​The Malliks, our neighbors, were an affluent family and every year they went on a family vacation. Roy, their eldest son, was in my class and would tell me of the exotic places they visited. I must have evinced some interest – my family could only afford to visit relatives for vacation! – because one summer Roy startled me by inviting me to join him on his family jaunt. My parents were hesitant, but once they had spoken to Roy’s dad, a hearty sociable businessman, they felt reassured and let me go. I was thrilled, for I had never spent two full weeks on a beach, living in a five-star hotel.
 
Roy had some of his dad’s disposition and in no time made dozens of friends in the hotel and on the beach. It meant I too had a glorious time in the company of new and exciting friends. We ate delectable food, played games and went on excursions to local tourist spots in two large cars Roy’s family had rented. But I also enjoyed the quiet, lazy hours I spent with Roy in our double room overlooking the sea, chatting about our life and dreams.

​Roy said he didn’t want to be an engineer like his father; nor did he want to run a business. Rather he wanted to be a forest officer, like my uncle he had met, live in a quiet rural town, explore the woods every day and come home in the evening and listen to folk music. He loved the sea, he said, and would take every vacation on a beach. He said he liked the sea so much that he would one day like to die right next to it. We spent our days swimming long hours and then relaxing on the beach under a large umbrella and reading.

​We went our different ways after school and I heard that Roy had joined his dad’s company, which surprised nobody. Within two years, however, he found a job with the government’s forest service and went to work in a remote corner of India. We exchanged an occasional letter and, five years later, we met up for a drink. Roy loved his work and lived the way he had dreamed, except that he had now a wife and baby. He said his pay wasn’t good enough for his family to vacation on the beach, but he expected shortly to save enough to be able to take his wife and child for a vacation on the beach we had been together.
 
Seven years later I had a letter on familiar hotel stationery: Roy had taken his wife and daughter to the beach where we had spent a summer together and was staying in the same hotel and, believe it or not, in the same room overlooking the sea. It had taken him some time, but he had fulfilled his project of a family vacation on the beach. I felt happy for him.
 
It was a shock to get a notice of a funeral service for Roy a few days later. I called his wife and expressed my sympathy, but could not bring myself to ask her how his end had come. She volunteered it was ‘sudden’ but did not explain whether it was an accident or an unexpected health problem. That left me free to imagine: Roy was swimming in the ocean, his body glistening in the late-afternoon sun, his arms moving rhythmically as his ears echoed the folk music he enjoyed, his eyes on the beach he so loved, his heart peaceful and jubilant.

​Dan was grossly obese. From the moment he joined our school, he was the butt of many jokes. He tried to be friendly, but the other boys and I would have none of it. I did not particularly want to be unkind to him, but I considered it important to be one of the crowd. That Dan was from a wealthy family and came to school in a chauffeured car somehow made it easier to laugh at his expense.
 
One day I fractured an ankle on the school playground. The headmaster called my father, but it would be a long time before he could find a taxi and come to fetch me. Dan asked his driver to give me a lift home. After that Dan and I started spending time together, and I found him genuinely good-natured and amiable. To my surprise he ate very little; a thyroid problem accounted for his large size. Doctors continued to treat his condition, but he seemed placidly resigned to it.

​I hid my friendship with Dan from our classmates, even going along with their cruel jokes, though it made me increasingly uncomfortable. Then Dan began coming to school less regularly. He told me he had begun to feel unwell, as a specialist had warned his parents he might.
 
Finally Dan stopped coming to school altogether. The teacher told us he had become quite sick. Without telling my classmates, I went to see him. When I sat down next to his bed, he smiled wanly. He was writing in a notebook — keeping a journal of his illness, he said, so that he could later tell our class what he had been through. He wanted his classmates to understand why he was so large.

​I admired his beautiful fountain pen. I had never seen such a fancy writing instrument before. Dan promptly said I could borrow it and return it to him the next time I visited. Maybe it was his way of ensuring I would come back. I took the pen and showed it off to friends the next day, though I avoided mentioning where I’d gotten it.
 
I never visited Dan again. The following week the headmaster announced that Dan had passed away in his sleep.
 
I went home and looked at the beautiful pen and wished I had openly acknowledged him as a friend.

With four extraordinary photographs from my talented friend, Kashyap Ray @kashyray

Yes, Kolkata is a city in eastern India. But there are many Kolkatas. Rich Kolkata and poor Kolkata. North Kolkata and south Kolkata. Elegant Kolkata and grimy Kolkata. Amazing how many Kolkatas there are. But for me there are only two Kolkatas. The Kolkata I lived in thirty years ago and the Kolkata I now visit.

In fact, the Kolkata I grew up in had a different name, Calcutta. Up to the end of the 16th century, India was the world’s richest country with the largest economy. So the British, the greatest maritime power at the time, sought a trading license from the royal Nawab to make use of the riverine port of Calcutta and three villages. Over the years they fortified their trading post and eventually, treacherously, ejected the Nawab. They made Calcutta their capital, the starting point of their Indian empire, the jewel in the British crown.
​
Calcutta was certainly my own private empire, the jewel of my life. 

Thirty years I walked its winding streets, drank its sweet milky tea and breathed its acetic air, happily and with gusto. I lived in succession in Mechua Bazar, College Street, Wellington Street, Park Circus, Ballyganj and eventually in Alipore – the first three in relatively modest areas, and the latter three, especially the last, in elite environs. Even when we lived in a run-down neighborhood, we had decent digs with functional furniture, and I always had a room of my own. So I could be by myself, read endless books in preferred isolation and listen to popular music and dream dreams.
​
Modest barrios have their benefits. It was the only time in my life, I got to know slum kids as I played soccer with them and they treated me as equals, without distance or deference. Thanks to my parents, who had a large circle of friends, I had a vast assortment of kids as friends, from the rambunctious child of a Scottish professor to a quiet but mischievous neighborhood girl who spoke little but wrote me long and suggestive notes. Our living room was curiously egalitarian: father wanted us kids to sit with adults and discuss whatever caught our fancy, even the multiple affairs of a Hollywood star du jour.

I fondly remember a Turkish journalist who stayed with us and taught mother how to make some lamb delicacies and a Japanese scholar who sang hosannas of Sushi and helped an Indian boy overcome his natural distrust of uncooked pesce. Unencumbered by the rules of hygiene, I ate with friends whatever street vendors dished out, with miraculous triumph over intestinal disorders.

I went walking everywhere, taking a bus only when the few coins in my pockets permitted it. It didn’t seem arduous or unpleasant at all, and I saw things you see only when you are not whizzing past in a car. You saw every pedestrian, every beggar, every fruit seller, every rickshaw-puller with his lined, sweat-soaked face. On Kolkata’s crowded roads your shoulders touched that of other passers-by; you had to be aware of the people, men or women, tall or short, old or young, that lived around you.
​
When I came out of the university and took a job with an affluent corporation, I was transported overnight into another world. I got to see the elite clubs, the fancier restaurants and the night life of the well-heeled, especially the movie stars for whom I did an occasional stint on scripts. It was, however, to the credit of Kolkata that it had bistros and coffee houses where the different worlds intermingled. Politicos and professors, reporters and policemen, executives and clerks, all talked, argued, analyzed, discussed, fought and made up. Kolkata was breathlessly alive on the streets and inside.

After decades overseas in different continents, now that I live in the west, I make an annual pilgrimage to Kolkata, partly to see friends and partly to renew my link with a city I still don’t want to become an alien universe. It is a quite a different Kolkata I visit.

A mammoth, modern airport beckons you. The roads are better, major street corners have become flyovers and the cars bear wellknown brand names. Some of the advantages are balanced by a fierce flow of traffic and a swollen and careless army of pedestrians. Many old buildings, even the ones I knew and loved, have yielded place to large condominiums. Some shops, run by family businesses I once knew, still exist, but several have ceded ground to large shopping malls that are impressive but seem a little impersonal to me.
​
The city has a different look – and a different price. The last pair of shoes I bought when I lived there was for thirty rupees; when I came for a World Bank mission twenty years ago I paid three hundred for a comparable pair; now it costs three thousand. A breathtaking variety of cuisine, Indian and Indianized Asian or western food, offers the gourmand a tantalizing temptation. Friends invite me to a number of clubs, still bastions of peace and grace, and the service is jaw-dropping.

I don’t walk as much as I used to, though I would love to: the sidewalks show neglect and are crowded, not the least because vendors have misappropriated a slice. Walking in the dusk, with the breeze in my face, feels strangely nostalgic, and, when I get lost, people on the street seem strangely solicitous to help me regain my bearing. One or two will even walk several yards to show me the correct turn.

That, to me, is quintessential Kolkata. Other things change, but remarkably the people haven’t changed all that much. They are busier, more hard pressed, more squeezed by the demands of more demanding offices and factories. But they have defiantly retained some of their pristine habits or virtues. They are helpful. They are warm. They are companionable. They talk, express, exult and pull no punches to tell you what they think of the government, the city, the people around them, and their own life. They are voluble, candid and lively. They are exactly as I remembered the people of this exciting and confusing city.
​
I will keep visiting, and getting excited as well as confused.

I was the foreman of a jury in a murder trial and, unexpectedly, got to know both the principal prosecuting and defense lawyers.

The defense counsel, Chadda, was a tall, angular man with wavy, dark hair and bushy eyebrows. Generally he had a hectoring style and a pugnacious demeanor. He left you in no doubt which side he was on and what he was prepared to do for that side.
​
So, when I got to know him better after the trial had ended, I was surprised to find that in private he was a very different person. He was suave and considerate, eager to hear your view, patient to a fault. Clearly his courtroom style was one he affected because he thought it gave him a professional edge.

He told me he had worked as a government prosecutor for several years and sent dozens of people to prison for long terms, satisfied that he was putting criminals in their deserved place. Over the years, however, he started having doubts. Defendants, he could see, were having a poor deal. Poor people were represented mostly by low-status lawyers eager to make a deal rather than go to trial; that saved their time but always meant a longer time for their clients behind the bars. If the case went to trial, the government lawyers invariably had better resources for investigating facts and gathering evidence, and the defendants would have the cards stacked against them. Chadda no longer felt he was helping dispense justice. He left his job and went to work as an independent lawyer, defending clients in criminal cases.

“I no longer had a salary. Nor did I have a well-guarded, well-appointed office, a secretary and an assistant, and a bunch of professional staff I could count on for help. But I was free of all political or official pressure, free to practice law as I wanted.”
​
He added, “I was free, above all, to choose the cases I took, delve into them as much as I cared, handle them exactly the way I thought best. I decided to choose my cases carefully: cases where I could make a mark or where I would be able to make a noticeable difference. Yes, I wanted to be noticed.”
​
He explained his aggressive style, “Prosecutors in general were a proud lot for a good reason. Their adversaries were often poorly paid, insufficiently prepared lawyers ready to strike a deal and avoid a trial. I wanted a trial, where I could punch a hole in their hubris. I accepted a few briefs, investigated personally, prepared rigorously and went to court like a gladiator.”

In three years Chadda had established a reputation as a persistent, painstaking practitioner who could be trusted to put up the best fight for his clients. He started getting important cases, cases that drew attention to his performance. In the fourth year, he got what his heart craved for, a murder case where the prosecution was asking for capital punishment.

It was a brutal case in an nearby village. An affluent farmer had been killed with a machete, his head nearly severed with a formidable strike. There was no eyewitness, but since the man had a land dispute with a neighboring farmer for years and their dispute had burst into ugly brawls in public more than once, the other farmer, Jit, was a prime suspect and promptly interrogated. The police gathered a large body of circumstantial evidence and charged Jit. The local lawyer who had initially advised Jit knew that he would be beyond his depth in a capital case. So he bowed out and the brief came to Chadda.

“I studied the voluminous file punctiliously, examined and reexamined every shred of evidence, then went to the village and visited the scene of crime. I memorized every name, checked every photograph with a microscope, and studied all the police and medical reports.”

“Didn’t you speak with the alleged killer, Jit himself?” I asked.
​
“At that stage, no. I make it a principle never to ask the client if he or she has committed the crime. Often clients lie and say they are innocent. In any case, their guilt or innocence is none of my business. It is for the judge to decide that. As their lawyer, my responsibility is to present the best defense, the most credible and advantageous interpretation of the evidence on their behalf. I spoke to him for a few minutes just before the trial only to reassure him and to advise him not to open his mouth.”

The trial lasted four days, the first two days mostly a procession of witnesses to establish the chain of evidence.

“It wasn’t done badly, but, as always, there were loose links. I was armed to the teeth and I exploited every lapse. I questioned the official witnesses mercilessly. Then the prosecutor presented his arguments, competently but perfunctorily. Finally, at the end of the third day. it was my turn.

“I had prepared well, and I delivered my points with all the eloquence I could muster. I emphasized that there were undeniable gaps in the evidence and none could send an innocent man to his death on that basis. The jurors were clearly spellbound. Even the judge looked impressed.
​
“As the court adjourned for the day, I was certain that I had scored a victory. Then the strange thing happened.

Chadda took a sip of his drink and said, “Jit, my client, had expressed a need to consult me and the guards brought us together in a small room next to the judge’s chamber. The man thanked me profusely for my effort.

​I was about to leave, when he suddenly blurted out, ‘I am genuinely sorry I killed that man in a rage. Please save me.’”

Chadda continued, “I came out of the court in a daze. Unknown to me, working hard to find holes in the evidence, I had convinced myself of the innocence of my client. Now I knew he wasn’t innocent. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept running in my mind the picture of the blood-soaked victim. And the thought of the killer I had helped to set free.”
​
The next morning, Chadda said, he was the happiest man on earth when the judge took the jurors’ verdict and declared that defendant had been found guilty. Following the jury’s recommendation, however, instead of sending him to the death row, he gave the man a life sentence. Chadda had lost the case, but he had learned a lesson.

​We had broken up three years earlier. I had been dating someone else off and on, and I had heard she was dating someone too. She was not far from my mind, though I knew she was irretrievably in the past.
 
Then I decided to make a break with that past and move to another country. I started getting rid of the furniture and then of the smaller items. The most difficult was to let go of personal letters and photographs.
 
The last day, as I sorted the remaining photographs, I suddenly gasped: there were, in my collection still, three photographs of her that I had taken, which I liked and which she liked too. I held them in my hand for a long time, knowing that I could not take them with me and I could not destroy them either. They were just too beautiful. Also, she was just too beautiful.
 
There was only one thing to do. I got into my car and drove to her office. The receptionist, who knew me, smiled and went in to fetch her. She came back with a frown and a message: she could not see me.
 
I gave her the envelope with the photos, “Please give it to her.”
 
I would have liked to see her my last day in the country, but it was not to be.
 
I went back home, had an early dinner and started working on the endless chores one must finish before exile.

​It was midnight when the bell rang. I opened the door and found her standing. Barely. She held on to the door to keep her balance and she was reeking of wine. I was astonished. I had known her for years, and she never drank. She disliked the stuff.
 
I held her arm and brought her in. She collapsed on the sofa.
 
 “Those photos were good,” she said. The words slurred.
 
 “But,” I hesitated, “you don’t seem so good now. Are you all right?”
 
A second later she started getting sick. She retched helplessly on the floor, the sofa and even on herself.
 
I carried her to the bathroom and turned on the shower on us both. Once clean, I dried her hair, helped her put on my pajamas and put her to bed. I made her swallow two aspirins and let her go to sleep.
 
I washed, dried and ironed her clothes for the next day. Then I readjusted the cushions on the just-washed-mildly-moist sofa and tried to go to sleep.

​Slender fingers nudged me awake. I saw the burgundy nails before I saw her face. It still looked as beautiful as ever. She had found and put on her clothes.
 
 “I have to go,” she murmured. That murmur had always entranced me.
 
At the door I felt I could not let her go. She was important to me. What we had was important. Nothing else mattered. I wanted to tell her that. No words came to me.
 
Finally, hesitantly, I said, “Please write to me,” and gave her a card.
 
She looked at me, the very last time, and said, “I will.”
 
We both knew it was a lie.