“May I join you?”
 
I was spending several months in Geneva on an assignment and was lodged in a charming little hotel near the lake. I was sipping coffee at the breakfast table when the question startled me.
 
The tradition at the hotel was polite but formal. At breakfast, the guests sat at their table and seldom joined other guests for conversation. With my eyes intently on the headlines of Le Matin, I wasn’t expecting an intrusion.
 
The interloper was a woman, dressed to the hilt, made up flawlessly. You would hardly notice those, for she was spectacular by herself. Shoulder-length dark hair framed a beautiful, bronzed face, the colorful Asian ensemble she wore adding an exotic edge to her slender presence.

She sat down before I had nodded and asked, “Are you from Pakistan?”
 
“I was born in India. My father was from a family that had once lived in what used to be Pakistan.”
 
She arched her brows at the complexity of my reply, but smiled and said, “Good enough. I live in Islamabad.”
 
“What brings you to Switzerland?”
 
“My brother heads the Pakistan unit of a Swiss company and they are having a conference here. I thought I would give myself a week’s vacation.”
 
“Summer is the perfect time for that,” I said. “I feel lucky that I am here for that week.”
 
“That’s wonderful,” she said, “you can take me around everywhere.”
 
She didn’t ask me once before making that plan, so assured she was of my compliance. She well knew the effect she had on men. In that staid dining room every eye was riveted on her.

“How can you drink that bitter black coffee? Don’t you want some cream and sugar?”
 
I was tempted to add those, such was the magnetic influence of her large sparkling eyes. But I summoned the last dregs of my will and said, “I like it this way.”
 
She chose the chocolate drink and asked for some fruits. I could barely take my eyes off the crimson nails of her slight fingers. Both her arms had a hundred bangles of gold, silver and rainbow colors and they tinkled as she stirred her chocolate with the right hand or brushed back her hair with the left.

​​It was a Saturday. So the next question from her was legitimate, “So what are we going to do today?”
 
“During the week I seldom have time. I was planning to visit MAMCO, the museum of contemporary art.”
 
Her face fell. Clearly modern art wasn’t her cup of tea. I felt bad.
 
I asked, “And what is your plan?”
 
“My brother told me of a museum too. Lots of watches, famous Swiss watches,” she said hesitantly.
 
An idea struck me.
 
“I have heard of it too. I tell you what: the Patek Philippe Museum is right next to MAMCO. Why don’t we take in a bit of pictures and statues, and then we can see all the watches you like.”
 
She smiled and said coquettishly, “I would love to see the pictures with you.”
 
I suspected, however, that she would not love to see those abstract pictures that fascinate me. It was to the credit of the museum that its spacious and sparse display was astutely designed to show off such artistry at its best. Sonia – who by now she had found time to tell me her name –  seemed taken in by the show. She took care to check out the Flatland on the first floor, the artifacts on the stairs and every work of Philippe Thomas. I was impressed and delighted.
 
I was glad to escort her to the Patek Philippe Museum after that. This time it was my turn to be taken in. Even without being a watch geek, one can be amazed at the ingenuity of Swiss horlogerie, and the delicate blend of art and artifacts in watches displayed from five centuries. I hadn’t expected to see a tennis player or tightrope walker on a watch or a watch masquerading as a pistol or a mandolin.

My friend, Walter, was a tenured professor in a wellknown university on the US east coast. He was generally popular and had written a few books that were well regarded. His wife had died five years ago; he had no children. In his sixties, he quit his job, moved to the west coast, took a part-time editing job and started painting. He told me he took lessons in the morning and painted the rest of the day.

He did it for several years, but had no success in selling his paintings. Since he had run down his savings, he started driving for a taxi company. From what I have heard, he continued to paint to his last days, though he had no marketing success.
 
Oscar Wilde talks of the two tragedies of life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
 
Do you know what you want? You feel quite sure that you want the sporty BMW you salivated over last week when you colleague drove over in it. Or the house six streets down that stands out like a special gem among the decent houses in a decent neighborhood. You feel certain that you want these things and they can add a lot to the quality of your life.
 
But think for a second about the two-story house you live in now that you craved for when you were living in a starter house some years ago. Or the Volvo you drive these days, which roared in your dreams for some years when you were going about in the used Fiat you had bought from your cousin. They seemed the end-point of your dreams, object of irresistible yearning, that would keep you content for the rest of your life. But they didn’t.
 
For most people, nothing ever does. The Volvo or two-story house, for which you would have given an arm or a leg, and which excited you when you first had them, has long ceased to be a source for excitement or even a cause of moderate satisfaction. What went wrong? Was there something wrong with the car or the house? Had you miscalculated that those things had qualities to please you?
 
Perhaps there were a few things not superlative with the house, an old-fashioned bathroom and a somewhat modest kitchen. Maybe the car did not have built-in GPS or a high-quality stereo output? Were these the reasons for your steady disenchantment? You know well that is not so.
 
Your tastes or standards were different. Whatever you fancied then would have faded by now. They would have dropped eventually in your esteem no matter what you had chosen. House styles change, car fashions ebb and flow, what is a model today becomes modal and common tomorrow. It did not matter what you chose. What mattered was that  you had chosen it yesteryear, and now it is another time.

​Is it then just a matter of changing tastes? We know that tastes will change if we are talking of cars and houses. Those are precisely the things where styles change quickly, from one year to the next, things swiftly become passé. If we switch our interests to less ephemeral things, crave for nobler things, such as religion or learning, perhaps our desires will change less drastically.
 
I am not so sure. The ardently pious seem to lose their faith as often as the skeptics take to religion. Heaven knows what stirs their doubts or devotion. Professors and scholars have been known to lose their interest in the life theoretic and give up on books and research. They take to pleasures of the flesh or of the bottle or move to Wall Street or Fleet Street.
 
The truth is we change. What we want, eagerly and earnestly, changes. We may be disappointed, even mortified, when we don’t get what we want. In the vast majority of cases, we overcome our disappointment and find joy in something else. For some, however, the loss may be more traumatic and may merit the name of tragedy.
 
On the other hand, we may be ecstatic to get what we want. In time, often too soon, the ecstasy fades. There is sometimes the painful realization that that is not something we really wanted or cared for. For the fortunate there is the prospect of further change. For the less fortunate, there may be the prospect of living in an unhappy acceptance of the unacceptable.
 
Are the twin tragedies Wilde mentioned then quite inevitable? Wilde’s neat trick was to call them tragedies. It is no tragedy that I no longer wear the swaddling clothes I was wrapped in as a baby. Nor the corduroys and pointed shoes that were the style when I was a student. I have just grown and changed. On the way I have learned a few things and become perhaps a little better. What I have shed, my clothes or my earlier selves, I have done to aspire for some small measure of excellence. Hardly a tragedy.

I have no idea how well Walter painted. But paint he wanted to do, and did. He was no Picasso and did not achieve fame and wealth in his lifetime. He was no Gaugin either and did not achieve fame after his lifetime. As a friend, I would have wished him the recognition that eluded him. As a human being as much as a friend, I am glad he did what he wanted to do: paint.

I had driven six hundred miles and now I was at the hospital.
 
Monica, my daughter, married three years ago and was lately contemplating adding to the family. When she found she was pregnant, she set about decking a baby room, arranged leave from her work, and began seeing neonatal doctors. Then the gynecologist gave her a specific date for childbirth, and I started the long drive from Washington.
 
All through the drive I riffled through my memories of Monica as a baby and a child. She had been a lively, almost rambunctious child, and I could not recall her memories without a smile on my face. She was the undeclared satrap of our home, exploring every drawer of every room, asking the name of every visitor, ascertaining the function of every gadget in the kitchen. What a girl! I realized half-way that I was assuming that Monica’s baby would be a girl and she would be just like Monica.
 
The gynecologist’s prognosis was most impressively accurate – or the baby’s punctuality was most commendable. She arrived just on time. I cooled my heels in the waiting room until I was allowed in. Then I had my first look.

Thank heavens, it was really a girl.
 
How Monica looked when she was born had blurred a little by now. This baby was just like a miniature doll. Though an eight-pound baby, she looked unbelievably small. When they placed her on my arms, she felt unbelievably light. In her swaddling clothes, she seemed tiny and fragile. I held her awkwardly, nervously, fearful to move or even breathe. The baby did not budge. She slept peacefully; only the minuscule quiver of her nose told me that she was breathing.
 
Her face had a reddish tinge. I was told it was the color a baby sported after its arduous transition to the outside world. She had soft dark hair all over her head. Again, I was told that it was transient and would fall off, to make way for her real hair, of genuine color. She had beautiful pink lips, occasionally moving even in her sleep. Maybe she was dreaming of milk. I looked at her hands and feet. Small, incredibly small, but adroitly crafted, a marvel of miniature art.
 
The nurse came to take the baby from me. The baby needed to go for her shots. She came back rather quickly. The nurse explained that only half the shots could be given; the baby apparently created such a ruckus that doctor decided to defer the rest of the shots. I was impressed that the new member of our family knew so early how to get her way.

​I looked at my daughter. She looked tired but pleased. She and her husband had wanted a baby and now they had one. She had done her job well. A pretty and healthy baby was now with us. She had been exhausted by the effort she had exerted, but her labor – it is called so for a reason – had now a satisfying result. She looked content.
 
She had always been my little girl. Even when she went to college, and later started working, I thought of her as a little girl. I showered her with unnecessary and perhaps unwanted advice, “Drive carefully” and “Eat what is good for you.” In the hospital room, she appeared in a new light. She had suddenly grown up. She was a mother now. I had not a single word of advice.
 
The doctor came just then and told us she had checked the baby and was glad to tell us that everything was fine. She advised the mother, as a matter of abundant caution, to spend the night in the hospital and left.
 
Some friends came to see Monica and the baby. They brought thoughtful gifts. The room looked full of things related to the baby. Her bassinet, her clothes, her diapers, her tiny blankets. Guests had bought bouquets of flowers and those were in every corner. Everyone seems to have brought a camera and wanted a picture of the baby or with the baby.
 
The baby fidgeted a little bit and went back to sleep. I held her and looked at her face. It seemed pointless to speculate whom she looked like. She looked like nobody. She looked like herself. That was fine. She looked peaceful. She looked beautiful.

​What should I call this beautiful girl?

​Penelope is the name the parents have chosen for the baby. In Greek mythology, Penelope was the patient wife who kept waiting for her adventure-loving, forever-traveling husband Odysseus, though a bunch of admirers kept paying court. Legend has it she held them at bay by saying she would respond when her knitting was done. Her knitting never got done, because she undid at night what she knitted during the day. Her name became an emblem of loyalty. It is no doubt good to be loyal. But I also know that in Greek the first part of the name indicates weft – something complex and hard to learn or know – and the second part means a face. A person with an inscrutable face?
 
After I had held the baby for a long time, she opened her tiny eyes and peered uncertainly at me. Did she approve of me? Does she like being held by me? Alas, she gave no clue. A very inscrutable little person indeed.  

​It was the only time in my life that a man, a virtual stranger, had crossed a room, placed his arms around me and kissed me on the temple, “You were wonderful!”

​We were candidates for a job, in effect rivals. A major multinational corporation had decided to hire some interns and set up an exacting interview process. Applicants had to write essays, solve problems, respond to a tsunami of questions and give an extempore speech. You put your hand in a large bowl, pick up a folded piece of paper, and give a five-minute discourse on the single word inscribed on the paper. For me the word was Democracy.
 
I began with a reference to the familiar reproach of democracy as a talking shop and argued that I liked it because it was a talking shop. I said when people talk they seldom fight and, also, the more they talk the better they understand each other. In divided Germany, I ended by saying, a dog had crossed over from the communist east to the western sector and was asked by local dogs his reason for making the risky transition, since he looked well-fed and well-cared, and the fleeing dog’s terse reply was, “Just to bark.”
 
Clearly my talk had gone down well; the judges looked pleased. But the moment they retired from the room for mutual consultation, another candidate from the other end of the room walked over and kissed me. He was tall, good-looking and articulate, and my bet would have been on him to be chosen. If I did well, I was in effect dimming his prospects and I expected him to be resentful.
 
On the contrary, he had liked my presentation, was happy at my success and expressed his admiration in an instinctive if unusual act of approbation. His appreciation was unstinting and unreserved. In time I was to find that was characteristic of Subroto: he felt things keenly and expressed his feelings candidly, no matter how offbeat he appeared to others. There was a wondrous prodigal quality to his friendship.

​We were both accepted as interns and we started work together. Our bosses decided that our initiation into work culture should begin with an immersion into a manufacturing plant’s production grid. We were to live in adjacent rooms in the same building on their industrial estate and experience the shift work of laborers. Torn from our comfortable urban milieu, thrown into the thorny discipline of a suburban factory, we felt deprived and disoriented. We talked of our misery and then, in contrast, of our hopes and ambitions, our friends and families, our girlfriends and lost loves. Those themes recurred, over and again, whether we played tennis or sipped beer.
 
Our paths diverged in a couple of years. I returned to the big city in a headquarters slot. Subroto continued in the plant as a production executive. But we continued as friends and, in weekend sessions, updated each other on our exploits and misadventures. When I acquired a new girlfriend, he acted as a chauffeur and, defying our secret accord, took us to places I knew nothing about but turned out to be excellent choices. When he fell in love with a senior executive’s favorite daughter and ran into stormy weather, I rightly encouraged him but wrongly underestimated the odds.
 
Our friendship survived our rarer encounters. He rose in the ranks and moved into a lovely home that I could visit with a second girlfriend. I changed course and went to work for a public enterprise. With Subroto’s backing, I began a new trajectory as a management writer and speaker alongside my executive work. His romance had matured into a stable marriage and, when I visited his new home with a third girlfriend, an American, he volubly encouraged me to follow suit, no matter how little or how much we had in common.

​Then followed the long decades of my incessant travel, peregrinations in Asia, Europe and Middle East, interspersed with executive and family life in the US. Subroto left the company he had worked for all his life and started a successful small enterprise exporting craft products and ran a guest house. Our lives ran on parallel lines.
 
It surprises me what things matter and how long it takes us to discover what really matters. I sometimes ask people I care for to give me something small, insignficant and of low value that I would like to retain as a memento. Rupen, a beloved colleague, left with me an old fountain pen that did not work; it does work, however, to remind me of the hours we spent together, working or drinking or just talking, and knowing that I was valued and wanted. Mother left me an old wristwatch and I don’t even know whether it works, for I have never replaced the defunct battery. It is there in my drawer, not to tell me the time, but to tell me the unflinching, undimmable affection that enveloped me whenever I was with her and whenever I was a thousand miles from her.
 
Sitting at my desk in Washington, I decided I must see Subroto, a friend whose memory is entwined in my guts and whose friendship flows ineradicably in my arteries. So there it was, weeks later, as a car wound through Ballyganj Place in Kolkata, that I peered at the house where we used to meet years earlier. As the door opened, the same sonorous voice, “You have made me so happy!”

​In a flash, years dissolved, space evaporated, my lined brow and his slow gait faded into the fog of oblivion. All that remained was his radiant face, his outstretched arms, a time-obliterating embrace, and a thousand unforgettable memories: shared pain and joy, pointless trips and meaningful talks, working together, fighting together, partying together, and staying together through rainy days and starry nights, loving each other.
 
When I left, in the impulsive act of generosity so typical of him, Subroto gave me a bound volume of Somerset Maugham’s stories. I could have told him – I did not – that he didn’t need to give me a memento. I already had a million of them.

​Kishori Lal Jain’s father had left his family’s traditional work as a priest and joined the revenue service of the British Government in India. His job was to track tax collection, and he was transferred to Bihar, in eastern India, where the collection was poor. That is how the Jain family moved to the Bhagalpur District from their ancestral home in Rajasthan.
 
The son, Kishori Lal, had no temperament for administrative work. He was a serious young man who devoted all his hours to his books, spurning his friends’ interest in sports and other frivolities. Neat and lanky, and industrious to a fault, he took particular interest in religious books and studied them along with the subjects he had to learn for his college courses. The family had retained its loyalty to the Jain religion; Kishori Lal scrupulously observed its rules, such as a strictly vegetarian diet and kindness to all creatures.
 
It was no surprise that he gained his bachelor’s degree with good grades. Nor was it a surprise to his parents that he never considered other kinds of work and accepted a job as a teacher in a government school. He taught in the city of Bhagalpur for several years and was promoted to school principal in the neighboring Banka District, in the small town of Katoriya. In that quiet, unlikely place came his biggest test.

​The British had an inspector of schools for every state, not so much to ensure a high quality of education as to make certain that schools taught English and helped create an army of clerks needed for government offices. The new inspector for Bihar, Angus Hillwood, seemed an enterprising one, with an ambitious schedule for inspecting outlying districts, including Banka. What was not known at the start was that Hillwood was an avid hunter, who prided himself on his collection of guns, and his principal interest in visiting Banka was the dense forest to the east of the city. The forest was reputed to have a variety of wildlife, including tigers occasionally seen by firewood-collecting villagers.
 
Kishori Lal’s peaceful life with students and teachers in Banka took a sharp jolt when he received notice that the British inspector was coming to inspect his school. The prospect of meeting a representative of Her Majesty’s Government and answering his difficult questions was disconcerting enough. What made it far worse was that Abid Ali, the minion who brought the notice, also informally told Kishori Lal that Hillwood intended to bag a tiger in Banka’s woods and expected the local principal to act as his guide. Hillwood had shrewdly figured out that the local school principal might be the best guide, as he was likely to know a smattering of English. Also the principal would be unlikely to decline the invitation of a mighty inspector, on whose approval his job depended.
 
Hillwood did not know, and cared less, that Kishori Lal was an earnest Jain and the idea of slaughtering animals in the name of sport could be anathema for him. For Kishori Lal the prospect was a nightmare. He had to think of something before the inspector arrived in less than a week.
 
When Hillwood arrived the following Thursday, accompanied by Abid Ali and a driver, he was royally received at the Circuit House, where august personages stayed. Kishori Lal acted as the interpreter, translating the Englishman’s orders for warm water first and tea and biscuits next. Then he walked with Hillwood to the school.

​Hillwood inspected the school building and emphasized the need for better cleanliness. Then he spoke to some of the teachers and students, emphasizing the need for greater loyalty to Queen Victoria and her Viceroy in India. Then he stressed that they should all learn the Queen’s English well and serve as useful as well as loyal subjects. Kishori Lal accompanied him all the time and translated his valuable counsel. Before retiring that evening, Hillwood reminded Kishori Lal that his services were needed the following morning, especially to instruct the scores of villagers Abid Ali had rounded up to act as the ‘beaters’ whose duty would be to beat drums and create the noise that would drive the tiger to the spot where the sporting Hillwood would wait on a tree with his gun to deliver the coup de grace.
 
When Abid Ali arrived the following morning to collect Kishori Lal, a villager asked him to proceed to the small temple nearby. There he found the barebodied Kishori Lal making loud incantations before the small deity and, he was stunned to discover, also a small picture of the Queen, torn possibly from a school textbook on history. Some villagers, respectfully standing nearby, would not let the infidel Abid Ali either enter the sanctum or interrupt the worship.
 
Meanwhile, Hillwood, impatient for the return of Abid Ali with the principal, had himself come out and faced the spectacle of his missing guide performing the absurd ritual with the picture of the Queen. The villagers would not let him interrupt the performance either. After a half-hour Kishori Lal stood up, emerged from the temple with a strange look, and spoke to the highly irritated inspector.
 
He said in his halting English, and then in vernacular for the villagers, that during the night the Goddess had appeared in a vision and told him that his proposed participation in the hunt for the tigress seen in the vicinity would be a great sin, for the brave tigress was none other than an incarnation of Queen Victoria herself.

​Hillwood, who had arrived exasperated, was by now quite furious. But he knew Indian villages well enough to know that he dare not question the vision or the worship. He swallowed his pride and resisted his inclination to call Kishori Lal’s story total poppycock. He nodded his head gravely, made a show of his understanding of the importance of Kishori Lal’s message, and said that the Queen should be respected above all. He gave the order for canceling the hunt and asked Abid Ali to prepare for his return.
 
Kishori Lal went back to his school, his faith intact. Hillwood went back to his office, his predatory ambition unfulfilled. The tigress of Banka, ostensibly the incarnation of the Queen herself, continued her reign in Banka’s wood undeterred, emerging only rarely to grab the straying goat from some unhappy villager’s herd.

I am an expert at getting lost. I get lost everywhere, on streets of course, but also in hotels, conferences, parking lots, new cities and new countries.
 
Perhaps I am too eager to see an old friend to do the homework on a map. I rush out, drive headlong in what I think is the right direction, only to find myself hopelessly lost. Then I call the friend, plead for help, gather new guidance and reorient myself. More often, I reach the place all right, but on my return, as my guards are down, I suddenly find myself in a strange location, clearly nowhere near my home.

Or I set out for a restaurant I know well and have visited many times before. I spurn the idea of noting the address or checking the directions. Then, as I go round and round, frustrated that I don’t see a restaurant that should have been in plain sight, I condescend to ask for help from a stranger. Dispiritingly, I find that the restaurant has moved or, worse, my memory has played a trick, for the restaurant has always been on a different street.
 
Decades later I still remember the panic I experienced as a child the day we moved into a beautiful apartment in a massive building. I explored the building at length, then came out to see its different facets, and then could not remember how to get back to the apartment. I was nearly in tears. 

Years later, I was waiting for a flight at Tokyo’s Narita airport with my daughter, Lina, 8, and needed to use the restroom. I told her, more than once, not to leave her seat while I was away, saying she might get lost. As I left the restroom I could see from a distance that Lina, perhaps curious, had walked with the crowd toward the concourse, which had interesting shops. I followed her and saw her admiring shop windows. When the time came for her to return to her seat, she could not find it. I saw her getting increasingly anxious and finally near tears. Then I wrapped her in my arms and took her back to the seat.
 
Getting lost can of course cost more than time, gasoline and tears. Seven years ago, Tom Mahood, a physicist, found the remains of a German couple and their small children, whose abandoned car in Anvil Canyon in California had aroused a cop’s concern fifteen years earlier. Mahood worked back from their maps that they had misread the symbols, lost their way and perished in the scorching desert heat.
 
Why do we make such terrible mistakes and lose our way?
 
Of course, we have many more reasons for losing our way. People today are not just going from a village to another village or from a village to the neighboring city. They are taking fast-moving cars, trains and planes to far-flung cities and countries. It requires us to keep a far bigger map in mind, a map that also changes far more rapidly than in earlier centuries. Many major businesses are global; for work, pleasure, medical treatment and academic research, travel is unremittingly international; and the pressure on world travelers often excludes the possibility of familiarity. Even if you live and work in the same city – a growing rarity these days – the chances are you vary your routes far more than your father or grandfather ever did.

​How well equipped are we to deal with these multiple and quick-changing routes? Not very, says Collin Ellard, a Canadian professor of psychology, if you compare us with primitive people or even many animals. In earlier times, the price of getting lost was to be eaten by wild animals or killed by hostile tribes. So people took great care to remember and retrace their steps from their habitat. For the Inuit in the Arctic or the aborigine in Australia, to be lost was also to be dead. Hence they carefully cultivated skills to find their way. Indigenous cultures taught people to navigate by tracking the sun or the position of stars relative to the fixed star Polaris. In a sea voyage, Polynesians found the direction by checking ocean swells, the natural rise-and-fall of water when a storm churns deep waves.
 
The other bad news is that we, humans, are naturally deficient in knowing the direction compared to animals. If we are blindfolded or disoriented, a lot of evidence suggests we just go round and round. In contrast, migratory animals go thousands of miles without a mistake. Migratory birds use an internal magnetic compass or a sonar system to create a detailed mental map. The African desert ant can go for foraging, without getting lost, on long, crooked routes 20,000 times its body length, the equivalent of a human marathon. Our minds work differently. We schematize and simplify space – straightening curves into straight lines, aligning landmarks that are unaligned – and create a false mental map, prompting our steps in the wrong direction.

The good news is that we are not helpless. If we don’t have the natural capacity, we can acquire technology to compensate for it. A smart phone can take a picture of the house you must come back to or the parking space you have left your car in. A Global Positioning System device can guide you to a destination, perhaps not perfectly but quite competently. A mapping app on your phone can tell you the exact coordinates of the place you want to reach, even though your mental map of the place is blurry or plainly wrong.
 
More importantly, we can train our minds. In fact, there is some evidence that the more we depend on widgets, the less our minds function to keep us on the right track. Often we get lost because we have not paid enough attention to a place before leaving it or we have seen it from only one angle. It is wise to take a good look at the place, perhaps from more than one angle. Our ability to recall improves with every effort. Researchers found that London cab drivers, who must remember hundreds of street names to pass the license test, develop a bigger hippocampus, the part of the brain where one stores such information. When we move to a new city, it helps to pore over the map and get a broad idea of its regions imprinted on our mind.
 
I hate the idea of stuffing my mind with maps. I guess I will still have to take a crack at it if I don’t want to get lost again. Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to locate a quaint café next to a laundry not far from a metro stop, will you please let me know?

My life has a taken a curious turn. I am writing a lot now.

Of course, I have written in the past, sometimes quite a bit. But those were mostly letters and memoranda as an executive, and reports and aides-memoire of diplomatic work. Now I write essays and belles lettres. Occasionally stories and poems. A very different kettle of fish.
 
The other difference is that in my work the writing felt secondary. The real business was to get things done. Words were ancillary to that. The main thing was what you achieved. Now, what I achieve are words. Words, hundreds of them, are primary. I don’t have to think beyond them, the effects they produce. I just have to produce the words.
 
This is a big change in my life. I was constantly doing things, calling people, giving instructions, driving to meetings, receiving faxes, sending cable, attending conferences. I was often on my feet, greeting people, shaking hands, aiming a pointer at a chart. Now all I seem to do is to sit at a computer and use my fingers. These days few use a heavy-weight tome, like a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia; those are all electronically accessible in a second. I am slowly, very slowly, getting accustomed to sitting at a desk for hours.

Richard Nixon, the disgraced US President, who retrieved a modicum of his respectability in the last decade by writing several books, summed up the requirement of his latter life in the coarse but pithy phrase “an iron bottom.” I seem to be developing it very sluggishly indeed.
 
I barely write a paragraph before I long for a sip of coffee. Another two, and I long to take a look at the headlines. Two pages down, I have a seductive itch for the breaking news on television. An hour or so later, the urge for a lunch break seems irresistible. I have come to see these as short escapes from the onerous yoke to which I have condemned myself.
 
That is not the only temptation of a starting writer. Sometimes I am eager to tell a story and the words tumble out quickly. At other times, the emerging words leave me with a gnawing sense of discomfort. Surely I could have said that better! Isn’t there a simpler, clearer way to express that idea? Then I have no option but to turn to some lexical help and muddy the stream of my thought. I am torn between keeping on writing, no matter what, and stepping back and tweaking what I have written.

That is not the only dilemma. I hate doing what teachers tell you to do in schools: make a blueprint of what I am going to write and follow its guideposts while writing. I find the procedure painfully constricting; it takes the joy out of writing. I feel like I am separating my thinking from my writing and placing them in discrete boxes, depreciating both. I prefer the blueprint in my head, mainly because it shifts, sidles and switches, and leaves me free to write by instinct and follow the flow in my mind.
 
In this respect, I trail D. H. Lawrence who chose to follow what he called his daimon, his guiding spirit, untrammeled by his reason. Beyond minor corrections, he refused to edit his manuscript. If he disliked the result of his effort, he simply started all over again, giving another chance to his daimon to recreate a better opus. Only rarely do I transpose paragraphs or make a significant change to what I have written. Let the substance get the approbation of the readers or their condemnation on its merit.
 
On the other hand, I am seldom fully content with what has emerged. I can never go back to what I have written a month or even a week back without pruning an adverb or tightening a phrase. I am certainly perfectible. I want to write better tomorrow than I write today.

​What do I mean when I talk of better writing?
 
The first thing I am trying to achieve is precision. I want to say just what I intend to say, no more, no less. I haven’t found such exactness easy to accomplish, but it is still my goal. I feel I haven’t done anything worthwhile if I have not said precisely what I meant to express. At the same time, I want to say it clearly. Nothing in written work exasperates me more than the need to extract the sense of a passage that remains defiantly obscure. I want to make it easy, as supremely easy as possible, for my reader to get what I am driving at. A third concern that I am aware of is elegance. Surely, I want to write some limpid prose that is easy on the eyes and the tongue. I want one to read me comfortably and enjoy it. I am not sure that I am able to meet all the three standards at the same time. In fact, I am quite sure I fail quite often. But I try and the guidelines remain in place.
 
It is a remarkable pleasure when somebody reads something I have written and likes it. Perhaps he or she takes the trouble to tell me. It is joyful news. Nothing, however, compares with pleasure of completing something I have started writing. It is a miracle that, where there was nothing, not even a ghost of an idea, a piece of writing has sprung from within me. It is a miracle that never stops stupefying me. It keeps me writing.

“We expect our executives to play golf, drive a car and become a member of a decent club,” said my boss. I was the recent recruit of a European company in Kolkata and my stuffy boss was laying down the ground rules after a promotion.
 
I was already a member of the club nearest to the office, mainly because I loved to swim there at lunchtime before grabbing a sandwich. I rowed and played tennis, but had no intention to play golf: my life had diverged enough from that of the average Indian and I didn’t want to go further in that direction. I had no yearning either to own a car. My office was a fifteen-minute walk from my home; I was entitled to use an office car much of the time; at other times, taxis were cheap and easily accessible, if I didn’t want to use a bus.
 
But company image was a different matter. I could flout the rules only to an extent, some of the time. So I would have to learn to drive and get a car. As a first step, I needed to take lessons. A rowing buddy took care of that.
 
“My father owns a driving school,” Brij said. “Why don’t you come there tomorrow, and I will get you one of our experienced instructors.”
 
The next morning Brij summoned what he called his ‘best instructor.’ He was a gaunt, tight-lipped man with salt-and-pepper hair, given to quick, cutting hand gestures.
 
“My name is Kar,” he said. “Just like a car,” he added with a frosty smile.
 
“He is first-rate,” Brij said after he had left the room, “the very best. He is very pleasant and will take very good care of you. You can start right away.”

Kar started the following Sunday with an encouraging spiel, “You are an educated person. I have been told you are an executive. You will learn this very easily.”
 
He added, “The first thing to remember: Have no fear. Just keep driving – fearlessly. You will master driving in no time at all.”
 
The training car was not an automatic one. He explained the gear levers, went over the dials, clutch and accelerator, and demonstrated the brakes.
“Now, start!”
 
I was raring to go, and with that word from him I released the clutch and pressed hard on the accelerator. The car shot forward like a bullet.
 
Kar screamed like a banshee for me to stop. I braked as clumsily as I had accelerated and Kar shook like a leaf.
 
“Are you crazy?” He asked in fury.
 
“The first thing to remember,” he said (I was about to say that it was the second thing really, but thought better of it), “you must have some sense and fear. You are driving a big metal thing. You can cause an accident. Now, start again and drive slow.”
 
I had driven barely three minutes before Kar barked, “Are you driving a car or a bullock cart? Why are driving so slow?”
 
So it went. A full hour of reproach and admonition, sarcastic remarks about my sense and judgment. He ended up suggesting I change my glasses, as I was not seeing the road well enough, and consult an audiologist, since I wasn’t listening to him well enough.
 
This will explain what happened next.

​Mira called me Saturday, “What are you doing Sunday? Why don’t we have lunch together?”
 
Mira was a stunner and this was a great windfall, especially as she had a busy social calendar.
 
“Why don’t we make it a dinner?” I suggested.
 
“What’s wrong with lunch?” she asked, then promptly went on the warpath, “Do you have a date for lunch?”
 
“Not at all,” I said meekly, “I have to take a driving lesson midday.”
 
“That’s not a problem at all. I will be near your home Sunday, and I can go with you. I will sit quietly at the back while you take your lesson. It may be fun. Then we can go for lunch.”
 
I hesitated. “Look, I may as well tell you. The instructor is ill-tempered and foul-mouthed. It will not be a pleasant experience for you. Let us try dinner instead.”
 
“Nonsense,” she said firmly, “you always exaggerate things too much. I am sure he is a perfectly decent instructor. Naturally he has to correct you sometimes.”
 
“It is settled,” she added definitively, “we are having lunch Sunday. You better take me to a good place.”

Mira looked resplendent Sunday. That did little to lift my spirit as I anticipated the hour of disparagement that lay ahead. That she would be a witness to my humiliation was no comfort.
 
Kar had a ferocious frown as I appeared. It changed dramatically the moment I introduced Mira and asked if she could be in the training car too. Kar beamed radiantly at her and said that it would “an honor and a pleasure” to have her with us.
 
He graciously held open the door for her and, to my surprise, took out his handkerchief and wiped the seat clean for her. He then told her that if she needed us to stop for any reason he would be very glad to do so.
 
Then he took his seat and nodded for me to start.
 
I knew I had made a bad start and waited for the usual blast. Instead came a dulcet reproof, “Mr. Nandy, you are doing all right, but the next time you should start a little more smoothly.” Unbelievable, particularly the honorific he had never used before.
 
I took a turn and missed giving the signal in time. “Mr. Nandy, it will be helpful if you give the signal early. It helps other drivers and pedestrians.” It was hard to believe that the instructions were coming from the same irascible instructor I had known earlier.
 
I changed gear as I picked up speed after the turn. Kar spoke up again, “You changed gear a wee bit early. No harm done. But remember to speed up a little more before you go to the top gear.” Then, with a broad and encouraging smile, “You will do so, won’t you?”
 
When the hour ended, Kar sounded near paternal when he said with a smile, “You are doing well. You will be an excellent driver yet.”
 
But his bigger smile was reserved for Mira, “It has been my greatest pleasure to have you with us. Please surprise us again with a visit. Any day.”
​
The moment Kar was out of sight, Mira turned sharply on me, “I don’t know why you have to malign that wonderful instructor. Ill-tempered? He is the sweetest and most chivalrous man I have seen in a while!”