The driver stepped out, looked at the damage and expostulated that I was driving too fast. I got out and faced him: an older man, late sixties, good-looking and well-dressed, now visibly agitated. I was shaken too, but the moment I saw his face, I felt sorry.

I said, “I am sorry your car is damaged. I am also sorry I have upset you. My sincere apologies.”

He looked taken aback and controlled himself. He gave me his card and the name of his insurance company. I responded in kind. We agreed to talk the following day and took leave of each other. I said in parting, “I am very sorry that this has happened. I notice your wife is in the car; my apologies to her too.”

He called next morning. “I apologize,” he said, “for talking rudely to you. That was uncalled for. Let us share the necessary information.” We talked, beyond the necessary information, and I learned that his car did not start after the accident and he had to walk home with his wife. I regretted my oversight and said I would have driven him home if I had known.

The next day was my birthday, and I resented having to attend to my car instead of joining a party. I left the car at a body shop, who also arranged for me to pick up a rental car from the company next door. The repair shop manager was very pleasant. He offered me a cup of coffee and chatted me up; I felt I had made a friend.

The Volvo owner and I talked affably on the phone the next day and agreed to meet for lunch the following day. That morning his insurance company called me to say it accepted full liability for the accident, and I returned the rental car and went to retrieve my own car.

Most unexpectedly, the body shop manager gifted me a miniature American flag, made, he said, by his daughter, introduced me to his colleagues, and insisted on my sharing coffee and doughnuts with them. He said, “You came for work, but we have enjoyed meeting you. We will like you to visit us and have coffee whenever you are in this part of the town.” I was touched.

Even my small boat couldn’t approach the island so shallow was the water. I had to shout to fishermen to come and get me in their tiny boats, really hollowed mango tree trunks.

I was investigating reports of human rights abuses in Haiti and had come to La Gonâve, a tiny island west of Haiti. Haiti, the poorest land in the American hemisphere, has La Gonâve as its poorest part. I stepped on to La Gonâve and thought I had landed on the moon.

Hilly, barren and bare, as far as my eyes could see La Gonâve had nothing except a few miserable shacks made of straw, tin, plastic and cardboard. A few rickety children played naked on the beach; the fishermen and women wore little more. The roads were mud tracks. Further down, there were a few modest brick houses, all in imminent need of repair. Old people lay around, ill and emaciated, waiting patiently for the next day. Even in the worst slums of Mumbai and Manila I hadn’t seen anything quite like this. It was just another world, a lost one, about which the galaxy I came from had no clue.

I stumbled through the sand to meet the only doctor in town, a soft-spoken Belgian pediatrician, who was examining the horribly swollen limbs of a child. An assortment of women waited outside in mute pain. 

How does a qualified, experienced doctor bring herself to practice here? What makes an attractive woman choose to live in a place as primitive as this? I wondered as I talked business. When finally I expressed, hesitantly, my private curiosity, she looked up, smiled and signed for me to look out the window.

Outside on the beach nearby a gentle sun was taking its last bow, radiating a tawny glow into every little shack and bathing the gaunt landscape in mellow, ineffable glory. 

I had known her barely two weeks, when a remarkable opportunity came up: a friendly colleague – who had to forego his reservation of a cottage on the beach to visit a sick mother – offered to let me use the cottage. I eagerly asked her, and, to my surprise and pleasure, she accepted. We would drive four hours to the beach the following Saturday. I dreamed of the weekend the entire week, planned every little detail and went to pick her up early Saturday morning.

I was in for a surprise. She hadn’t packed and she wasn’t dressed for the trip. Then she delivered the blow without a word of explanation: she didn’t feel like going. I was crushed. Her mother, an elegant tall woman, who stood in the kitchen a few feet away and heard the exchange, came over and said apologetically, “I’m sorry she stood you up.” 

She urged me not to be disheartened and offered a cup of tea. I was in no mood to tarry, but decided to be polite and accept. As we talked, I realized what a thoughtful, charming person she was. By the second cup, I felt distinctly better. When I told her that I didn’t want to go to the beach alone, but hated to miss using the cottage, she astonished me and said she would be glad to come if I wanted.  

It proved to be an agreeable drive. She was easy-going and a great conversationalist. We arrived at the beautiful cottage, right at the edge of the sea, and she unpacked all the food she had brought. We had a light but superb lunch, and spent the entire afternoon on the beach, swimming a little and talking a lot. The cottage had a small but modern kitchen, and afterward we drank as she cooked dinner and I helped. A great candle-lit dinner on the backyard followed.

The cottage had two main bedrooms, but the smaller one seemed under renovation. She said she didn’t mind sharing the master bedroom, as there were two large beds. It was wonderful that we could switch off the lights and continue sharing stories.

We talked for a long time, and I said that it had been a perfect day for me. Then, she decided to make it more perfect still. Silently, she shuffled over and got under the blanket with me.

I arrived at the public mortuary early in the morning with an observer from the UN team. Protesters were demonstrating against Haiti’s military junta, and government death squads had been brutally murdering opposition leaders.  As a human rights investigator, I had come to examine the dead bodies from the previous night.

It was a low stucco building, poorly maintained and badly discolored. As we entered, we were hit by an overpowering stench of waste and chemicals. The UN observer, a fresh-faced young woman, promptly regurgitated, adding to the odor.

The man whose almost naked body lay on a steel tray had been shot at point-blank range, his hands tied behind him. In a typical ghoulish gesture, his face had been skinned, and the body had been left in a trash bin. There was blood all over.

Forty years earlier I’d been a school boy of seven in Calcutta, India, when a religious war had broken out between Hindus and Muslims. Since my family’s house was on the border between the two communities, we became helpless spectators to many violent incidents. One morning a Muslim tradesman who had done some masonry work in our home was passing by, and a chance remark he made caused some Hindu youth to attack him. Five people surrounded him and just kept beating him till he was still. I stood at a window and watched the puddle of blood around the body expand until it seemed to cover my entire view.

The same was true in Haiti as it had been forty years earlier in India: none had raised a finger to staunch the flow of innocent blood.

I lived and and worked in Kolkata, India, but decided to move to the US, to be with my American wife who worked in Washington, DC. When I mentioned the idea to my parents, who liked her, they supported the idea. However, it took me a little more time to discover that my father, to whom I was close, was upset at the idea of my living so far away from him.

Over dinner one night, when he remarked that Heaven alone knew when he would see me again, I chose to handle the subject head on. “Even while I am in India,” I said, “I travel a lot, and you don’t always get to see me. Travel to the US is no greater barrier. I can always come and visit you in India. You too can visit me in Washington.”

“That is true,” he conceded, “but you are leaving your home here. You may not find it that easy to stay in touch.”

He was right. I got busy with my new job in the US, my travels were mostly in North America and the plan to visit India kept getting deferred. To tell the truth, settling down in my new life also seemed a higher priority than a nostalgic visit to my friends and family. I tried to compensate by writing long letters to my parents and calling my father regularly. He always said he missed me but never asked when he would see me again.

A cable came to say that a surgery he had undergone had gone badly and his condition was getting worse. I was traveling and never knew about it. Nor did I know about a second cable from my brother suggesting an immediate visit because my father’s condition was critical. When I returned home Saturday morning, a third cable had just been delivered: he had passed away the night before.

Suddenly all my immediate priorities seemed totally meaningless. I could not think straight and simply ambled out of my apartment building. It was snowing and my glasses soon became opaque. I trudged on pointlessly, the realization slowly dawning that the past that I had so complacently taken for granted had forever slipped out of my reach.

I had irrevocably left home.

I was seven and he was a colorful hero to me. Sen was barely five-six, with graying temples and a slight slouch, but looked resplendent in his starched navy uniform and black-banded felt hat. He had a shy, boyish smile and a wonderful way of telling his stories, but what made him heroic in my eyes was his occupation. 

A guard in the Indian railways, he checked passengers’ tickets, answered their questions, helped travelers with problems, told obstreperous children not to lean out of the windows, and finally retired to the tiny last compartment of the train, his little home away from home. I imagined him traveling to exotic places, meeting new and exciting people every day, savoring unusual food at remote rail stations, and living, in short, an odd, fast-changing life very different from the humdrum existence of people I knew.

In diplomatic circles parties are plentiful and in this small, friendly country parties abounded in summer.

At the third cocktail party of the evening, an elderly, fashionably dressed woman stopped in front of me, “I have met you before,” she paused.

“You are the Consul at the US Embassy.” As I nodded, she added, “You denied visa to my son.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “We have to follow rules.”

“Right,” she said. “You actually did me a favor.”

I confessed I did not understand.

“I didn’t want him to leave for the US. He is my only son. If he went there to study, I wasn’t sure he would ever come back. I was relieved when you rejected his visa application. On the ground that he couldn’t say much about the studies he planned to pursue in the US.”

She added, “He stayed with me, as he couldn’t go to the US,” and, after a pause, “I wanted him with me.”

“I am glad it worked out right for you,” I said.

“For eight months,” she said. “He died in a car accident. He was always a bad driver.”

“I am so sorry,” I responded sincerely.

“I am thankful to you for those eight months he spent with me. Without you, I could have lost him earlier.”

I did not know how to respond. The party was over for me.

Then she came back to me and pointed to the much taller slide older children were using. I explained to her that the taller slide was for bigger kids, not her. She did the smaller slides a few more times and then came back, pointing again to the taller slide. I repeated that it was for older children, adding that it was very high and the many steps to the top would not be safe for her.

Lina went back to the animal slides, but returned within minutes to point again at the tall slide. Her heart was set on it. Despite strong misgivings, I said, “All right, you can play on that slide, but be careful.”

​Lina climbed the steps, one after another, while I stood anxiously on the ground below, half regretting my reluctant approval. She finally reached the top, and plunged down the slide. In a few seconds she landed safely, quite radiant with triumph.

I had noticed, however, as she climbed the last few steps of the tall slide, the worried look on her face and the anxious glance at me standing below. I asked, “Lina, you weren’t afraid, were you?”

In reply, she just hugged me, her small arms tight against my neck. She had faith in me: she knew she would be looked after.

My disgrace was complete. I was an experienced oarsman, had captained the company team in several regattas and had gone out this crisp early-fall dawn in my favorite scull. As I reached the end of the lake and veered to turn, an excruciating pain, surging through my back, literally paralyzed me. The oars fell from my hands and, still strapped in seat, I collapsed sideways at an awkward angle.

Serendipitously, another early-hour rower in another boat saw me, raised an alarm and got a number of rowers to turn up. With great difficulty they lugged me to a heavier boat, rowed me ashore and lifted and laid me in my car. Then they drove me to a doctor.

That was my first encounter with Dr. Gupta. He was a man in his sixties, with a round face and a large shock of jet-black hair, surprisingly nimble despite his middle-age spread. Swiftly he gave me a shot of a potent painkiller, then sat down to hear an account from me and my rescuers. He was an intent listener, who gave you unwavering attention and left you in no doubt that he wanted to hear it all. He probed in depth my earlier history of a car accident, and then, as my spasms subsided, examined my back from every angle. He recommended rest, abstention from rowing for days and some pills.

When I returned for a review a week later, he again examined me punctiliously and suggested a series of preventive exercises. He made me do each of the exercises to make sure they were correctly done and suggested another review three weeks later.

In every review, I found that, even in those pre-electronic days, he maintained scrupulous records of a patient, and made it the basis of an exhaustive check on actual and potential problems. A patient to him was not just a case, but a commitment. He felt he was responsible for the entire well-being of the person and would not let go of a single clue that bode future trouble. Like all doctors he relied on equipment, but depended far more on acute clinical judgment than on a plethora of tests.

In short order Dr. Gupta became my primary care physician, but soon also the principal wellness consultant. I persuaded several friends and relations to turn to him for help. If he felt another physician would be better able to help in a particular case, he not only called the other specialist but arranged an early appointment. I could not help noticing that anybody I referred to him stuck to him and insisted on bringing their family members to Dr. Gupta for consultation.

I found the reason for that. He clearly believed health was an integral thing and medicines were not the only means of sustaining it. He made no excuses for asking about one’s diet or living style. Faced by his interrogation others were taken aback as much as I was, but realized soon that he operated as an advisor as well as a clinician. His concern for a patient was total, and that gave me a sense of trust and relief I have seldom experienced since.

Waiting in the doctor’s chamber I always carried a book to read. When he noticed that, Dr. Gupta eagerly asked about my interests and we found we had a common interest in literature. More surprisingly, I discovered that, while he practiced as a traditional family physician, he had wide-ranging knowledge of other systems of medicine. He explained that, though he had started, like his fellow doctors, with deep-seated skepticism of homeopathy, he had read Hahnemann’s and other treatises and believed implicitly in the capability of other esoteric systems.

A bunch of hand-made birds adorned different corners of his chamber, and it took me time to find that he crafted them in his spare time as a hobby. He loved birds, had extensive knowledge of ornithology and used it to create remarkable life-like models. He told me how he collected the materials painstakingly, colored them and put them together at late hours after his work was over for the day.

Our friendship continued until the day I emigrated.

After thirty years, spent in work assignments in three continents, I was on a nostalgic visit to India, and I paused briefly in front of the neat little house where Dr. Gupta lived in the back and had his office and examination room on the front. I was told the house would soon be demolished and replaced by a tall apartment building, indistinguishable no doubt from a dozen other nondescript buildings around it. I tried to banish the thought and recall the sunny, cheerful office where I had spent hours with a doctor who always seemed to have time to listen and explain.