​I voted this week. The presidential election is in November, but I may be out of town on the day. So I took permission and voted today.

I like voting in the US. It is quite straightforward and fairly well organized. The voting booth is usually some place near your home. When you arrive everything is clearly marked; you know where to go, what to do. If you have any doubt, there are always representatives of the parties who are eager to help. Once you enter the hall and identify yourself, you get the ballot and go to the machine to record your vote. It is swift and simple.

I spent a number of years overseas, but that did not preclude my voting. I could mail my ballot and I did. I had to make a bit of an effort to find out information about the candidates, but I was certainly not excluded from the electoral process.
​
As I stood in line, I also liked the fact that I saw around me a wide variety of people. I saw men and women, old and young, Hispanics, African Americans and Asians like me. They had all come to vote early, because they had things to do on election day or they simply preferred to vote early. They had all come enthusiastically to discharge their citizen duty and vote.

I know, of course, that this picture is misleading. 45 percent of US adults – nearly half! –simply do not care to vote. Doubtless a small percentage may be people who are traveling, have to attend to some emergency or simply forget, but a voting percentage of 55 percent is disturbingly low, compared to Belgium’s 87 percent or Turkey’s 83 percent. Whatever values our schools, colleges and universities may be inculcating in the young, citizen spirit is not among those. A wiseacre once said that an American would rather cross an ocean to fight for democracy than cross the street to vote for a candidate.

One would have thought then we would try to get more people to vote. In most countries registration for voting is automatic or mandatory; they try to make it easy for people to vote. Canadians, who have a large, federal system like ours, are registered 93 percent. In the US, a third of the people are unregistered and cannot even go to the voting booth. You have to register before an unrealistic deadline, certainly before the election; after that you sometimes have to pay a fine. ​

There is a concerted Republican effort to create more roadblocks. Many states require identifying documents – some prescribe photos – which are harder for the poor, elderly or handicapped. This is ostensibly to prevent impersonation, though there is not the slightest evidence of significant fraud. Only 31 cases have occurred since 2000. On that excuse some state have ‘purged’ their voter rolls, invariably to eliminate minority community members and gain a political advantage. The US has the dubious glory of being, not only the world’s largest jailer with 2.2 million in prison and 4.8 million on probation or parole who can’t vote, but also the only country to deny votes to people even after they have served their sentence, in some cases for ever. Since African Americans represent 39 percent of the incarcerated, nearly three times their share of the population, this too has a clear political angle to hamstring minority voting.

Clearly, we need to follow the lead of other societies that have successfully registered virtually their entire adult population so that they are all entitled to vote. Then we need to remove the roadblocks, such as the unnecessary requirement of identifying documents, and the tendentious restriction of voting days and hours, as in several states. People, even the older, poorer and handicapped people, should find it easy and convenient to vote and gain the satisfaction of taking part in deciding the society’s future path.
​
I voted and voted comfortably. I was happy to vote against the people who seem not to care whether every other person can do so too.

​Poetic justice may be rare, but it does occur periodically.
 
Several American veterans live in the Philippines and they sometimes come to Citizen Services section of the US Consulate for assistance.
 
Bill, a large jut-jawed long-haired man, appeared one morning.

​My secretary, teary-eyed, reported that Bill had been calling her and the clerk unmentionable names, saying he had been kept waiting too long. I did not want my staff abused and asked that he be ushered into my office.
 
Bill came in with a noticeable frown and, after a quick glance at me, declared that he didn’t want to speak with a ‘brownie.’ The word is a common pejorative term for Asians.
 
I told him I was the consul and I would like to help. He repeated he didn’t want to have anything to do with a ‘brownie.’
 
I again explained to him that I was in charge of the consulate and would be glad to assist if he told me his predicament. Anticipating that he was expecting a Caucasian, I also explained that my superior, the Ambassador, would not be available for such consular matters.
 
This time he said with a grimace that he didn’t care to deal with ‘brownies.’
 
I called the Marine guards. They are usually men of few words: they simply picked him up and threw him on the street outside.
 
I thought that was the end of Bill. But sometimes life offers, unlike Hollywood, an interesting sequel.

​As a part of my consular responsibility, I made it a principle to visit the local prison every month to speak to American prisoners. It turned out that Bill was there. Speaking to his landlord, somehow enraged, he had pulled a knife, and the landlord had called the police.
 
In the jail, he had spoken insultingly to the staff and threatened a guard, and they had put him in chains.
 
When he appeared before me, he realized I was his only hope. He begged me to help him.
 
I told him I was still a ‘brownie’ but would do my best. I got him a good lawyer and I requested the jailor to take off his chains.
 
Bill stood there, as I was leaving, bedraggled, cowed and totally bereft of his earlier bravado. I turned and gave him a gift of two boxes of American cereals, something I knew from past experience American prisoners missed in the local prison.

The last animal you will ever see domesticated is: your mind. I know it from my experience.

Just try a simple experiment. Sit in a comfortable chair, away from all distractions. Shut off your television, silence your phone, close the door and even the windows if you like. Think of any one subject. Can you do so for five minutes, without your mind straying once? For two minutes?
​
All your years in school, college and university have been in vain and all your years learning to swim, cycle, master this art or that science, have gone to waste if you can’t even discipline your own mind for two minutes. You can’t control what the Buddhists call your ‘monkey mind.’ It just keeps jumping from point to point, irresistibly and irresponsibly, and it seem you can do little about it. Your most important asset, your mind, you can’t restrain. Like a frisky animal, it is an undisciplined, purposeless force. When you think you have worked on a task or an idea for an hour, at least a half, possibly two-thirds, of that time your mind has been moonlighting on other distracting ideas.

Many years ago, Tetris, the computer game became a rage. Everybody played the game. I came late to the game and scored much less than anybody I knew, especially my secretary. I practiced a lot and steadily improved my score. After a while I seemed to have reached a plateau, where my score stayed put no matter how hard I tried. Two weeks later I broke out of that level and my score rose again, though slowly, until I again reached a plateau. Another plateau or two later, when my score seemed perennially stuck, I decided to try a different track. I went to bed early, slept well, got up early, shaved, showered, meditated for a half-hour, then, calmly, sat down to play. I scored better than ever before, much better.
​
What made the difference, I asked myself. The answer was obvious. My mind was in a better place, calm and collected. My skill or will was no greater than before, but my mind was better able to guide my proficiency to a higher score. 

I don’t play Tetris any more, but the lesson stayed with me. I took to playing Sudoku puzzles, a game of logic that is sometimes mistaken for a mathematical game. It is certainly a more contemplative diversion, requiring no nimble finger play or hasty attention to tumbling blocks. I love the divine simplicity of the game and the devilish complexity of mastering it. I can play it sitting at my desk, or I can play it lying in my bed. I can play it in books, magazines and newspapers, with pencils and erasures, or – needless to say it these days – I can play it on my computer or tablet.

The game involves the application of two brutally basic principles, those of inclusion and exclusion. You include a number in a given cell if the other numbers in the row, column or segment require its inclusion because it is not there. On the other hand, you exclude a number from a given cell, if the other numbers do not allow it, for the simple reason that the number is already used. Yet in applying these two simple principles, you occasionally find yourself sweating, cerebrally and metaphorically of course, and cursing yourself for engaging in a masochistic time-killer.
​
Since I seldom have time to engage in the diversion during the day, I find myself Sudoku-embattled usually close to the midnight hour. The result is that, given a difficult puzzle, I often have to leave it half-solved – half-puzzled over what the next step ought to be. The miracle is that, when I resume after a gap of several hours, often a day, more often than not I immediately spy an opening. I find the opening so quickly and easily that I cannot help ask the question: Why do I see a breach now that I didn’t see earlier? What changed and for what reason?

The truth is that patience, persistence and pertinacity – qualities that we have been asked to develop from our childhood and that go so well with the quality of obedience that our elders so valued – work only up to a point. Beyond that point, it is like battering your head against a wall. Then it is better to walk back and try from a different angle. We are creatures of circumstance as well as success. What worked for us once we cannot let go and persist in, no matter the prospect. A temporary withdrawal is not an abject abdication, but a strategic regress, to review, rethink and return with a better perspective. Even when we don’t consciously cogitate on a topic, the very act of stepping back provides a new perspective. It helps us come back with a fresh point of view.
​
Even if it is only to return to the dubious, masochistic joy of the next Sudoku.

I was working late in the US Consulate in Kathmandu when the telephone rang. As the secretary had left, I answered, and when the caller said, “Namaskar,” I responded with the same word. The caller continued in Nepali and explained his problem in detail. I listened and suggested a solution, also in Nepali. He thanked me and said he would call the American officer the next day. I told him that he was indeed talking with an American officer: I was the Consul.

Evidently surprised, the caller said, “But you are speaking Nepali!”

I laughed and said, “Because Nepal doesn’t have a law that foreigners cannot speak the language.” I explained that I had learned the language when I was in Haiti and was the US contact person for the Nepalese contingent in a UN multinational force.

The caller then complimented me on my accent and said, “I work at the Home Ministry. Why don’t you drop in some day and have a cup of tea with me? Please let me know if I can be of help any time. My name is Khadka.”
​
I might have forgotten about the exchange, except for what happened three weeks later. I was scrutinizing visa applications, when my secretary reported that a young couple was waiting in the hall and the wife was visibly distraught and in tears. I asked the couple in.

The story they narrated was intriguing. Craig, from an affluent midwest family, had always been an idealist and joined a private voluntary organization in Chicago. They sent him to work on a water project near Dharan in southern Nepal. While he went to work in different locations, his wife, Clara, taught basic English and mathematics to some village children. As she did so on front porch of her home, she would notice a girl, possibly five or six, skeletal and filthy, clearly a waif, playing on the street.

Passing her one day, Clara gave her a candy. The next day, the girl, possibly trying to get Clara’s attention, was playing in front of her home. She got another candy. Then on she got a candy or cookie each day. A week later Clara was in a local bazaar and saw a girl’s dress and bought it, as it cost next to nothing. The next day she was about to replace the girl’s tattered frock, when she realized how dirty she was, living on the street. She called her in, gave her a bath and then put the dress on. Clearly the girl was pleased and surprised in equal measure, wearing the only new dress she had ever worn. From then on the girl – her name was Maya – imperceptibly became a part of Clara and Craig’s village life.

Two years later, when the project ended and the time came for them to return to the US, they realized to their surprise that they could not leave without Maya. They came to Kathmandu, went to the Home Ministry and applied for adoption, expecting no glitches, since she was an orphan, with no relations to claim her. Then they came up against a legal wall: Craig could not adopt, for under Nepal’s law a person could not adopt a child unless one was at least thirty years of age, and Craig was nine months short. Clara was even younger. They were despondent and had turned to me as a last recourse.

Unfortunately I had no reassuring answer for them. I could not contend against a well-intentioned law designed to protect children. Then I thought of Khadka, who, I had found out, was the Deputy Minister. I called and said I would indeed like to join him for tea. He was friendly and gracious, and said I could come right away.

I took Craig and Clara with me, but advised them to sit in the waiting room and not say a word. Khadka was a sun-tanned, heavy-browed man, squat but nimble, in an elegant Asian jacket. He greeted me with great warmth, but I knew from his face that he guessed I had come with a purpose. I decided to be candid.

“I want to show you a photo,” I said, and pulled out a picture of Maya.

“I see it is a very young girl,” he responded, with a questioning look.

“You will also notice that it is an ordinary girl. She isn’t pretty at all.” I added bluntly.

“Now I want you to take a look at her medical file.” I pushed a file toward him, “You will notice she has a large number of health problems: of eyes, ears, skin, stomach and general health.”

I proceeded, “That isn’t surprising. She is an orphan and has lived most of her life on the street, eating scraps and spoiled food neighbors have thrown out. Nobody has cared for her, nobody wanted her.”

Khadka listened intently.

“Now a miracle has happened. Somebody loves her and wants to adopt her. It is the first and possibly the only break in her miserable life. But the couple who want to take her are less than thirty years, and the law stands in the way. I have no way to solve that problem. So I am asking for your help.”

I added, “Because the couple is American, I am pleading their case. But, believe me, I am pleading even more for a little girl who has this one chance for a better life. Your life and mine will go on as before if the adoption doesn’t go through; even this couple will eventually reconcile to their loss. It is only Maya who would have lost her one opportunity to not be just another waif on the street.”

The secretary had brought the tea, and Khadka asked him for Maya’s adoption application file. He signaled me to drink the tea while he studied the file. He quickly reached the last page and started writing. 

When he had finished, he gave me the file to read. Invoking the appropriate section and subsection of the law, Khadka had written that he was granting a humanitarian exception to the law and the adoption would be allowed to proceed.

I thanked Khadka, saying that Nepalese tea had never tasted better, and left. In the waiting room, when I had the explained the outcome, Craig hugged me and Clara wept some more.

I know I had said something wrong to the Nepalese minister. Every Christmas Craig and Clara send me a family photo, and this year I looked carefully at their adolescent daughter. I had told Khadka that Maya was an ordinary girl, not pretty at all. I was wrong. She is beautiful.

It was my birthday last week. I was flattered to receive a lot of messages, from friends, acquaintances and even strangers. It was a pleasing experience and a signal contradiction of my occasional feeling – I guess everybody has it sometimes – that none remembers my existence.

When I grew up in India, I had a clear edge over my friends. My birthday was always a public holiday: it was the birthday of Gandhi. Father could skip his office and take me somewhere special. Mother, who did not have to work either, could stay at home and cook something special for me. They made me feel special and, when my friends came, to my great pleasure they were treated royally too.
​
Now, I am not sure why, I seem to feel a little embarrassed when somebody tries to do something special on my birthday. It is pleasant to be with friends, perhaps drink a glass of wine. That is enough for me. What pleases is that someone remembers.

A birthday is a time not just for cakes and ale, but also for review and retrospection. Fortunate perhaps is the man who knows from the start where he wants to go and proceeds there along a straight line. Certainly his life is simpler. VS Naipaul wrote that he knew from Day One he didn’t want to do anything but just write. That has not been my life.

As a kid, like other kids, I dreamed of a fun life, full of adventure. World War II was in full swing and I saw the planes roaring away in the bright Indian sky. I thought of being a pilot, not knowing that many of them were flying to their flaming end. Later I fell in love with cricket and imagined being like Don Bradman, the Australian wizard of a batsman.
​
Even later, after I heard the brilliant Hungarian writer, Arthur Koestler, speak in Kolkata, I borrowed a phrase from him to express my dream: I would like to walk on the line of intersection of the planes of thought and action. I worshipped the world of ideas, but I didn’t want to live there all the time; I also craved for the world of action. I remember how I admired Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General, who flew instantly to every trouble spot on the globe during the day, only to retire at night and jot his Markings. I still adore his definition of strength, “Only one feat… not to run away.”

But the world was hardly my oyster and I did not have many choices. I had to start making a living – quickly. I ended up working as an executive in two multinational groups, and later as an international development specialist with the UN and a diplomat. I grew up and lived in one country for many years, then moved to several countries in succession, and ended up living in another country. I discovered that much professional work – certainly all that I have done – has plenty of opportunity for both thought and action. Most who perform it, however, do not care to walk on that line of intersection; they are all ideas or all action. The sad part is that often the ideas are mundane and the action pedestrian. It is painful to push for new ideas or unusual action. Many times I was reminded of a character in a TS Eliot play who said, “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”

I have struggled to find fulfillment in my work, for work was important to me. I have also struggled to find fulfillment in the rest of my life, with mixed success. One is occasionally tempted to wonder why one has to struggle so much to achieve so little. Some friends seem to sail more smoothly and accomplish more easily. Perhaps they have a better handle on life.

Every birthday represents the crux of a curious anomaly. Everything you do is unimportant, because whatever you do matters little in the vast cosmos and in the eternity of time. All is forgotten and put aside. At the same time, everything you do matters greatly, for it makes a difference to the world around you and the people in front and back of you. Because of that it makes a vast difference to your life.

That night a thoughtful neighbor came with a birthday cake, on which there was a solitary candle. For me it was a good reminder. The birthday candle burns brighter when you remember that it will eventually burn out.

​A large diplomatic cocktail party in an Asian country. Lots of food, lots of drinks, and lots of guests. The host is the American Consul: me.
 
Though there are secretaries, assistants and other people to help, I prefer to open the door personally to welcome guests to my home. I was doing so for each incoming guest.

​An American couple came in. I smiled and said Good Evening. The husband looked at me but did not respond. At first I wondered if he had heard me. Then I realized that, from my looks, he had inferred I was a domestic help and beneath the level of a polite response.
 
I extended my hands then to take the coat from his wife. She said, as she divested herself of the fur coat, “It is an expensive coat.” Though I nodded to indicate that I had understood, she stressed, “It is a very expensive coat. Take good care.” She placed a dollar bill in my pocket.

​I hung the coat in a closet and went in. The barman was giving drinks to the couple. My assistant said to them, “Let me introduce you to our host, the Consul.” The man’s jaw dropped in surprise and the woman started stammering, “Oh, I am so sorry. I hope you don’t mind.”
 
I raised my voice just a little bit, so that all the guests in the hall could hear me, and said, “I don’t mind at all, unless you ask back for the tip that I have earned.”