I left India for the US in 1978. My father came to the airport to see me off. At the last moment he said despondently, “I don’t know if I will see you again.”

“Dad,” I said earnestly, “I traveled so much here. You didn’t get to see me all the time anyway. Washington is just another town. I will come and see you often. I’ll always be there for you.”

It didn’t work out that way. Six months into my new job and new city, a minor surgical procedure went wrong for my father and he died two days later. I was traveling and my brothers couldn’t even get in touch with me. I saw their cable when I returned to Washington, when he had already been buried.

I talked to my brothers when I visited India a year later. They had stood next to my father’s bed as he lay dying, and they saw his eyes scanning the room. Knowing he was looking for the missing son, they said apologetically, “He lives very far away, as you know. He couldn’t come.” My father, always the kind, thoughtful person, said, “I understand.”

I never saw my father again. His last words, indeed prophetic, rang in my ears for years, “I don’t know if I will see you again.”

As my flight glided to a stop at Geneva, I felt immensely relieved. I had missed the earlier flight, and the present flight was bringing me to Geneva no more than three hours before a dinner meeting with the distinguished group, Club of Rome. The relief was short-lived: the airlines could not find my suitcase. The speculation was it had gone to Frankfurt.

I was in jeans! The airlines gave me an Overnight Kit and some cash as temporary relief, but late in the Saturday evening where would I find an evening suit when the stores were already closed in Geneva?

I called my host frantically on the way to the hotel and explained the awkward circumstances. Calmly, he asked how much I weighed and how tall I was. Half an hour later, he arrived in my room with two shirts, two ties and an evening suit, all his own. These fitted me perfectly. No surprise, he said, because his height and weight were coincidentally the same as mine.

The meeting went well and I was delighted.

When I returned to my hotel, a message was waiting for me. My suitcase hadn’t gone to Frankfurt; it had been picked up by mistake by another passenger and he had since returned it to the airport. Could I come and collect it? It had been a long day, but I went to collect it nonetheless.

The next morning the key didn’t work well, but I managed to open the suitcase after some effort. Women’s clothes spilled out of the suitcase in profusion. Exhausted, I hadn’t noticed the previous night what wasn’t easily noticeable: the suitcase looked like mine but wasn’t mine.

Another wasteful trip to the airport, another Property Irregularity Report and Overnight Kit. The airlines representative worked twenty minutes on his computer and came up, smiling, with the news that the missing suitcase had been located in Amsterdam and would be in Geneva the next day. But, since I would be in London by that time, I suggested that the suitcase be sent there. I was assured that it would be there before my arrival.

It wasn’t. 

It wasn’t even when I left three days later.

The suitcase came two days after I returned to Washington, DC. I was told it was waiting for me in Tokyo.

On a warm summer night I had put my baby daughter to sleep in the bedroom upstairs when a muffled sound like firecrackers made me look out the window. I saw tracer bullets crisscrossing the night sky. A civil war had begun.

It was August 1987, and some military officers were staging a coup d’état in the Philippines to topple the new government of President Corazon Aquino, who had deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The dissident officers’ strategy was to attack downtown Manila, the capital, and cripple the financial district. American expatriates like me were particularly vulnerable, for the U.S. was seen to be behind Aquino’s rise to power.

Our official walkie-talkie crackled with news of violence and advice to stay indoors. Several civilians had died in the initial firefight, and nobody expected the inexperienced new government to be able to end the insurgency anytime soon. There was no television news; the station was reportedly under siege. No use calling the American Embassy, which had already announced that it could do little to assist anyone till morning. I called neighbors, who said insurgents had commandeered some people’s homes to better target key street corners. It was hazardous to stay put, but with the sound of gunfire from three sides, it was just as hazardous to leave.

My wife and I moved the baby to a central room and shuttered all the windows. We also packed two suitcases with essentials, in case there was an opportunity to get out. Then we did the most difficult thing of all: we waited.

Three hours later, as the guns rattled, the official word came that at dawn U.S. civilians were to form a convoy of cars near the school and drive to a hotel in a safe area near the port, so that if the situation turned worse, we could be evacuated to a U.S. Navy vessel.

As the sun rose, we rushed to our car with our suitcases and drove to the hotel. For a week we lived in a curious bubble: while violence raged elsewhere, we passed leisurely days in five-star comfort, at government expense, eating gourmet food in plush restaurants, our children entertained on the manicured hotel grounds by clowns and musicians. No work, all play. We drank coffee and bourbon, pored over newspapers for tidbits of news about the unfolding and then unraveling coup, chatted with colleagues, read books and just relaxed. Our daughter took it all as an extended picnic and reveled in the endless company of familiar kids.

After seven days, the coup ended as a futile adventure, and we returned home. The house was the same as we had left it, with one exception. A bullet had penetrated a window on the first floor, traversed the length of the living room, and lodged itself neatly in a desk, on which stood a framed photograph of our baby, smiling without a concern in the world.

Packing boxes are the staple of my life. From the time I came out of the university, I have worked in jobs that meant traveling from country to country, living there for a while, developing a few friends, till the time came to move again. All my worldly belongings went in cardboard boxes, neatly sealed and labeled at one end and impatiently opened and rearranged at the other. Those khaki boxes with silver duct tapes all over them seemed to represent my life, uprooted from one land and replanted in another.

The first couple of times I took great pains to list all my things, categorize them by nature and use, and, once the boxes arrived at destination, to open them promptly and place them quickly in appropriate rooms. Then I grew tired of the routine and took my time opening and arranging the contents. Sometimes a box would not be opened for months; sometimes it would remain unopened and was later simply forwarded to the next country I went to.

Every time I moved, I told myself I would simplify my life and not port so much stuff from one stint to another. After all, I was the 21st century nomad who could get most of the things I needed in the place I went or order online. Yet my boxes grew in number and size, and each successive move seemed burdened with the need to move a larger consignment.

People say wistfully, “If I were to live my life all over again…” As I went to a new country I abandoned my home and neighborhood, colleagues and friends, familiar storekeepers, doctors and plumbers, and look for new people and places to fill my life. I was literally living life all over again, more than once, and had the singular opportunity to change the style, pace or purpose of my life. As with my boxes, I vowed to change something, and did perhaps change a few things. But those were the inconsequential ones, and soon I found myself doing the same things in the same way and living essentially the same life – another time.

Finally, the truth dawned on me that the life we live, modified though it is at the margin by our circumstances, is substantially the life we create by our omissions and commissions. Whatever we say or think from time to time, essentially most of us don’t want to change anything, and our life flows on, devoid of drama, but also bereft of design.

The gypsy who would never stay put just wouldn’t change his soiled bandanna.