​Legend has it that a young prince of Nepal turned his back on a lavish life and became a wise preceptor when he stepped out of the royal precincts and saw three sights: a dead man, a very sick man and an old man. The first two are easy to understand, and aging too is a dismal prospect in tradition. Is it still so?
 
Exhibit Number One is my friend Din, who played Tic-Tac-Toe with me in school when the history lessons became mortally boring. He has both high blood pressure and high blood sugar, as many above sixty seem to have, but is quite fit, drives his weather-beaten car to visit his son in another part of town, bullies his wife to cook what he should not be eating, and on rare occasions deigns to take short walks in the park opposite his home.

Exhibit Number Two is Romila, a nutrionist I met at a political rally and have been friends with ever since. She is possibly in her seventies, looks twenty years younger and is one of the liveliest persons I have met. She enjoys her work, likes helping people, and has no intention of seeking peace in retirement. Anytime I meet her, she begins, “Guess what happened today?” Things always happen to her.
 
I offer myself, immodestly, as the third exhibit. I am not in a stage that anybody would call young, but I neither feel decrepit nor think of myself as an older person. I live by myself, travel and work extensively, eat and drink happily, socialize energetically, read indiscriminately, eat sensibly but enthusiastically, drink heartily though not heavily, and live very joyfully.

How come that the three of us seem so happy when our years should have doomed us to Doomsday? Surely chronology is not destiny. At the start of the twentieth century, we were living to fifty, and already we are living to seventy; in the US, the longevity is eighty. Unless you are having unprotected sex in the back alleys, infectious diseases are unlikely to fell you; shells and mortars will not kill you, if you are not living in Afghanistan or Yemen; starvation may not be a threat if you don’t live in Venezuela or South Sudan.

Studies tell us the opposite of what bothered Siddhartha so much: the bulk of older people are having the best time of their life now, instead of in their so-called prime, when the demands of work, family and society weighed them down. Some have begun to talk of a U-curve of happiness: people in the last phase of their life retrieving the happy, carefree existence they experienced in their childhood.
 
As the standard of life go up, savings make up for the loss of income when people stop working. As the standard of healthcare go up, new drugs and therapies make up for the age-associated frailties. Suddenly the ever-expanding work hours are replaced by the ever-promising leisure hours. Comfortable travel, carefree socialization, congenial sports, capricious reading, all become possible and available.

People who have retired from an organization, sometimes at an early age, say, from the government or the military, often start working for a non-profit or cause-oriented organization and treat their assignment more as fun than as work. Or they take a new interest in their community or club and derive satisfaction from a very different kind of responsibility, especially if their new project brings them more fulfillment than fuss.

Gone overnight too are the vicissitudes of love and romance, the resulting hurts and heartaches, the aching adjustments of conjugal life, the sleepless nights and thankless sacrifices of parenthood, the endless strain of proving oneself in one’s company and one’s community. You have realized by now that you will not be a ballyhooed corporate titan, a beloved community leader or even a branded tennis star. You have found peace in the realization of your middling gifts, even your mediocrity. Now is the time to find joy in what is feasible, the tea and sympathy of a pleasant neighbor, a game of chess in the club backroom, a weekend overnight trip to visit the last college friend you still have.

​I think I never saw my father happier than when I saw him, after retiring, first from his administrator’s job and then his educator’s role, and embracing his new life: sipping morning tea with mother, chatting with neighbors, shopping in the local market, going on long walks and returning home in the evening for a quiet meal with us. More than ever, he was peaceful, content, in tune with the world and with himself.
 
No, the experience of old age, even with its dolorous signs of creaky joints, leaky memory and waning energy, will not drive you to walk out the door in search of Nirvana. It will rather help you scale to a new plateau of placidity, reconcile you to the soaring peak you will never reach, and make you glad that you have what you have: a wealth of life, a taste of peace and the prospect of abundant joy.

It is never easy to lose somebody from your life.
 
We all know how painful it is when, through a misunderstanding or an inadvertent hurt, there is the end of a friendship or a close relationship. We may angrily say, “I am well rid of such a person,” but the pain of rupture is real. Every person we lose is a significant subtraction from our life.
 
If I care for a person, his or her departure from my life is a real loss. Every person is unique and so the void is never filled. On a quiet Sunday morning, as you sip your tea, the memory suddenly returns like the sudden prick of a pin. As you listen to a song, an unexpected pang overwhelms you with a pain you thought you had put firmly behind you.
 
Through this agony, who knows, there possibly runs a thin filament of hope that, one day, in some mysterious way, there will be, if not a reconciliation, at least a rapprochement. The other person will see that you meant well and cared deeply, and will turn round with a penitent heart. You will then once again see a well-loved face, clasp an extended hand, hug a tender body. All the accumulated hurt will melt in a golden moment.
 
But what happens when the loss is definitive and the door has been shut with finality? When death comes and ends a relationship, there is not even a slender hope. You know that you have lost something precious forever. There is only desolation, the sense of an unfinished story, and the despair of utter hopelessness.
 
I have now come to a country where for years there was an unending spate of violence. In Colombia the extensive killing has ended, but there are not many families that have not lost a beloved member. A family I have known from Washington, whose hospitality I have enjoyed in Bogota, is one such family.

Matías was only twentyone, a fresh graduate, a lanky young man with a broad smile and a loping gait. He was highly social, knew everybody in the neighborhood, and eager to lend a hand, whether to get a medicine or fix a bicycle. Kind and jovial, he had access to every house in the neighborhood and friendship with every young man or woman.
 
That social link may have been his undoing. The stories of those violent days are seldom clear, and that of Matías is no exception. Nobody knows what happened; there is only speculation. He may have unwittingly come to know of some drug deal. He may have overheard some planned shenanigan, even the killing of a key official. He may even have been offered a part in some shady operation and his refusal may have sealed his fate. Those were not days when terminating a life, even a young, innocent life, was a big deal in the eyes of cartel leaders.
 
Matías did not come home one evening. After a night of frantic calling and checking, and of agonized search in many homes, at the crack of dawn some villager reported a mutilated body on the town’s outskirt. Matías had been shot in the head and his body had simply been left on the street as a warning to those who doubted the omnipotence of drug dealers.
 
Matías’s mother, Mariana, is my friend and she has talked about her lost son a number of times. It hurts her to talk about it, and even twelve years later it brings tears to her eyes. But she cannot but talk about it. It is still a living reality for her. A very living reality.
 
How can you not miss somebody you gave birth to, saw growing up, day by day, month by month? You held him, you fed him, you clothed him, you gave him life that was an inseparable part of your own life. How do you live after that very important part of your life is snatched away? I don’t know. I shudder to think of the enormity of pain that suffuses every fibre of our body when such a loss occurs. And to think that somebody, for some indecipherable reason, deliberately causes that inhuman loss.

​I listen to Mariana. I see the photos she shows me. I hear the painful history and its painful aftermath. She cannot help it and I cannot but hear my friend’s story. I wonder how does one live after that and live a daily life. How does one walk, read, cook, shower, eat, talk, do the simplest things of life? How does one sleep at all?
 
Yet Mariana lives and does all these things. She even laughs when I say a joke and holds my hand when I give her some insignificant gift. She says she does not know how she came out of the nightmare of the days that followed the horrific discovery. I suppose nobody knows or understands how one survives such mortifying pain.
 
I only know now, with a poignancy that I never knew before, that people live with such excruciating loss. They live from hour to hour, day to day, putting one step before another, doing the daily chores, while at all times nursing at their heart a wound that never stops bleeding.
 
You and I, exempt from such loss, – but only for a few months or some years, for our turn has to come, to lose what we value – can only sit quietly and listen. And try, earnestly, to understand what is surely beyond all understanding.

Here I am, on the eleventh floor of a downtown building, looking out on the city from a outsize window extending from wall to wall. It is a sunny day, and I have a panoramic view of Bogotá, packed by homes and offices and fringed by green-gray mountains. One day I will amble past those homes and offices and walk up to the mountains. 

I am in this town for the past three weeks. I speak Spanish and the Latin culture intrigues me. I know a few people, but generally I am on my own. I walk the streets, I haunt the museums, I sip divine coffee in the innumerable bakeries and consume endless croissants. Here it is never too warm or too cold. A light parka is enough to keep me comfortable when I emerge late from a night club.
 
I am amazed how much our lives change when we move from one country to another. I am the same person whether in Washington or anywhere else, very much a creature of habit. Why should my life change at all, except very peripherally? Yet I find that my routine has changed dramatically. I am eating differently, spending my time differently, even thinking differently. Convenience may have something to do with this, but surely my habits and inclinations would work in the opposite direction and keep me in my place. Instead I notice in me a seismic shift, in the way I react to people and things.

I get up in the morning and cross the street into a tiny coffee shop and order for breakfast a bowl of changua, a bread-and-egg soup, or arepas, ground maize patties with cheese and avocado, followed by a chocolate drink. These are nowhere near what I eat in Washington. In taste and texture, they are in fact very different, but I eat them contentedly. When the young woman with tousled hair who serves the drink misses a step and spills a drop or two on my jeans, I am unconcerned and gladly tip her more than she expected.
 
When I walk, I look at every shop and every passerby. Everything seems to have a strange aura of newness. The new faces of men and women strike me with a curious piquancy. Many look preoccupied, some look sad or indifferent, but some look upbeat and happy. They jolt me into remembering that there are quite a few things in my life to make me very cheery. Even when they carelessly jostle me, it fazes me no more than the lightest drizzle, and I walk on. Here sometimes it drizzles without notice, suddenly while the sun is at its dazzling best, and I am content to walk and let my jacket gather the moisture.

​I know an accomplished dressmaker and I playfully ordered a bunch of shirts, of a special design that had caught my fancy. I cannot even remember when I last had a shirt made to order, but the person seemed cordial and the price more than reasonable. Now that the shirts have come, I wear them with the enthusiasm only a naïve adolescent should feel. I honestly don’t think I felt a kindred thrill when I bought a new Mercedes Benz.
 
What is this special feeling I have? Is it just the fun of experiencing the newness of my world, the sharp taste of unaccustomed sights and sounds? Is it the hope of some kind of a new beginning, which is always full of promise? Is it just my body responding to the freshness of a new land, new lodging, new air? I could disregard it as the naive enthusiasm of a casual visitor to a new country. Then it occurred to me how little is the newness of my new environment. This apartment, charming as it is, is not so very different from all the apartments I have lived in. The food, intriguingly different as it is, is not all that different from the exotic foods that I have variously probed. The leisure, the ease, the company, valuable as they are, are not a category apart from the time and pleasure I have had with others at other times.
 
What is new is the time I have given myself to taste the newness. The freedom I have suddenly assigned myself to look at things, to listen to people, even to taste what I eat without rushing to judgment and asking myself how they really are. Perhaps unknowingly, but wisely – with the wisdom born of a thousand regrets and disillusionments – I have freed myself to experience the beauty that lies both hidden and open around us.
 
When I woke up this morning and rolled up the window screen, the sun was just coming up. My disorderly room filled instantly with a gentle light. There seemed a kindly promise foreordained in the quiet unveiling of the day. No great event is planned for the day, no plan for a mountain tour or a great outing with a special person, not even a candlelight dinner to look forward to. Still I felt a strange pleasure as I stood in the shower, smelled the towel and put on my new shirt. The world has something to offer me and I have something to receive.

“Would you like to look at some scarves?”

Some work had taken me to the base station of the Annapurna circuit while I was serving as the consul in Nepal. There was a series of small shops, selling a variety of handicrafts, woolens, caps, maps, picture postcards. I had no intention to buy anything, but I liked to look at the modest offerings. Now I was at the slightly larger corner shop, presided over by a sturdy, bronzed man in his sixties. He had a pleasant smile. I instantly liked the man.
 
I bought two scarves for which I had no use. Those could be gifts for my driver and the cook. A conversation ensued.

I like to talk with the simple people of the hills. They are direct and warm, and I hear of a lifestyle I know nothing about. There aren’t many tourists now and sales are slow. But Gurung – that is the man’s name – is quite content, confident that the tourist stream will widen in the months ahead.
 
Gurung says some of his buyers just buy some stuff and go their way, but others, like me, stop to chat and ask a lot of questions. Does it bother him, I ask. No, no, he shakes his head vigorously, he enjoys talking with people. Some of them are very good and are very interested. They rarely haggle and pay the price he quotes, and a few don’t even take the change.
 
He remembered a man had come a few years back with his wife and bought several things. They had stopped to have tea with Gurung and, before leaving, the wife had given him a gift, a book written by her husband. They were so nice, Gurung had proudly kept the book on display in his shop. He laughed and added that some American tourists had even wanted to buy the book, but he had told them it wasn’t for sale. 

I was rewarded with a cup of warm tea, very welcome that cool autumn morning, and then Gurung brought the book. I was astounded. It was a book by President Jimmy Carter. It was autographed, and no doubt that was the reason the American tourists wanted to buy it.

​Then Gurung said that he would have liked to send a gift to the man and his wife, but did not know how to do it, since he didn’t know the man’s address. What was the gift, I wondered. He brought out a large scroll. Unwrapped, it showed a beautiful design of a Mandala.

I was touched by the simple man’s generosity. I told him I was the American consul and, if he trusted me with the scroll, I will be glad to forward it to the Carters. How would I know the address, Gurung asked. I told him that the man was a famous one, and he headed an institution whose address my office would have.
 
I planned to place the scroll in a box and mail it to the Carter Center in Atlanta. But, when I returned to my office, I discovered to my surprise that an American couple I knew well, Hank and Janis Blaustein, were returning to their home in Atlanta the next week. They readily agreed to carry the gift and deliver it safely and swiftly. I gave them the package and wrote a letter to the Carter Center explaining the circumstances and requesting that, when Mr. Carter receives the package, a word be sent to me.

​What happened next was stunning. When the Blausteins spoke to the Carter Center, they were requested to come the following Monday. On arrival, they were received by Rosalynn Carter. Mr. Carter had apparently instructed that both she and a photographer be present when the Blausteins deliver the gift. He had said that if one was kind enough to send a present, one deserved a decent acknowledgement. As the Blausteins handed the gift package to Mr. and Mrs. Carter, the photographer recorded the event.
 
The Blausteins received a copy of the photograph the very next day. I received by express mail two envelopes: one for Gurung, containing the photo and a charming letter of acknowledgement and thanks, and another for me, containing a letter thanking me for my intermediary role and requesting that the other envelope be given to Gurung as soon as possible.
 
Gurung was thunderstruck the next day when I explained who the visitor to his shop had been and how he had arranged to receive Gurung’s gift. Then I handed him Mr. Carter’s letter and the photo. Gurung's wife wept with joy. A simple man, who had liked and remembered a visitor to his shop without knowing his antecedents, and had asked another visitor to forward a generous gift, had had a deserved reward.
 
Opinions differ on Jimmy Carter’s role as a US President. There can be no difference of opinion that no US President, perhaps no world leader, has done more for the world after leaving office than him. He did something for me too. The little incident, in which I played a minor role, brought me a major gift. It yielded a lesson I can never forget: However big or busy one is, a gift from the heart is far too important not to be treated with the utmost deference.

​My father, who loved to travel and to walk, would say, “There is no better way to understand a city than to walk its streets.” I listened seldom to my father, but decided to try out his recipe in Bogota, the month-long refuge of an over-the-hill gypsy.

When you walk in Chapinero, a pleasant middleclass district, you see a sign on the sidewalk, Pedestrian Path (Sendero Peatonal). My editorial spirit came up with a more appropriate sign, Path for Gorillas. Only gorillas should be able to negotiate these sidewalks safely and happily.
 
Gorillas! You think this an overstatement. To say the sidewalk is irregular is an understatement. It is an obstacle course. The surface changes from block to block to surprise the pedestrian, sometimes slippery tiles, sometimes rough undulating cement, and sometimes stone-studded stretches even young gorillas may not enjoy.
 
The first thing one expects in a sidewalk is its consistency. It should be about the same anywhere. Here variety, the most ferocious variety, is the name of the game. You would imagine a different contractor has designed and laid every 500-yard length of the sidewalk.

Not satisfied with offering the pedestrian the most incredible diversity, the Chapinero sidewalk is also a veritable trap for the unwary. There are holes, large and small, waiting to suck in your heel or your whole foot: lost tiles, broken cement, dislodged concrete. There are huge iron plates that cover possibly access to utility lines; sometimes they are in place, but at other times they are precariously tilted. I haven’t tried them out, but if you step on them, you might end up in some mysterious netherland, or at least disbalanced and cast on your back.
 
When the sidewalk ends on a street, you would think there would a gentle slope to let you walk on to the street. You have to search for the slope, for it is almost never aligned with the sidewalk. When you find it, it is often steep and takes careful negotiation. At other times, it is just not there. You have to jump eight or twelve inches from the sidewalk onto the street and then, on the other side, jump up another eight to twelve inches. It certainly improves your athletic finesse.

What is even more astounding is that large organizations like banks or insurance companies that have offices on a street don’t just build their edifices, they feel free to modify the sidewalk in front of their office. You are walking and you suddenly find yourself having to climb a series of steps to reach a platform and then climb down another series of steps to get back on the sidewalk. I have seen elderly people panting up the steps, just to be able to reach the next street corner. Probably, the company that mutilated the sidewalk is surreptitiously trying to make the older population more exercise-prone and athletic.
 
A broad swath of the sidewalk is sometimes marked out for bicyclists. I am all for bicycles and environmental awareness. But I am also for ordinary mortals who walk instead of riding plain or sophisticated, power-driven bicycles. Given the narrow sidewalks, the generous allowance for cyclists seems a stepmotherly view of hapless pedestrians. I have tried walking on the remnant of the sidewalk and found myself forced to intrude into the cyclists’ territory, simply because in some places the remaining sidewalk is covered by rubbish awaiting collection or equipment of a construction crew.

​Yes, a gorilla might find it easier to ignore the varying ups-and-downs of the sidewalk, hop over the big and small holes that endanger the human passerby and easily rise and sink with the steps set by a thoughtless bank, but its girth will have a hell of a challenge giving a pass to the speeding cyclists by slinking to the narrow strip left for the pedestrians.
 
Unlike my native city, Washington, Bogota, despite its many varied restaurants, innumerable and inexpensive, does not seem to have many obese people. Thank heavens, I can pass by normal-sized citizens even on the narrow stretch of the sidewalk that the city allows me. I feel like bowing in salutation, for I admire their energy and forbearance in daily using a sidewalk that is unsuitable for humans and gorillas alike.
 
My father was probably right to say that walking is a good way to find out about a city. Bogota, full to gills with pleasant, friendly and thoughtful people, has a thoughtless administration that cares little for ordinary beings that go about their life and trade by walking on streets meant only for cars, and perhaps for cycles, but certainly not for ordinary humans. It is a city that smacks of an oligarchic bent, signaling it cares only for its well-heeled car drivers and has little thoughts for its simple pedestrians.

​Carrera Siete, an avenue running north to south, is a major thoroughfare in Bogotá, Colombia, and my apartment on the eleventh floor is somewhere midway. In the living room, as well as in the bedroom, extravagant windows run from end to end, sunlight flooding the rooms with a glow at an early hour. However late I toil on my computer, and I often go far beyond midnight, I wake unaccountably early, and the morning light fills me with a mysterious energy.
 
Things are even better on a Sunday, as it is today. Carrera Siete has been declared a car-free road for most of the day. The broad avenue is free for people who want to walk, run or just amble with their dogs. It is wonderful to see a road usually dominated by cars, buses and trucks, suddenly liberated by fervent joggers and walkers. After a quick sip of robust Colombian espresso, I shake off my ingrained sedentary bent, overcome my incurable serfdom to a laptop screen and step out on the street.
 
I am in good company. All around me are people, sniffing the brisk morning air. The wonderful thing about Bogotá is that it is seldom very warm or cold; it is obdurately pleasant. Unless it is raining, as it does capriciously at times, even on a bright day without a cloud in sight, you can be out day or night with no more than the lightest parka. I am out with my sleeveless travel cardigan, feeling the fresh morning breeze on my face. 

Luciana keeps pace with me, as I stride toward the south. The sidewalk is irregular and I need to watch as I step ahead. I am becoming familiar with this part of the town, but Luciana of course knows it like the back of her hand. She tells me to watch out and avoid cracked concrete and sewage holes. I like her caring eyes and her gentle admonitions. I am a careless walker and I need to pay attention to uneven surfaces instead of the interesting faces passing by and the endless bistros and cafés on every block.
 
What am I doing here? There are a few things I do here, but none that fully justifies my exile. I felt I wanted a break. A break from the comfortable sameness of my daily round. The Washington suburb I live in is nothing if not comfortable, and my life feels absurdly organized and tranquil. It is easy to go on just as I am, doing what I usually do. So I decided to break the pattern and break away. I have landed in Bogotá without much of a preparation and nothing of a plan. I just wanted to breathe a different air.
 
When we hear of bees building a hive or ants constructing a large ant-hill, we wonder how those bees and ants can work so assiduously to do the same thing every day. Yet, if we look at our own lives, what most of us do is not much different. If we are not slaves of a company or a business or a profession, we turn and become the slaves of an addiction, an unruly passion or even an immoderate ambition. I meet people who can’t stop talking of their job, their success in securing a deal, their unflinching determination to be somebody important and successful. It is good to be able to dedicate ourselves to a goal or a cause beyond ourselves, for it keeps us from being petty and self-centered. But when it grips our mind and heart like a vise, makes us lose our human touch, we have become, despite all appearances, a self-made slave, little better than the crawling ant or buzzing bee.
 
That is the time it may be a good idea to crawl out of the ant-hill or fly away from the bee-hive. 

Luciana said, “Look at that!”
 
There were three friends, in colorful shirts, biking away in tandem on the other side of the street, two young men on either side and a slender woman in the middle, her long hair flowing in the wind behind her. The gentle sun was on their face, the man on the left yelling some joke that made the other man respond with a roar and the woman laugh with her head thrown back. In less than ten seconds they were gone.

​But they left behind a fleeting image of joy and abandon and freedom that had attracted Luciana’s eye and instantly fascinated mine. Their happiness was so clearly without cause, without reason, just born of the moment, relishing their speed and the morning air, that you couldn’t help but wish that you could be that easily happy.
 
Yet that happiness is open to all of us – us who have so many sad tales to tell, so many disappointments to overcome, so many heartaches to conquer. Those are all true, those are all important, and, given half a chance, those would all pounce to break our heart.
 
But there is also a glorious Sunday morning, a radiant sun, the fresh breeze, the unusually uncluttered street, one or two congenial friends, and the undimmed prospect of a life that can be different and exciting and joyful, a life simply worth living.

​My flight was delayed, and I was reconciled to a long wait in the airport lounge.
 
Scarcely a minute after I had taken a seat, there was a tap on my shoulder. An elderly man, bespectacled and sharp-nosed, in an elegant pinstriped suit, stood behind me.
 
“It looks like there is a long wait ahead of us both. Care for a cup of coffee?”
 
An invitation from a complete stranger is a double-edged sword. He can be an insufferable bore and go on about his business or personal problems. He can also be great company and help pass the time in good conversation. I took the chance.
 
We went to the nearest coffee shop. Hardik introduced himself.

​“I see from you face that you don’t recognize me,” Hardik said, and, before I could apologize, added, “I don’t expect you to. You had spoken at a conference in Singapore some years ago, and I had a brief chat with you afterward.”
 
As I frowned, trying to recall the talk, he remarked, “It was all about anticipating the future and developing a strategy.”
 
I had the blurriest recollection and I said, “I was a more optimistic person then. I am afraid I am a more cynical man now.”
 
He laughed, “So are we all. Don’t forget I have lived much longer than you.”
 
I said, in all honesty, “Clearly, those years have weighed very lightly on you.”
 
“And I will tell you why,” he responded, “I have weighed, tried to weigh, lightly on the world.”
 
That hooked me. How does one weigh lightly on the world? I asked him.
 
I said, “Everybody wants to be happy, at least peaceful. If you do that by weighing lightly, we would all like to know how. How did you do it?”
 
Hardik smiled, “I had examples close at hand, contrary examples. My mother was very religious, very offended by what everybody was doing all the time to violate her religious principles. My father was a scholar, whose judgments about the foolishness of what people in the society were doing were severe. They weighed heavily on the world. They were hard-boiled critics. They saw few silver linings.”
 
“How did you react to that?”
 
“I saw them weighed down by their beliefs. It was not a happy prospect, and I wondered what alternatives existed. That is what led to my interest in studying the future and my attendance at your talk. Can we develop a strategy of get out of the present mess?
 
“Most people quickly embrace a convenient solution. They just take it from their parents or their community or their country. For many, it is a heavenly god, for which there is not the slightest evidence. For many others, it their country or their government, which can do no wrong, except that it does all the time. For others, it is a dogma of some kind, liberalism or communism, that will emancipate us, except that it always places new shackles.”

​Hardik sipped his coffee and continued.
 
“The other option a huge number choose is to burrow into a small groove of a private life, with at best a few friends or relations, and ignore the world. This is the lightness of being Milan Kundera talked about. I found it unbearable. I didn’t like the idea of floating over the world, like a bird, watching and not bothering.
 
“I wanted to both care and not care. I wanted to care for the things that touched me. I loved the sea; I wanted to be near it whenever I could. I loved reggae music; I listened to it. I also wanted to care for things beyond me. I supported poor students who needed help. When flood affected two villages that I knew, I volunteered as a helper and worked hard at it. But I didn’t want to be enmeshed in political campaigns; the mutual hate turned me off. Religious fervor, when it included loathing of other faiths, I found hateful.”
 
I had to ask, “Doesn’t that sound a little colorless, dispassionate?”
 
“Maybe. Remember what Yeats warned: while the best lack all conviction, ‘the worst
are full of passionate intensity.’ I have tried not to lose all conviction, but avoid the passion of causes and campaigns. I have tried to weigh lightly on the world, by living quietly, cultivating friends, contributing to communities, helping the people whom I meet on the way.”
 
I knew I was not like Hardik. But I liked his special view of life. I lifted my cup of coffee and said, “Hardik, my friend, I am glad I am on your way.”

When I joined the diplomatic service, a veteran ambassador offered a word of advice, “If you get posted to a peaceful, picturesque country, your wife may have a good time, but you will suffer a miserably boring period. Try to get sent to a troubled country, in a revolution, civil war or some other horrendous trouble, and you will have a truly exciting time.”
 
Wise words. I had quite a bit of excitement in Haiti: a military coup, refugees in leaky boats and mutilated bodies in trash cans, and then invasion, US marines and a UN multilateral army. After horrendous trouble and horrendously long hours, I was looking for a respite when George called from the Dominican Republic.
 
2000 miles from the US, south-east of Cuba is the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, 30,000 square miles. The eastern part of the island, two-thirds, is the Dominican Republic, the western third is Haiti. The whole island has a horrific history of rapacity by Spanish and French invaders: exploitation, slavery and wanton cruelty. When they left, local dictators like Trujillo and Duvaliers took up the mantle and inflicted years of poverty and suffering on their people. Haiti, once the jewel of the French crown, was now the poorest land in the western hemisphere. Dominican Republic, though better, still bore the scars of its past.

George, an old foreign service colleague, had just arrived in the Republic and was keen to see Haiti. I was just as keen to see the Republic. In less than ten minutes we reached a curious pact. We agreed we would both take leave during the same week and exchange houses. Two weeks later, we both started driving from home at the crack of dawn, met at the frontier and exchanged greetings, and then proceeded to the other’s home.
 
When I arrived at George’s home with my wife and two small daughters, his maid greeted me, and I found on the dining table three things: five hundred dollars in the local currency, a list of places to see and the names of good local restaurants. When George and his wife arrived in our suburban home, he found the same three things on the dining table, and a valet in addition to the maid greeted him.
 
What we did with our week in a new country was very different. George loved our sprawling seven-bedroom house and the delicious Haitian food our maid cooked and our valet served. They sunned on the terrace, ate long, leisurely meals, and had their exercise by swimming in the house pool. They went out occasionally, but used their vacation mostly to relax and rest their bones.

When we arrived in George’s home, an elegant apartment downtown, we noticed that it was ideally located in the very heart of a bustling city, with numerous places and events within easy reach. We enjoyed the breakfast in the morning George's maid served, but after that there was no stopping us. Rain or shine, we went out every day, exploring museums and galleries, palaces and streets, shops and roadside restaurants. The Colonial Zone is a maze of narrow streets, bordered by architectural surprises from the sixteenth century, palaces converted into breathtaking museums, elegant homes turned into shops and restaurants, the ten-block Calle de Conde brimming with cafes and souvenir shops and art vendors, the Casa de Teatro where artists and writers jostle and watch the latest photo exhibits.

One morning my wife said she needed to take the elder daughter for a haircut and suggested I take younger one out and amuse her with some sightseeing. Lacking a plan, I thought she might enjoy the nearest park, and we stepped into a most exciting event. Apparently the city has, like my native Kolkata, a day marked for kite flying, and there were scores of people, young and old, flying the most magnificent variety of kites, large and small, and engaging in friendly combat.
 
I felt like I had suddenly walked back into history, when I flew kites with my brother and friends. I did not just fly them, I dreamed them. We begged and collected money, bought kites of different colors and dimensions, sometimes writing little messages on them. We prepared for kite wars by grinding glass, mixing it with glue and then dipping the kite thread in that hellish mixture, so that the thread could slice the kite thread of rivals. Kites and kite wars were an important part of my childhood.
 
All the intervening years had suddenly melted. I could just stand in that park and watch other fly kites, but I couldn't. I promptly bought three kites and a reel of threads to fly them. I told Monica with supreme confidence, “We will have great fun.”

​We had. Monica promptly got into the spirit of the game. Together we not only flew kites, we engaged in friendly but ferocious kite wars. When our first kite was felled by a rival and Monica was nearly in tears, I said to her, “The fun has just begun. We will now kill his kite.” Monica’s heart leaped and we promptly set about attacking the enemy’s kite.
 
Frankly, I don’t quite remember whether we took successful revenge, but at the day’s end we had predictably lost all the three kites. But our heart was full and we really had great fun. Monica used to recount her role in a kite war as her peak experience in the Dominican Republic.
 
Twenty years later when a young man proposed marriage to Monica, I was taken aback to find that she had decided that she wanted to be married in the Dominican Republic. I was taken aback, but not entirely surprised.