The large crowd, spilling over to the street and blocking the traffic, caught my eye a warm Saturday morning. It mystified me, for I had heard of no planned political rally in the city. Our house faced a movie house and my second-floor room window gave a wide-angle view of its portico and entrance. What could it be? Could the winsome Nimmi, the heroine of the new release, whose giant cutout adorned the theater entrance, be the expected guest at the cinema? Would I be so lucky as to catch a sight of the ample goddess?
 
A school student, bursting with hormones and curiosity, I would not budge from my window. I ate my breakfast, the bowl of ginger granola my mother had served, standing impatiently at the window and scanning the street. The crowd had multiplied, the traffic had stalled, and a police posse was trying bravely to keep things in order. People seemed excited, anticipating something special and periodically giving a shout, of annoyance or ebullience I wasn’t sure.
 
Finally, after more than an hour of waiting, there was a deafening roar, as a big black limousine slowly slid through the throng. A door opened, a person emerged, but six burly bodyguards ringed him and let neither me nor the people see the person. A groan of discontent arose from the crowd. I returned to the last dregs of my granola in despair.

​Then the remarkable thing happened. Suddenly, miraculously, on the extended upper-floor balcony of the theater appeared a lithe, smiling man, and a giant, spiraling roar of excitement rose from the multitude. It wasn’t really a man, it was Dev Anand, who patently trumped the 330 million gods of the land. He had on a black shirt, tight black pants, a flamboyant vermilion necktie and an exaggerated pompadour that was his trademark. He also wore five large marigold garlands that must have been foisted on him when he entered the theater.
 
Dev Anand edged closer to the front end of the balcony where his assembled admirers could see him better. He acknowledged the unceasing successive waves of noisy adulation, not with the customary folded hands, nor with the prosaic uplifted arms, but with a strange mock-military style of sloppy salute. Once, twice, thrice – and each time a vociferous howl signaled the crowd’s grateful acknowledgment.
 
Then His Stardom played his masterstroke. He took the first garland from his neck, bent low and threw it with great force to a section of the crowd. The crowd went wild. People ran, pushed, clawed, fought, grabbed, for a fraction of the garland – or even of a marigold. Before the scuffle was over, Dev Anand took the second garland, bent low again and tossed it to another section of the crowd. Once again, a ferocious pursuit, followed by a furious melee, as people jostled and struggled to secure the minutest part of the star’s cast-off gift.
 
The same scenario played out three more times as the star carefully and energetically, as if he was playing a board game, neatly lobbed a garland in a new direction and provoked a mad frenzy for a fragment of a torn and worthless garland. You saw a thousand hands stretch to touch a particle of a marigold that might have touched the holy corpus of their celluloid deity. Each time after the showy exercise Dev Anand stood erect again, watched the frantic race for a tossed garland and flashed a broad smile. He seemed satisfied, like a master choreographer, that he had created precisely the denouement he had intended.
 
I was young and naïve, but by the fifth encore of the performance I began to feel a creepy sensation. Something was disturbing, in fact revolting, in the calculated game of using people’s adulation to tempt them into a humiliating scramble for a trifle. We all admire some people, somebody beautiful or successful or famous, but to race like hounds for a useless memento seemed demeaning for humans.
 
Years later, I did some stints for the movie industry and got to mingle with some beautiful people both in the east and the west. I would talk to famous stars and be taken aback by their unalloyed confidence that they were the Chosen People who fully merited their place in the sun. They took for granted the affection and admiration that came their way. They seemed oblivious that such exaltation was invariably fleeting, very fleeting. And that the people who offered it were human too, just like them. 

I was late to arrive, but the moment my hostess opened the door I knew it was the typical Washington party. A dozen people, of whom I appeared the least sprucely dressed, all talking and affecting an earnest bonhomie they were unlikely to be feeling. I was quickly handed a glass of Pinot Noir and seated at the only remaining seat.
 
On my right sat a well-regarded professor of the university where I had once lectured, with whom a conversation was less feasible, I soon discovered, because of the advanced hardness of his hearing. On the left sat a woman in a simple royal-blue dress, who, the hostess said, had just returned from India. That doubtless was why I had been placed next to her.
 
Celia smiled pleasantly as she gave me her hand. She had a soft, rolling voice and a deferential style, but her words had a contrasting directness. She sounded clearly American, but I seemed to detect a trace of something exotic. She enunciated more distinctly and gave longer pause between sentences.
 
Since she had recently visited India, I asked her if she had enjoyed her trip to India. She could have gone to India for pleasure or for work, but I made the foolish male presumption that she went as a tourist. She stunned me with her reply.
 
“I lived in India for thirty years,” she said, “I am a nun.”
 
She added, “Yes, to answer your question, I enjoyed my stay in India.”
 
When I confessed to my silly assumption, she said generously, “That is all right. Most of us don’t wear a habit any longer. People who are used to seeing nuns in habits are sometimes confused.”
 
She then smilingly pointed to the brooch she was wearing on her dress. She explained that she wears it with her street clothes to indicate her calling.
 
She had entered the church as a young girl, enthusiastically received her training and had gone to India to serve. For more than thirty years she had lived and worked in a small town in the south. Her life was simple. She lived with an Indian nun in a modest cottage, shared domestic chores, wore Indian clothes and ate Indian food. She taught young children during the day and helped in a church-run clinic in the evening. Her days were long and nights were occasionally short, when she was awakened for some medical emergency. It was hugely different from the comfortable middleclass life she had led with her dentist father and firefighter mother in an Ohio town.
 
I could not help asking if she was happy in her sharply altered circumstances.
 
“The first several weeks, perhaps months, were a period of excitement. Everything seemed like an adventure. An Indian town and daily life in it were like an unfathomable mystery to me. I knew nothing and I understood less, despite the briefing I had received from my elders and superiors.
 
“Once the period of transition was over, I settled down in my new life. I was peaceful, very peaceful. Of course, there were pains and irritants. Sometimes with the town people, more often with colleagues, but these were, at least in retrospect, minor and fleeting. I knew the patients at the clinic liked me; the children perhaps liked me a little more. That kept me going.”
 
And how did it feel to be back in the US after three decades?
 
She smiled, “At first cataclysmic, to be honest. I had returned to a country very different from the one I had left. Everything was different: food, clothes, transport, newspapers, phones, computers. The church was a solace, the mass offered friendly familiarity. Though, even there, the priorities and concerns seem to have changed.”
 
Has it been difficult to settle down?
 
She thought. “Honestly, yes. It has helped that I now live in a hostel with other nuns, many of a comparable age and experience. I feel I am settling down quite well.”
 
She laughed and added, “The only thing that bothers me yet is the food. I have gotten so used to Indian food that anything I eat here seems a trifle bland. I miss the spices. I tried cooking in the kitchen we have, but the smell lasted a long time and bothered other sisters. I had to give up on the idea.
 
“But, don’t worry,” she concluded with a laugh, “I am not starving.”
 
Three weeks later I made a reservation at the best Indian restaurant I knew and invited Celia. She looked bright in a yellow dress and the brooch shone with the candles the waiter lit.

​I ordered some cumin-and-ginger drink for both of us and, a pen ready, got hold of a menu.
 
“You have to tell me, Celia, of the food that you ate in India and liked. I want to mark the items in this menu to get an idea.”
 
She took a little time to recall the names from a language she knew scantily, but eventually was able to name eleven delicacies: two meat, three chicken, four seafood and five vegetarian entrées. Then, over her strenuous objections, I ordered all the eleven menu items. The waiter was slightly taken aback, but he wrote down the order assiduously.
 
It was my turn to explain to Celia.
 
“I want you to remember tonight as the India Night, when you could once again taste all the eleven Indian dishes you had tried earlier and liked. I have talked with the restaurant manager and he has promised that whatever we don’t eat now will be packed very carefully and you can store it in the hostel refrigerator for several days. You just have to heat it and eat it on successive days. There will be no odor, and the other nuns will not complain.”
 
I will long remember Celia’s startled but happy face.

I was watching the Democratic Convention in the US where Kamala Harris, a black Vice-Presidential candidate, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, spoke eloquently of her life. I was touched by her recall of her mother, divorced and alone, struggling in an alien world. Kamala hoped that her mother was looking down from above at her signal triumph.
 
It touched me especially because it made me think of the hard struggle my father and mother had to wage in India to live decently and bring me up. Now that I live in a charming, bucolic place, alone in a large house surrounded by woods and a lake, I wish I had my parents with me, and I could look after them. I feel I didn’t have enough quality time with them, I couldn’t look after them well enough. I don’t believe that they are up in the clouds and can share in the comfort with me. I miss them.
 
I remember the day I left India for the US. Both my father and my mother came to the airport to see me off. I find it hard to forget what my father said, “I wonder if I will ever see you again.” My mother gently reproved him, saying, “You mustn’t think like that. Of course, you will see him again.” I said, “Dad, even in India I travel often, and you don’t always get to see me. Washington is just another city. I will certainly come again and see you. We will meet often.”
 
Sadly, my father’s words proved prophetic. He died suddenly because of a botched surgery. I did not see him again. I was traveling. His last rites had to be done before I could reach India. His last words to me keep ringing in my ears, “I wonder if I will ever see you again.” My inept, optimistic words, when I think of them, seem to mock me.
 
My brothers, who were present at his deathbed, said my father asked about me and they had to console him by saying that I lived far away and it would take time for me to reach his side. I never saw him again. He never saw me again. Just as he had mused.

Those words haunt me. I wish I could see him again. I wish I could walk with him, as often I used to do. I wish I could take care of him, take him places he would have liked, buy him things he would have enjoyed, give him a few days of comfort and closeness and caring. I wish I could look after him the way he looked after me, lovingly, punctiliously, when I was a child. Heaven knows I would have very much liked to.

​That longing never leaves me. It stays with me day and night and it recurs every time I see a new city that I like, a new museum I visit, a new show I see in Washington or New York or in a new country. He enjoyed new experiences. He liked to visit new places, try new food, meet new people. The times we traveled together I saw his childlike joy, his pleasure in savoring the tea at a railway station, his eagerness to know the fellow passengers in a bus or train, his happy absorption in the simple countryside scenes we passed, his utter imperviousness to the inconveniences of a new place, a new home.
 
When I took a job and lived in another town for some months, I invited my father to visit me. In just a few days, he knew every one of my neighbors, even their children. More significantly, he made me buy vitamins for a driver’s child because he looked frail and increase the gardener’s pay because he had found out that his wife was in a hospital. When he left, the old cook – whose handiwork my father had praised to high heavens – was bold enough to tell me that I should have persuaded him to stay longer. His chastisement remains ironically in my memory. I wish I could have arranged for him to stay longer with us.
 
I know I will not see him again. I can only look at my favorite photo of him, an inept closeup I took of his surprisingly-unlined face, topped by soft, silken, thinning hair, accidentally capturing the essence of a thoughtful, friendly, gentle man, who adored his wife and admired his children and gratefully absorbed the simplest goodness that life had offered him.
 
Quite unreasonably, I never seem to get over the fact that I could not reach his bedside when he was breathing his last. Some months ago, he responded to my longing by appearing in a dream. I was traveling on a long-distance bus on some dusty road when, from my window, I saw in the window of a bus traveling in the opposite direction – I just couldn’t believe my luck – my father! He seemed to be looking for something, perhaps me. I shot up, rang the bell and frantically shouted for the bus driver to stop. I ran out, crossed the road, ran frantically at the other bus just departing, hollering all the time for its driver to stop, hoping desperately that at least the conductor or a passenger would hear me and stop the bus. Nobody did. The bus went away, gathering speed, leaving me stranded, despondent, in a cloud of fumes and dust.
 
He did not see me. I never saw him again.

My father had a lot of friends and he put a lot of stock in what his friends said. One of his friends was the principal of a school. It was no surprise that, one night, over dinner dad divulged that he was considering moving me to his friend’s school. He thought I would have better education there.

​It wasn’t any better, unless a bigger building and a more pretentious name could be assumed to portend better learning. Our texts were the same dull books, our teachers were the same unimaginative task masters, and our hours comprised the same boring rote learning. In literature, I refused to write the silly formal essays others wrote and got reprimanded for submitting New Yorker-like tongue-in-cheek compositions that raised the tutor’s eyebrows sky-high. Of Pythagoras’s theorem, I found somewhere an alternative proof that I considered more elegant and drove my teacher up the wall for using it instead of the standard proof he had taught in the class. The first lesson was to conform; the last lesson was the same. Anything faintly original and slightly different invited derision and penalties.
 
My guerilla tactic was to take an inconspicuous rear seat – but not the last bench, for that would invite branding as a backbencher – and amuse myself in other ways. The central one was to bring an interesting book and focus on finishing it, looking up occasionally at the teacher or blackboard. The other was, especially when the teacher set a task to be completed in the class, to draw sketches of other students, the teachers or whatever I could see through the windows. Of the last, the most intriguing was the plump girl who brushed her long hair, standing at the window of a neighboring house. Often a portrait was accompanied by a satirical limerick, usually focused on what I considered the person’s most annoying feature or execrable habit.
 
It was the latter that proved my undoing. Walrus, a teacher who had earned the title because of his luxuriant moustache, set us the task, in his composition class, of writing an essay on My Most Memorable Experience. I was certain the others would write pieces on terminally dull themes like ‘The time I scored the winning goal’ or ‘The year I got the medal for geography.’ I considered titles like ‘The year I got caned for asking a witty question’ or ‘The time I scored with a plump girl,’ but settled for the modest story of my blowing off a batsman’s glasses in a cricket match with a wayward googly.
I should explain that students were expected to carry as many exercise books as the subjects taught, with classwork in the appropriate notebook. I carried so many story books in my bag that I had space for just one exercise book, in which I recorded all classwork. When at the end of the class Walrus collected all the exercise books, so that he could grade them at leisure, he took away my only exercise book. The greater disaster was that the exercise book contained my entire series of sketches of the teachers, including Walrus, along with waggish limericks on each. I had nightmares of being summoned to the principal’s office and then asked to go home with my shamed parents, irrevocably expelled.
 
The next day, as Walrus walked into the class with a quizzical look on his face, I anticipated disaster. When Walrus somberly declared that he had made a strange discovery from the exercise books he had collected, I waited for lightning to strike.
 
Walrus took the pile of exercise books from his bag and placed them on his desk. Without a word, he took the exercise book from the top, adjusted his glasses and started reading. It was the story of a cricket match, unquestionably my essay. He read several paragraphs, then stopped and said, “I will not read all of it for a reason. The essay is not exactly what I expected to see, but it is a good essay, a very amusing one. I am impressed that someone in my class can write something as comical as this.”
 
It was not exactly what I expected to hear.
 
He added, “I will not read the whole essay, because I have something more interesting to read. I find in this exercise book a long series of sketches, each accompanied by a short poem. I could read them all to you, but I will selectively read the ones that are most likely to be of interest to you.”
 
He started reading the limericks on the teachers, and after each reading held up the exercise book to show the sketch. He began with the principal and went through all our teachers. Finally, as my anticipation grew, he came to the verse about him, read it and demonstrated the sketch and said, “I did not realize that my facial hair was the most noticeable feature about me! Well, now I know.”
 
The bell rang. The class was over.
 
Before leaving, Walrus said, “I believe creativity deserves some recognition. I have recommended to the principal that the author of the essay and poems should be the next editor of our school magazine.”
 
When the magazine came out six months later, I saw my writing in print for the first time in my life.

I was not unsocial, but I was shy. I looked on with envy as my brother started conversations with friends and strangers alike wherever we went. A wedding, a birthday party, tea and sandwiches with our parents’ numberless friends, whatever. I looked desperately for a familiar face, somebody I could talk to and not look as luckless, friendless as I felt.

​Then, at my parents’ prodding, I joined a Pen Pal group where members wrote friendly letters to one another. I sent out two brief missives to anonymous members. They hit targets and quickly elicited replies. The first was a boy in Delhi, who wrote at length about things reassuringly familiar to me, cricket and novels. The second was from a kid who didn’t mention a location but poured out an abundant heart on joys and jerks of kid-ship and ended with a brief and informal nickname. I took it to be that of a boy, but mother pointed out the farfetched possibility that it could be the abbreviation of a girl’s name. Both correspondences continued unabated, but the feeling-laden one was no doubt more interesting. We both wrote feelingly, lengthily, and with increasing frequency and fervor.
 
The shock came at the end of four months of animated exchanges. Mother called me to the living room and introduced me to a young woman, who, she said, was the elder sister of my second correspondent. There, next to her, sat smiling a young girl of my age, in a yellow-white dress, toying with a book – which turned out to be a gift for me. I had admiringly mentioned an up-and-coming author in a letter, and she had persuaded her escort to buy his latest novel on the way to my home.
 
An unheralded encounter! That, too, with a thoughtful gift! The cricketer in me mentally labeled it as an Overdrive and I was bowled over. Mother got busy to make a suitable response by giving them tea and snacks, leaving me to the fearsome task of dealing with two unknown women. The elder sister, who had possibly capitulated to an impetuous younger one, was very kind and tried to help two awkward kids initiate a halting chat.
 
I mention this episode from my school days because it echoed years later when I worked for a UN group while my wife, Jane, served as a diplomat. We both traveled, but if I went to Switzerland, her work took her to Egypt; at the least, when I rushed to Thailand, she hurried to Singapore. We spent so much time apart that, in the absence of WhatsApp and Skype, we had to write copiously to each other to stay in touch. We needed to write, and we wanted to write. The letters were a vibrant link that made two lonely people, at two ends of the earth, feel that we weren’t quite lost in the overwhelming tide of distractions.
 
But at least we saw the other after a while. My parents lived thousands of miles away, almost on another planet, and it was impossible to visit them in the initial years. Father wrote a beautiful firm hand and his letters – though he was too diffident to speak his heart – conveyed his longing to see me. In the pain of finding my feet in an alien world, away from all relatives and long-term friends, those letters became my timely assurance that his affection was both profuse and perennial.
 
Then came the unexpected and devastating blow: in a bungled surgery, he died suddenly. Unknowing, I was traveling for work and came to know days later, after the last rites were over. Thus began a new epistolary episode with my mother. While my brothers took care of her immediate needs, I began writing regular letters from wherever my missions took me. These were not postcards, but long, detailed letters every other day telling her whatever was happening with me and my family. I wanted her to feel that she was a part of my family and could participate in every one of our decisions and choices. I told her whatever I saw in different cities, whatever we bought or did in Washington, whatever new words the baby was babbling. Often the days were packed with visits and meetings, and I would struggle sleepily at night to update my reportage and make sure that mother knew exactly what was happening in my life.
 
I told her what was happening in my work, what I had achieved, and where I had flubbed. I told her of new friends I had gained and old friends I had lost. I described the color of the new curtains we had acquired and the metallic-gray look of the new car. I spoke of the Bedouin camps I had visited and said I would like to show her those. I wrote of the royal gardens and said I would love to take her there too. I narrated the naughty things my little daughter did each day and said how much I needed her to keep the child in line. I wrote detailed, descriptive letters, the best I could write, to make her feel near me, share my joys and regrets, become an intrinsic part of my life, and know for sure that she wasn’t alone, but close to me, however remote I seemed. I wanted her to sense that I was in touching distance.
 
Three years later, I was working in the Abu Dhabi emirate and I finally persuaded mother to visit me. A thinner woman, her hair turning gray, she was now getting adjusted harrowingly to her widowhood, and could at last bear to speak quietly of the murky days when she lived from hour to hour – and did not know how to live through those hours. Then, unexpectedly, she turned to me and said something that suddenly made my midnight toil over long letters all quite worthwhile.
 
“I did not know then how I could continue to live, but your letters kept coming,” she said and paused. “I read them. I re-read them, again and again. They were my lifeline.”

Happy memories sustain us. An hour of fun, even a few minutes of joy, stay with us for years and become a reassuring touch.

Years ago, I was visiting my second cousin, Di, in another town, and, while we chatted, her little daughter, Mira, six, sat on my lap and absorbed our talk. When I told Di that I had to visit a friend in their town and would leave for a couple of hours but return in time for dinner, little Mira insisted that she would come with me. It was no problem, I thought, she could play with my friend’s children while we talked. Her mother agreed.

​As I drove toward my friend’s home, a happy Mira sat next to me crooning, occasionally pointing at a fluttering flag or a barking dog on the road. I took a turn and suddenly came across a large expanse of water on the highway. The puddle looked shallow enough and I kept driving, barely reducing my speed. I was wrong: there was quite a lot of water on the road. There was a colossal splash, huge walls of water rose on either side and a massive wave drenched the windscreen. For a second I could see little. I slowed and ran the wiper swiftly.
 
As our car emerged from the giant rinse and water dripped all over, I turned to see if Mira was frightened. Not at all. She was thrilled by the unexpected showering and clapped her hands. She said, “Wow!” Delight was written all over her tiny face. She was clearly thrilled.
 
I had slowed down and now I stopped entirely to talk to Mira. A wild idea had struck me.
 
I asked, “Mira, would you like me to do that again?”
 
Mira laughed and joyfully agreed, “Yes, please!”
 
I turned around, picked up speed and went through the big puddle once again. There was a second gigantic splash, perhaps a trifle bigger, and I could hear Mira laughing and clapping. She was deliriously happy. Once again, I slowed the car to let water slide off the car and to watch Mira’s happy reaction. She had a flushed face and she said, “That was great fun!”
 
Cousin Di kept in touch but I did not get to visit her again. I did not see Mira for a long time, as I went to live abroad.
 
During a visit to India, I attended a family wedding and met Mira after nearly thirty years. She was now married and sat at a table with her husband and two children. I sat next to her and looked at her pleasant round face, glistening in the candlelight. I said how happy I was to see her again and she should tell me all about herself.
 
Her bright eyes lit up as she looked directly at me and said, “Uncle, you remember that puddle you drove me through? Twice! It was such fun!”
 
Thirty years apparently hadn’t dimmed her recollection of the event. Seconds of fun had remained glitters of a merry souvenir.
 
A parallel souvenir comes to mind. My brother Ashis and his wife, Uma, stayed with me for a while and went out often to meet friends. Their daughter, Aditi, then six, stayed happily with me and I tried to think of ways to amuse her. I soon found that what she loved most in my home was the large bathtub. I would fill it with warm water and, once inside, Aditi, would hardly like to budge. Being a bachelor, I had no toys suitable for a child, but I dug out a plastic duck and some colored paper to make paper boats. For hours, the pretty child would float the boats and bathe the duck and simply decline to get out of the water. All the time she spoke to the duck and admonished the boats to stay afloat. At times she even crooned messages that I could not decipher but were possibly meant to encourage her fleet of boats and the solitary duck.
 
Aditi is no longer six – even her daughter has long passed that landmark – but that happy memory, of a child playing, crooning and enjoying herself in my home, remains a vibrant souvenir. It didn’t take much to make her happy besides a tubful of warm water and a watchful uncle who would supply another paper boat when one got thoroughly wet and sank. Years haven’t blurred the dulcet tune of a child’s melody that moved boats, inspired a duck and filled the heart of an unimaginative, inexperienced adult.
 
These are the memories that endure and do not fade. In life a thousand things go wrong, our work encounters a roadblock, our career takes a nosedive, our most trusted relations break, our children act with inhuman indifference, our closest persons hurt us mortally, and all our wounds fester and show no sign of abating. We need something to hold on to, something nobody can take away. Then, to our rescue, come our happy memories. The reminiscences that stay with us, give us sustenance on our darkest days and, on a bright beautiful day, suddenly and miraculously charge us with the joy of living that perhaps should be our title evermore.

​The train wasn’t crowded but the woman who boarded in Baltimore chose the seat opposite me. I could easily guess the reason: the overhead rack near me was empty and she could easily place her large suitcase. She was a slender young woman, probably Asian, dark hair in a braid, a designer tote on her left shoulder. Since the suitcase looked heavy, I made a gesture to suggest I could help her lift the suitcase to the rack. She paid no notice and lifted the suitcase herself.

As she sat down, she spotted the handbag next to me with its large load of papers and said politely, “I’m afraid I have left no space on the rack for your handbag.”
 
I said, “No matter. I will be working on these papers, and I’d rather keep the handbag next to me.”
 
She thanked me and asked if I was headed to Washington.
 
“Yes, I live and work there. What about you?”
 
“I was living in Baltimore with my brother, but now I am moving to Washington.”
 
She spoke clearly but with an unusual accent. There was a charming lilt.
 
I had a thick report in my hand; she had a thin book in hers. None of us seemed faithful to the printed word.
 
“Do you like living in Washington?” she asked.
 
“Yes, I find it a pretty and lively city, with good museums and active theaters. It is no longer true to say, as John Kennedy once said, that it was southern in its culture and northern in its hospitality.”
 
She said, “I hope to be near a university, for I want to take some language courses. I will be doing international work and languages might help.”
 
I asked, “Do you know where you will live?”
 
“I have taken an apartment on a short lease. I will look for a permanent place once I am familiar with the city.”
 
I said, “You don’t sound like a native of the country. Do you feel quite accustomed to the country?”
 
“Not really. I am still learning the ropes. Also, I lived with my parents earlier, and with my brother for the last three years. Now I will live by myself for the first time.”
 
I laughed, “That should be quite an adventure.”
 
She mused, “I may feel a little lonely at the start.”
 
“Possibly, but it is unlikely. Your new work will help you know new people. There are lots of things to see and do in Washington, and you will meet a variety of people as you go around and do things.”
 
“I hope you are right,” she said. “Frankly, I am a little nervous. There will be quite a few things to get under my belt.”
 
“Don’t be. You can take your time and pick up the threads little by little. I promise you an interesting time.”
 
I was enjoying talking with her. She seemed bright and vivacious. She had a disarming combination of calm and candor.
 
We were not on an express train and could have a pleasant conversation for nearly an hour. When the train entered Union Station in Washington, I shook her dainty hand, took leave and said that I wished our paths would cross again.
 
*****
 
Liam, my Swedish colleague, had just narrated his short, eventful train ride over the weekend. Clearly, he hadn’t been able to put the Asian co-traveler out of his mind in the last several days. A good friend, he wanted to share over coffee what weighed on his mind. It was also possible, who knows, that he wondered if another Asian could be of some help.
 
I had no help to offer. Only a question, “Why didn’t you ask her for a telephone number? Or an email address?”
 
Liam said, “I hesitated. I thought my words, even my manner, had shown a clear streak of interest. I didn’t want to push my luck. I gave her my card, but I don’t think she will ever call me.” He added morosely, “She is Asian, I believe; she will never be so forward as to call me.”
 
“My friend, you should have at least wheedled out of her where she was going to work. Looking for her would be like searching a needle in a haystack in this big city.”
 
Liam said ruefully, “I didn’t realize then how her thought would haunt me.”
 
He had hardly finished when there was a knock on my office door. The young Cambodian woman who had just joined my section that week came in with a file.
 
I was about to introduce my colleague to the fresh staff member when something strange happened. Liam jumped up and nearly dropped his coffee cup. He and my new assistant looked at each other as if they had both been electrified. At long last, she smiled demurely.
 
However unnecessary, I formally introduced them both. Then said, “Why don’t you two talk while I go and arrange another round of coffee for us all,” and quickly exited.
 
I tarried purposely. There was no hurry. None at all.