six in the evening. When the family assembled for dinner, we faced a table fit for royalty. Father and mother had dressed for the occasion, and uncle Majid wore a tunic, and I felt embarrassingly underdressed for the feast that waited.
 
We began with Mezza, a tapas-like collection of various small dishes: Fattoush, a vegetable salad with fried pita pieces, Maqli, fried eggplant with tahini and lettuce and Turshi, a potpourri of pickled vegetables.
 
Then came an astounding array of entrées. There was Maqluba, a rice and aubergine casserole, Fesenjan, a chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranates, Bamia, of lamb and okra, and in a tribute to my parents’ partiality for seafood, Masgouf, a Mesopotamian dish of fish cooked in tamarind and olive oil.
​
These were presented with plates of Pilaf and side dish of Muhammara, hot pepper dip, and Tzatziki, strained yogurt with cucumbers, parsley and dill.

​We ended with two remarkable desserts. There was delicious Qatayef, sweet crepes stuffed with cheese and nuts, and Kanafeh, rose water scented semolina-and-cheese pastries.
 
Unquestionably this was not just a memorable dinner, but also the greatest feast we have had. Mother thanked Uncle Majid profusely, and we each told him, as he wanted, our favorite choice out of this amazing menu of delicacies. Then came the biggest surprise of all.
 
Father turned to Uncle Majid, expressed his gratitude for the wonderful experience, and asked how old would be his son this birthday.
 
“My son, Aftab,” said Uncle Majid, “died of a pulmonary infection when he was six.”