My older friends complain that the young people don’t listen to their advice. I congratulate the young people for that. Never listen to anybody’s advice, including mine. They are not you, they don’t know what you want. Their advice is at best irrelevant, at worst misleading. Maybe you don’t know yourself what you want. You need to find out what you want, what you care to do, what you would like to be. Not listening to others’ advice is just the first step. There are many more steps to follow, but one has to begin by disregarding others’ counsel.
 
I have probably made a hash of my life. Most people do. Without a dress rehearsal, you don’t expect anybody to offer a peak performance on the opening night. At least I can say I created my mess mostly by myself. It would have been a double tragedy if I had bungled things on other people’s advice. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have lived my life in my own light, however dim that light may be. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to live a life according to others’ choices. The mistakes are all mine, and the credit for occasionally avoiding them is also mine.
 
This is the fun part of having reached the latter stage of my life. No one has much leeway when he or she is at mother’s breast or father’s feet. Even in school and college one’s freedom of choice is quite limited. When you start working, the choice is a little broader, at least for some. Still there are too many rules to observe. That ends when you stop working, or – as in my case – you start working for yourself. Your choice is much broader. This is the time to live for yourself.

​This is, therefore, the time to ask yourself: Who are you? You are somebody’s son, somebody’s spouse, somebody’s father. You are also somebody’s employee, somebody’s neighbor, somebody’s friend. If that is all you can say about yourself, you have nothing but a derived existence, dependent on others. If you strip away those dependencies, you are getting closer to the answer. Is there something you care for, something you have ever loved, something that has seemed worthwhile to you? Those things are closer to your bone and, to an extent, might tell you who you are.
 
You could also ask yourself: What have you ever enjoyed doing? Perhaps there was something you had pleasure in doing, making, creating, listening, writing or performing. Perhaps it was in the distant past, nearly forgotten, and is now merely a fragrant memory, but it could be worth recalling and exploring. The world has an insidious way of encroaching on our loves and sweeping them away like a discarded toy. Now may be the time to retrieve that plaything and play with it again.
 
I write this not as a prescription for others to follow, but as a tentative guidepost for myself. Nobody can tell me what is best for me today. I don’t know it either. But to live my life must mean pursuing the butterfly that catches my fancy.

​When I was a kid, along with my brother I produced a handwritten family news bulletin for my parents and us. I wrote in my school and college magazines. Those were fun pieces my friends loved and talked about. Then I started work. For decades I wrote nothing but thousands of letters and reports and memoranda. Some created waves, but most sank quietly into deserved oblivion.
 
Then last year I started writing a few pieces that had nothing to do with my work. Some essays, some memoirs. Even some stories. Some I write in my first language, that of my birthplace. Others I write in the language of my adopted land. I have also written some in a third language that has grown closer to my heart. In each idiom I feel a unique sense of freedom that I can’t seem to find in others. I am not trying to impress people with my versatility; I am just struggling to speak my heart. It is amazing how different the languages are, and how differently they let me express what I feel.
 
Nor am I trying to be Proust or Tolstoy, a great auteur. I am simply eager to express the ideas circling in my mind. That is my way of staying happy. Which is another way of saying: That is my way of living my own life, doing something that seems pleasant and meaningful.
 
Like many of our other assumptions, the great assumption that life is the best when one is young seems increasingly false. The ups and downs of youth, its uncertainties and acute miseries, often overshadow its buoyancy, and researchers are telling us aging brings a bigger share of peace and joy. It certainly allows a closer move toward your deepest values. It lets you do what you have long deferred: find yourself.
 
I would not take my dog’s admiration as proof that I am quite wonderful. Nor would I, as Goethe once said, if I were to find myself, I would want to run away. Wonderful or not, I just want to live my own life, uncluttered by others’ expectation, undaunted by others’ demands. Just my life.

​Joy and Sam, a friendly couple I have known for a while, adopted a child when he did a stint in Vietnam. She was a cute little girl whom I came to see and have dinner with them. After she went to sleep, we tiptoed into the nursery to see her fast asleep under the blanket, in the embrace of her favorite teddy bear. Joy bent down and fished out from a cupboard what the girl had hidden well out of sight: a bowl of rice. What the little girl had learned well in her orphanage was that food was not always available for children and she had to save some rice when she could. In that plush, well-furnished room, where the girl had every toy and could eat as much as she wanted, the sight of that bowl of old dried rice nearly brought me to tears.
 
How important can be a bowl of rice? I know now: very important.

​I am no cook. It is a pity, because I have realized that, to really appreciate food in a discriminating way, you have to learn to cook. Though I hung on to my mother’s apron strings as a child, I did not learn the art of cooking. Mother did the bulk of cooking, though sometimes she had help from another kitchen, to which father had access because of his job. We also had occasional gifts of a delicacy from the restaurant housed in the ground floor of our building, whose owner was dad’s friend.
 
Whatever we ate, we also ate rice. Mother’s culinary range had expanded, because she had friends from other states and countries. Our typical meal might include lentils as done in Tamilnadu and bread pudding as made in Scotland. The family had lived in Bihar and Maharashtra and mother had learned to make bread in a variety of ways that we liked. But no day passed without some rice on our plates.
 
When I started working and lived in my own apartment, I acquired a cook and moved, metaphorically, even farther from the kitchen. As I travelled in different countries, the pattern continued: a cook cooked and I ate. On rare occasions, especially if there were guests, I suggested what should be cooked.

​It is only in the last decade that I have taken charge of what goes inside me. I buy my own food and I prepare it. The choice is rather health-centered and the preparation is rather amateurish. I am content to do things in a simple way. That is when I discovered something.
 
Because I eat out frequently, and even at home the accent is on simplicity, it is not often that rice is on the menu. On the rare occasion that rice is on my plate, it is a spine-tingling experience for me. I have discovered anew what a wonderful thing rice is.
 
This will seem an exaggeration to many. There are those who consume quantities of rice, as in India, and some who consume it thrice a day, as in Bangladesh. They seem to take it for granted, as people take their spouses for granted or kids their parents. They would be taken aback to find someone singing hosannas of something as pedestrian as rice. They would never consider eating rice as it is, without a generous drenching of lentils or some form of sauce or salsa.
 
At the opposite end are the westerners I encounter who find the insidious intrusion of rice in an elegant repast a kind of alien invasion. What, their raised eyebrows suggest, is wrong with some herbed mashed potato or a baked potato topped with sour cream? Gently they place the side-dish of rice aside with an impatient fork and approach the solitary filet mignon, perhaps with a steamed broccoli or some Brussel sprouts.

​I rather like the Latin American habit of placing a discreet amount of rice, at a polite distance from the plato principal, lentils and salsa in a separate container at arm’s length, leaving you to treat the fragrant rice with the respect it deserves. Of course, I have seen the hoi polloi pour a large dab of salted butter on it before tasting a single grain. Such plebeian practices mean they have not experienced the magic of rice.
 
I was impressed by the reverence with which the Japanese treat their rice. The preparation has to be seen to be believed. I love the charming delicacy of their fried rice which seems to raise simplicity to an uncanny level of excellence.
 
It is a little embarrassing to place the Chinese fried rice a step down, since it was my early love. That is only because of my confusion between the eight different schools of Chinese cooking. I know that I adore Shanghai and Fujian cuisine, but the Hunan and Sichuan style of cooking rice I find a little overwhelming.
 
Let me not quibble. I am incurably partisan. I feel I have had rice so long in my youth that it runs in my blood. I will always long for rice, in one form or other, in whatever cuisine I run across. Heavens forbid, if it runs short, I can imagine myself hiding, very carefully indeed, a large bowl of rice somewhere in my cupboard.

​Wear your best dresses, switch on all the lights, turn on the liveliest music. A breathtaking event is about to happen.
 
In truth, the scene is pretty prosaic, a small room next to the chemical lab in Syracuse University. The only room that was available at short notice for a meeting of the Ukrainian students. It can accommodate only ten people. There are some folding chairs and two small tables. The walls could do with some painting.
 
Still this room is the site for a magnificent event, an unforgettable encounter of two people who will arrive at this point by a highly circuitous road.
 
Artem, 23, is the first to enter. New to the university, he is lonely and eager to pick a friend among other Ukrainians like him. How he comes to be here is quite a miracle.

​His grandmother had shrewdly guessed the winds of war and persuaded his reluctant grandfather to abandon their modest life and family connections in Lviv, at western end of Ukraine, for other shores. With the dissolution of Imperial Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Ukraine, never a tranquil land, had seen its western part endure harsh subjugation under the Poles. Now, with new war clouds gathering, she wanted desperately to escape more uncertainties. She wrote to some cousins in the US and took a boat with her husband and little daughter Yulia for New York.
 
Neither she nor her husband spoke a word of English. Entering the country was no problem, because nobody asked for a visa those days. He took a job as a meat carver, did it diligently for ten years, and also set about learning English. With his savings he then set up a small retail shop his wife could run. Two earnings, he thought, would not only ease their life, but also provide better for the child’s education.
 
Yulia did well in school and later in college, but, to the disappointment of her parents, did not meet any one she wanted to marry. They encouraged her to visit her native land, with the secret hope that she will meet an eligible Ukrainian lad. Old family relations invited her to endless social events, and her parents were thrilled to hear that she seemed to have taken to a teacher in the local school. Yulia, a determined woman like her mother, quickly made up her mind. She got engaged to Danylo.
 
When she heard that he might be conscripted, she went a step further. She married him, hoping to make a difference. It did not make a difference. Danylo was forced to join the army and went to the front. When he returned three years later, Yulia thought it was time for her to return to the bosom of her parents, along with her husband. Danylo too was eager to begin a new career in the new land. But they found that Yulia’s parents could not sponsor Danylo’s immigration, because they had never formally become US citizens. They had to wait another two years before they could finally land in New York’s giant immigration gateway in Ellis Island.
 
Five years later, Danylo and Yulia were finally a legitimate American couple, working decent jobs in retail stores and renting a modest apartment in Bronx. They were happy. Their happiness became complete when they had a healthy son, Artem.
 
Artem, a bright but shy boy, finished his school with distinction and chose Syracuse as his university, notable enough in reputation and close enough to his parents in Big Apple. Now he sits expectantly in the dingy room next to the chemical lab, as other Ukrainian students trickle in. 

And then the miracle happens.
 
In walks the world’s most beautiful woman. Or so it seems to Artem.
 
Yana too has arrived at this magical moment by a winding road. A dangerous and highly circuitous road.
 
Her grandparents lived in a tiny suburb of Kyiv, near the edge of Dnieper river, which had been devastated by wartime hardship and had decided to flee Ukraine rather than face the expected Soviet rule. They had gone west, past Lviv, after trudging endless miles and passing the frontier, to enter Hungary. Their daugher, Yulyana, could not walk anymore and they planned to take a train.
 
As they waited, the siren went on and the three of them took shelter in a primitive bomb shelter next to the train station. A train station was a prized target and the two Allied bombers struck home. The shelter was smashed to smithereens, the grandparents were both wounded, and their girl was lost in the wreckage. They started digging in the debris with their hands. When the others in the shelter understood what they were searching for, in spite of the language barrier, they too started digging and finally they found the half-dead girl under the fallen beams.
 
Some of the men who spoke German begged a retreating truck of German soldiers for help. The soldiers agreed to take the Ukrainian family and promised to get them some medical help. The Germans dropped the family in a town the next day and the grandparents at first did not know where they were. They realized eventually that they had been dropped off at a monastery. The monks gave first aid to the couple and treated their daughter. When the monks realized that the couple had nowhere to go and were afraid to return to their homestead in Ukraine, they offered a job to the grandfather of looking after the grounds and the grandmother a scullery maid’s position in the kitchen.
 
There they remained for five years. When, quite accidentally, a senior monk mentioned his friendship with a Dominican priest in New York, the grandfather expressed his interest, for he had heard of the inflow of immigrants in the new country. Six months later, their passage paid by the monks, the family arrived in Boston, on their way to a shelter in Brooklyn.
 
The couple found jobs in the public transport system, and the girl, Yulyana, grew up strong and healthy. She studied and worked at part-time jobs, went to college for two years and then dropped out, to marry a young professor, whom she detested initially, for he was Polish, but eventually came to admire and love. They had a bright and brilliant daughter, Yana, who, to her parents’ great pride, had no difficulty getting admission in Syracuse University.
 
Yana did not expect to meet Ukrainians in Syracuse, but she has come to the meeting, mostly out of curiosity, for she has heard many stories of Ukraine from her mother. And, now, here is a young, good-looking man introducing himself as Artem and gaping at her face.

​She smiles. She smiles a lot more when they date the following week. And the week after.
 
Fifty years later, they are still married, and they live a hundred yards from my home.
 
Yana still has a radiant smile. Artem still likes to see it every morning. They are still glad that their paths, however circuitous, miraculously crossed. 

When I was a kid, my parents complained that I occupied the bathroom for a long time. My brother, with his gift for hyperbole, would say, “If he enters the bathroom now, we will not see him until tomorrow.” He must have passed on the idea to his wife when he married, for I remember getting a birthday card from her twenty years later that pointedly quoted from Martin Luther’s diary, “The more you wash, the dirtier you get.”

​I am sorry to report that neither the complaints nor the sarcasm had the intended effect of reforming my behavior. I continue to tarry in the bathroom. I simply love the place. Buddhadev Basu wrote a charming essay years ago explaining why the bathroom was his favored place. He said that was the spot where he felt the most untroubled, immune from others’ demands. Nobody could reach him; family members hesitated to knock on the door. He was totally free of the world. To my family’s annoyance, I read the essay aloud to them after dinner.

​I don’t quite have the same problem. I live alone in a three-story home, where there are two bathrooms, and, in addition, what Americans call, two ‘half bathrooms,’ that is, bathrooms without a shower. I am never in the way of a guest or a visitor who feels an irresistible urge. Yet Basu had a point. Once you close the bathroom door, you have a world of your own, private and peaceful. Whatever mansion or hovel you live in, that remains a reassuring refuge.

A neighbor across the street, a widower, lives with his brother. The brother lost his job and his apartment, and came to live with his sibling – temporarily. That temporary period has now extended to seven years and looks certain to continue. My neighbor, though clearly very fond of his brother, has a recurrent theme in his conversation: he does not have a space to himself. He cannot speak on a phone, sure that he will not be overheard. He cannot be in a room, sure that his brother will not walk in. He dreams of the day he can again have his space to himself, though the prospect seems unlikely.

I have all the space I need to myself, in fact much more than that. Having grown up in India, where people live in smaller houses with smaller rooms, I have a recurrent sense of guilt for wasting so much space. I know I will be content with a smaller, one-level apartment, where all I need is an independent study or office. But, even in that smaller lodging, I would prefer two bathrooms, so that I don’t have to share it with a visitor. I would like the unhurried use of my bathroom behind a firmly closed door.

​My family, including my sister-in-law, was quite right: I shower for a long time. I thrill to the abundant sprinkling of modern shower heads, where you can regulate the volume and power of the water jets. I confess I am not yet used to the more modern types where the water jets come at you at various levels in different angles. I am sure they are very hygienic and serve to massage distinct parts of the body. My world-weary body is not yet accustomed to this cutting-edge innovation.

 I am guiltily aware that I use more water than I need to clean myself. UNICEF tells me that one billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water. At least I am not using the large bathtub in my other bathroom. I have used it sometimes, but the long ritual of filling it with warm water, putting in bath salt and immersing myself, while refreshing, is not for my everyday routine. I like the simplicity of a dial or a couple of faucets, and the next moment you are delightfully drenched from head to toe in warm water. 

In Japan, I was impressed by the practice of scrubbing and cleaning oneself before getting into the bath, which is really for relaxing. I use the shower for both, first for cleaning and then for relaxing in the warmth of flowing water. I follow the Japanese in another way: I turn up the water heat once I have showered for a while. It is supposed burn calories, reduce blood pressure and strengthen the heart. Whether you believe that or not, you cannot question what I immediately feel after a warm bath like that. It dramatically lifts my spirits and blows away my blues. I am glad to pay a little more for my water bills if it gives me this quick track to euphoria.

There are records of people taking a bath since 3000 BCE, and the Greeks and Romans had both public baths and private bathrooms, at least in the wealthier homes. Clearly the private ones were for cleaning and resting, while the public ones were for relaxing and chatting. From the sixteenth century, public baths went out of fashion, but the Japanese were smart and kept their wonderful sento and onsen. I loved the onsen in Chiba, though the locals clearly did not like that, unlike the Japanese, I had not waxed my bodily hair before immersing. Nor did they care for my daughter’s large tattoo.
 
My children may laugh at my long shower and my beloved sister-in-law may continue to send me sardonic notes. I tell myself that Homer’s heroes took baths to gain strength before a major encounter. The great Achilles’s mother Thetis bathed him in river Styx to make him invincible; sadly, she held him by his heel, which remained vulnerable. I too am vulnerable, very vulnerable, and not just in the heel.
 
But if I must have a room to myself, it has to be the bathroom.

For a couple of weeks, I was a house guest of the Shuklas in the California bay area. I am a poor guest, disorganized and forgetful. But Shubha treated me like a prince, making every comfort a certainty and every meal a gift to relish. Shiv took a day off from his hectic business schedule and offered to take me to any out-of-city site I wanted to see. I opted for the Asian Art Museum, famous for its collection of Sikh and Madhubani art and its ancient Buddha statue, excavated from Sultanganj when rail lines were being laid.
 
We had a wonderful leisurely trip, enjoying sights on the way. When we arrived at the museum we found out what we hadn’t checked in the website: it was closed that Tuesday. We were crestfallen; I was deeply disappointed, knowing I may not again have the chance to come there. As we wondered what we could do, we noticed a sign a few hundred yards away. A tea garden. We sauntered in.
 
It was a most astounding discovery. It was an oasis in the middle of a bustling city.

During the World Fair of 1894, as a part of the International Expo, a Japanese tea garden was built in the Golden Gate Park in California. It is the oldest public Japanese garden in the US, masterfully landscaped, three acres of plant, water and rocks clearly inspired by Buddhist and Shinto themes. When the Fair ended, in agreement with the city masters, Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese emigré and professional gardener, designed and modified the temporary exhibit into a permanent tea garden and became its official caretaker.
 
He looked after the garden for thirty years. He poured his money and passion into creating a garden of utmost perfection. He tripled the size of the garden and imported from Japan plants, birds and koi fish. He even secured the ornamental wooden gate of the Japanese pavilion when the 1915 Panama Pacific International Expo closed. After he died, his daughter Takano Hagiwara and her children scrupulously maintained the garden.

Shamefully, anti-Japanese feelings gripped the country during World War II, and Takano and her family were evicted from their home. They were shipped, along with 10,000 innocent Americans of Japanese origin, to a internment camp. Even when the war ended, the Hagiwaras were not allowed to return to their home or paid any compensation. Reportedly, their home was destroyed, along with a precious Shinto shrine. Rabid authorities even renamed the garden as an ‘Oriental’ tea garden. Much later, a plaque made by Ruth Asawa, known for her elegant metal sculptures, was placed in acknowledgement of the Hagiwara family’s remarkable contribution.

I did not know any of this when I walked into the garden. I confess that I am not fond of most gardens. They seem nurtured in blatant defiance of architect Mies van der Rohe’s classic principle of Less is More. People seem to stuff all the plants and flowers they like in a terrain, where everything looks crowded and the onlooker is overwhelmed rather than pleased. What a different impression this garden made on me! 

Everything was in its rightful place and everything seemed just perfect. There was unspeakable elegance in its delicacy and economy. The garden had a network of several pathways, each thoughtfully dispersed. There were arched drum bridges, charming pagodas, cherry blossom trees and serene koi ponds. There were native Japanese plants all over, with a tranquil zen garden. The artistic configuration of rocks and water provided a calm ambience. The grass and stonework and waterfalls completed the picture. The bonsai trees offered a gentle finishing touch.

I stood there. Ambled a short while. And stood again. It was electrifying in the speed with which the garden took away your cares and concerns. I just stood there and breathed peace. I felt at peace with the world. There was balance and flow everywhere in that quiet scene.
 
We walked some more, and then walked over, fittingly, to the tea house. I ordered the matcha set, which includes matcha tea that is served in the tea ceremony and the red bean paste daifuku. The matcha, brewed in the traditional concentrated way had a mildly bitter taste and exactly matched the sweet daifuku. Others had jasmine, hojicha, sencha and iced green tea along with rice cakes kuzumochi and bean paste pancakes dorayaki.

​Then we walked out of the quiet Japanese dream in the heart of San Francisco.
 
I suddenly remembered that was quite the feeling I had when I sat, silently, in the sanctuary of the Kopan monastery in Nepal, waiting to see the Rimpoche. I was at peace even before I met him. On the way out, I read a Tibetan proverb.
 
It said: To live well and long, eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.