THE STRANGER IN MY HOME
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now  /  then

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The ideal Couple

6/30/2015

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Couple in love
Rachel and her husband David had always seemed an ideal couple to me and to our friends. They clearly enjoyed each other’s company and enthusiastically shared the responsibility of their household and care of their only child, Peter. When David suddenly died of cardiac failure at 47, we all considered it a great tragedy.

So it was a surprise to me when, six months later, Rachel approached me with a request to secure the services of my lawyer friend, saying she needed his help in arranging an adoption. She wanted to adopt an orphan girl who had grown up with an out-of-state family and she wanted it done quickly. When I sought to understand the circumstances, especially the need for urgency, Rachel told me an unexpected story. Apparently she had had a last-minute bedside conversation with David before he died. He told her that he had, unknown to Rachel, had an affair with her best friend, who had quietly gone out of town and given birth to a girl. The girl had then been growing up with the friend’s sister’s children in rural Pennsylvania. David had a strong sense of guilt for not having looked after the daughter well, let alone acknowledge her, had confessed his lapse to Rachel and begged her to do something about the girl.

I told Rachel that it was good of her to want to give the girl a loving home and asked if she was quite clear in her mind about adopting David’s love child with her best friend. She paused and impressed me with her firm response. Yes, she was certain that she wanted to adopt David’s child and she felt she could lovingly bring her up and give her every opportunity.

“You see,” she added, “I listened to David and promised him that I would take care of the child. But there wasn’t time enough to tell him what I wanted to tell him at that point. Well, Peter wasn’t David’s son. He was the unexpected result of a fleeting relationship I had with his brother when David was out of the country. I could not bring myself to divulge it to him earlier, and then there just wasn’t the time.”

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Enter the wizard

6/26/2015

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I didn’t care much for Indian classical music and had simply accompanied a persuasive girl friend to a performance where apparently some celebrity was to sing. Typical in India, the event started at eight, with lesser known performers exhibiting their skills in the first three hours. Unlike in the west, the listeners felt free to talk, go out for a snack, keep beat audibly and even shout encouragements. You could even sing along with the artist. I wasn’t used to this and took it all in, curiously, like a circus show.
Musician
At eleven, the major artists started performing and the audience seemed more attentive. I tried to concentrate and enjoy a form of unfamiliar performing art, though more impressed than thrilled by the virtuosity of the maestros. By two in the morning, I was tired and my ability to listen with concentration had diminished, when a roar arose from the crowd at the announcement of next artist’s name. Bhimsen Joshi was evidently well known and eagerly anticipated. The fifty-year-old who walked on the stage seemed inure to the applause, quickly took his seat on the stage, nodded respectfully at the two accompanying musicians, closed his eyes for a second and then opened his mouth.

An electric shock seemed to pass through my body at the sound of his voice. It was a powerful, seamless voice, almost inhuman in its controlled majestic force. I didn’t so much listen as felt enveloped in a warm, eerie experience. I wasn’t a religious person, but I experienced what seemed like a spiritual experience, so acutely that the bizarre thought occurred to me that, should I somehow touch him, I could say that I had touched something holy.

Musician, playing music
I am still not sure how long he sang, for time had stood still for me and for others too. I had heard the story of how he had left home, penniless, at the age of eleven after hearing a song by the master Abdul Karim Khan, to search for a teacher that would instruct him to sing like Khan, and become an itinerant singer living on others’ largess, till eight years later he found a tutor who was himself Khan’s protégé. Joshi had gone on to become a legend. I was hearing a voice that could, like Hamelin’s Piper, entice you on an unknown journey from your familiar universe.

When Joshi stopped and quietly folded his hands in the traditional gesture of completion, the crowd seemed petrified and made no move. Minutes passed before a giant roar of applause followed his humble, quick exit from the stage.

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the outlier

6/22/2015

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A visiting professor at De La Salle University in the Philippines in the late eighties, I invited the students home for a party every Wednesday after class. The students were working executives attending evening classes, so the parties gave me the opportunity to know them better. This had a practical angle, for I was teaching Organizational Behavior, and the better I knew their problems the better I could address them in the class.

But it had also a personal angle. I believed in knowing and understanding my students, so that, besides meeting their intellectual curiosities, I could genuinely help and support them and provide some guidance. A few of the students, who kept in touch with me later, did indeed say that I seemed like a caring mentor.

What I remember, however, is the time I failed. Roel Caniza wasn’t easily noticed; he was effortlessly self-effacing. He didn’t speak often. When classwork required him to, he spoke briefly as if observing an inviolable limit on his airtime. It was the unfailing cogency of his comments that made me pay attention. It was also what made me go out of my way to invite him to an after-class party at my home. I doubt he would have joined otherwise.

Once in the party, he impressed me with his social skills. He immediately made himself useful. He served the hors d’oeuvres the cook brought in, helped with the drinks very competently, and circulated gracefully among his classmates. He never talked or smiled much, but there was no mistaking his faultless role as a partygoer. With his good looks and neatly pressed clothes, he could have passed as a true party animal except for one thing: he quietly maintained a boundary around him and did not really belong.
Lonely man, outlier
My wife, who came in briefly at these parties, happened to sit next to Roel and was struck by his charm and intelligence. She told me that he was a wonderful conversationalist but seemed guarded in talking about himself. She had gathered only that his parents lived apart – a common practice in a Catholic land where divorce was not on the books – and he had little to do with them or other relatives, but lived alone in a city apartment close to his work.

Since he didn’t turn up in the next two parties, I made it a point to invite him to the third. He came readily and reverted to his role as the perfect partygoer who helped with everything and looked after other guests. I asked him to join me at the bar, ostensibly to get his assistance with some chore, and engaged in a private chat. Did he enjoy the course? Was it a burden, in addition to his work, or was the university a pleasant educational and social experience for him? Since he lived alone, did he feel lonely or did he enjoy being on his own?

Roel had realized by now that I was interested in him. He seemed to lower his guard and spoke with unwonted candor. He said he did not like living alone, but he was hoping to get used to it. He missed his siblings; he couldn’t be in touch with them because his parents did not want it. His work earned him a living, but it was undemanding and meant little to him. He would like to have friends, but he didn’t have any. I told Roel that I would like to stay in touch with him and that he was welcome any time the students came to my home.

The next week Roel was not in the class. I asked two of the students, but they did not know why he hadn’t come.

The following week the students came to my house for another after-class party. Where was Roel? When I asked the students, one took me aside and told me that Roel had hung himself in his apartment the previous night.

Did he say anything to anybody? Did he leave behind a note?

Characteristically, Roel had left a two-sentence letter thanking his friends and well-wishers. He gave no reason for his decision.   ​
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homespun healer

6/21/2015

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Medicines, pills
My mother, then 81, developed a ‘callosity’ in her index finger: a part of the skin became hard and discolored. Since there was no identifiable reason for it and it caused her no great discomfort, the local doctor in India, where she lived, suggested she apply some moisturizing lotion on the spot. Her three brothers, all distinguished doctors, wouldn’t, however, leave it at that. They came up with two medicinal creams that she was to use morning and evening.

When I visited her months later, the callosity not only remained, but had grown. Since I lived in Washington, DC, and worked for an international organization, I contacted reputed dermatologists, who recommended a panoply of various medicines. I bought them and send them to her, insisting she use them.

My brother, a psychologist who had been in medical school, examined the finger a year later and found no improvement. He wrote to his professional friends worldwide, gathered latest data and prescribed some more medicine. No result either.

Aging hand
Two years later, mother went to a wedding in a remote village and stayed overnight. The maid, who brought her a cup of tea in the morning, notice her discolored finger, promptly went out and returned with a raw papaya-like fruit, broke the tip and applied the oozing sap to her finger. Mother had a slightly itchy sensation and the callous patch turned another color. The next morning the maid brought another fruit with the tea and, despite mother’s misgivings, applied the sap again.

When my mother returned home after two days, the patch was gone. A fifteen year old rural girl who could not read had found a solution that had tenaciously eluded top medical specialists in three continents.

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The doctor and the outlaw

6/18/2015

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Stethoscope (Doctor)

Any dying man would be a doctor’s special concern. But this one was very special for my uncle. He sat close to the gasping man and whispered, “I am the one you sent for.”

He had just taken out the two bullets the police had used to take the man down and knew the damage was extensive and irreparable. All he could do now was to help reduce his pain and find out why he had specifically asked for him.

He knew the man as Ram, but almost certainly that wasn’t his real name. Three years ago some farmers had found Ram at the edge of their field, dying of bullet wounds, and had carried him to uncle’s country clinic. He was 65, a country doctor who had become a legend in his lifetime and drew patients from over twenty villages in eastern India. A large man, with silver hair and a walrus moustache, he was the calmest of listeners and gentlest of healers. He treated many of his poor patients free and I marveled to see his eyes mist when women or children spoke of their pain.

Ram had said that he had been robbed and then shot by hoodlums. He teetered on the verge of death for weeks before he recovered. Because he now walked with a limp and could not return to his work as a day laborer, my uncle hired him as a domestic. The children liked him, and he became a part of the family.

One day he disappeared, about as suddenly as he had originally appeared. My uncle missed him, but when others commented on Ram’s ingratitude in leaving without a word, he said, “We don’t know why he left so suddenly. We shouldn’t guess, and we shouldn’t judge until we know.”

A shattering blow came in less than a month.

Gun (Outlaw)
Ram, it turned out, was no day laborer. He led a notorious gang of outlaws who had been shot not by hoodlums, but by police in the course of a violent encounter. Worse, when he had left, he had stolen my uncle’s hunting rifle, using his position as a trusted domestic. Since rejoining his gang, Ram had shot and killed two policemen with the gun. Now my uncle was implicated, because the police presumed that he had allowed the misuse of his gun or at least been negligent in its safekeeping.

After grilling him for three days in the district court, the authorities let my uncle go but cancelled his gun license. The public humiliation was his worst punishment.

Now, after more than two years, a police car had fetched him to the bedside of a dying man who did not want any doctor but my uncle. 

Ram said, “Doctor, you saved my life once. In return, I stole from you.” He paused, and added, “Please forgive me if you can.” 

Those were his last words.

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the man who knew shoes

6/14/2015

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Shoemaker
​When promoted to executive status, my style needed an upgrade, my boss decided. He introduced me to his shoemaker, Jin Cheung. I had survived on off-the-shelf shoes all my life and had no idea of custom-made shoes. Jin was to change all of that.
 
Jin’s grandfather had moved from the depressed Fujian province of China to Rangoon, capital city of Burma, now Myanmar. He was a master shoemaker, whose handiwork adorned the feet of the Burmese elite. When the Japanese 15th Army invaded Burma in January 1941 after taking China and the Philippines, he advised his son, who had just completed his apprenticeship in the trade, to move to the bustling Chinatown in Kolkata, India. It was an easy move, since Burma was a part of British India, and the son established and grew in time a successful shoe repair business in Calcutta.
 
Jin, the grandson had a different idea. He cared little for his father’s lucrative repair business, and focused on the small number of clients who wanted handcrafted customized shoes. He was determined to put to use the extraordinary skills he had learned from his grandfather as a hobby, and pressed his father to teach him the subtleties of fine shoe making that business imperatives had led the old man to put aside. Among the nouveaux riches in post-war India, the extraordinary quality of Cheung upscale footwear became the talk of cognoscenti.
 
When I met Jin, he was 47, a small, humble, modestly dressed man, who gave no clue to his encyclopedic knowledge of shoes. He asked, in his limited vocabulary, if I “liked” shoes. Confused, I told him that I did not have any strong feelings, but could see that some shoes were designed beautifully while others weren’t. He seemed to approve of my sense of discrimination and went on to ask if I knew much about leather. When I confessed I didn’t, he gently reassured me that he could correct the situation shortly. He spread out on my desk a large number of samples, and proceeded to describe their origin, features, processing and characteristics. Next was the design. He just focused on dress shoes, and showed me a bewildering variety of styles from four catalogs. As with the leather, he expertly narrowed the display to my preferences, but steered me gently with succinct explanation of the merits and disadvantages of a choice. It was an extraordinary guided tour with a mild-mannered master who seemed intent on helping me make the most knowledgeable decision. I felt so educated and entertained at the same time that, when it came time to place an order, I unhesitatingly ordered two pairs and did not even ask his price.

Shoes of quality
When Jin took my measurements, I was astonished that he not only measured the length and width of my feet, but also checked out the individual toes, heel and instep. He then requested me to walk a few steps, and carefully studied my stride and style. He even made me remove my socks and examined my feet for corns and bunions, to better understand, he said, how my feet reacted to shoes. 

He returned three weeks later with the half-made shoes for a trial. They seemed to fit perfectly, but Jin thought otherwise and made punctilious notes of what needed to be improved. My interest provoked, I ordered another pair of shoes in casual style.

When I got the three pairs of shoes a month later and tried them on, I told Jin in total sincerity that I had never worn shoes of such quality. They felt ‘natural’ from the first instant and, wearing them, one almost forgot their existence. 

Over the next several years I ordered more shoes from Jin and introduced some friends to his wizardry. Jin became more like an admired friend. He came for work to my office and I would typically take him later for lunch to a Chinese restaurant nearby. I remember him regretting that none of his two children was interested in shoes and wanted the more ‘prestigious’ occupation of a doctor and an engineer.

Shoemaker, in workshop
In 1962 the Chinese Red Army marched into northern India and a war ensued. Many Indians saw it as an act of treachery, for there was mutual friendship earlier. Some demonstrated against the Chinese and there were a few cases of vandalism in Chinatown. Jin told me that his business had suffered greatly and several customers had deserted him. He seemed disconsolate, especially as he considered India his homeland.

The following year Jin reluctantly migrated to Hong Kong. He sent me a farewell note before he departed. He spoke of an uncertain future and the burden of starting in a new country at a late age. But the last sentence of his letter revealed his biggest concern: “I hope my children will change their mind and start taking some interest in shoes.”

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    Manish Nandy

    Writer, Speaker, Consultant
    Earlier: Diplomat, Executive


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