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 was a devil of a coincidence.
 
I had a reservation on a flight for Tegucigalpa, but a silly but painful accident playing kickball the night before forced me to defer the trip. The first thing I see, while taking my seat on the plane the following Wednesday, is that you have the seat right in front of me.
 
I hadn’t thought of you in a while. No, that’s a lie. I had tried not to think of you. It hadn’t always worked. The finality of the end was far too painful not to want to forget. Yet you were embedded somewhere far too deep to forget easily.
 
You stood up and smiled. You looked about the same, though the reading glasses you now affected gave you a slightly different appearance. Your coiffed hair and formal dress told me that you were traveling for work.
 
Before I could barely say a word, you spoke to the flight attendant and had your seat changed, next to mine. In a second, the insinuating aroma of Calandre took me several years back.
 
I was new to Washington and, back from my downtown office, I had stopped for dinner in a Moroccan restaurant and, not finding a table, seated myself at the bar.
 
The woman sipping a dry martini at the next stool politely moved her stool to make space for me. When she said Hello, a conversation started.

I remember she said that she lived near the restaurant and often stopped there for a meal, for the Moroccan cuisine pleased her. We had right away hit some common ground.
 
I ordered a martini too but specified a Golf Martini. You asked what it was, and I explained that I preferred a martini with bitters. You threw your head back and laughed when I added that Mencken had called the martini the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.
When I finished my martini, you asked if I cared for another sonnet and ordered Golf Martinis for us both.
 
We had dinner together and I was amazed how good the food was. I had cautiously ordered some Couscous, but you had ordered Pastilla, and we shared our portions. It was still early evening and you invited me to your apartment.
 
You found you had some leftover pie and we shared a few pieces with coffee. We continued talking for a long time. When I finally returned home, I knew it was quite late because the night guard’s brows went sky-high as I turned the key.
 
We saw a lot of each other. We even went out of town on long drives to inns she fancied in small towns nearby. Occasionally I drove, but she did the bulk of the driving. She seemed to like it and I liked to sit back and watch her drive and listen to music. We both liked the winding roads in the nearby mountains; the scenes were ever-changing and breathtaking.
 
The best memory I have is of the time we rented a cottage on the Potomac and spent three ideal days together. In the quiet of that lovely cottage we came the closest together. We also, sadly, began the process of moving away from each other. There was no reason. Nor was there a way to slow or stop the steady breach we felt overtaking us. We gingerly talked about it. We didn’t know how to prevent the pain that waited for us both. We just had to recognize it and accept it as an irresistible faultline. Finally, came the bleak day when we hesitated even to call each other.
 
All this went through my mind as we chatted amiably and ate the modest dinner the airlines served. It seemed like the old times, except that it wasn’t. I have no idea why relationships end, but, when they do, it is futile to try and recapture the lost thread. We knew; we did not try. We made the best use of the time we had together.
 
The flight landed on time. A car had come for her from Marriott where she was staying. She asked where I was booked, and I said I had a reservation at Clarion. I took a taxi.
 
I hadn’t spoken the truth when I said I was booked at Clarion. My reservation was also at Marriott.
 
I checked the conference website and came down to the banquet hall at the right hour. The hall was packed, and I took a seat unobtrusively in the last row.

​She looked splendid with her hair in a bun and in a black dress with a red leather jacket. She did a splendid job too: a succinct speech with a pitch perfect delivery. The audience was spellbound.
 
I left as quietly as I had come. That was my last view of her.

From the deck at the back of my home, I can see a charming little trail winding its way through the woods. If you follow that trail to the left, you will go past a large green field, through sturdy trees and picturesque houses, and end up in a wide plaza, with shops, stores and restaurants. If you instead follow the trail to right – my favorite way – you will walk through a shaded path, crisscrossed by rays filtered through pines and firs, and reach the edge of rippling, glinting Lake Anne. Were you to overcome the temptation of the cafés and bistros on its edge, you would eventually arrive at a crossroad of a small street and a broad avenue and know that you have again lost your heart to a heartless city.

​Not just from the sunlit deck, but even from my living room with its pride of a generous window, I can see anyone who takes the winding trail, morning or evening. When I wake early, with a cup of coffee in my hand, I watch some children who are stragglers take the back road to a school nearby. An hour or so later are the early joggers, taking their run before they go to work. In the evening, you see the elderly take their daily constitutional in a plodding way. A little later come the young couples, who like to pass the privacy-giving bushes in the gathering dusk. In the afternoon the trail is relatively deserted, except the occasional hausfrau walking lazily to the local store or some lonely kid kicking a misplaced stone or stick on his way to the playground.
 
The striking difference in my eyes is the older man who trudges, at some unpredictable hour, along the trail, carrying an oversize bag. Even his direction is unpredictable: some days I see his going eastward, and on the other days, he goes in the opposite direction. There is no special hour of his passage, except I have never seen him very early and very late on the way.

​I hesitate to call him an old man, for he looks sturdy enough, though he can’t be anything less than sixty-five. He looks nearly six feet, of medium weight, with a slight stoop, who walks with a determined step, as if he is very sure of what he is about to do. That makes me wonder every time about his intended mission. What is he going to do?
 
He wears a neat Madras shirt, blue jeans that always seem pressed, and a bluish all-weather parka, replacing the last with a heavier gray jacket when the air turns cooler. His thinning salt-and-pepper hair is always tidily brushed back, and a few long strands overrun the collar of his shirt and parka. He doesn’t wear glasses, and his eyes dart left to right as he passes my house, taking in the squirrels that are forever foraging for nuts near the bend. The man is a striking figure as he strides past the trees and passes beyond my sight.
 
He is striking above all because I don’t know what he is about. For most people who amble on this pathway, I can guess what they are doing, whether they are going to work or just out for a stroll. For the old man with the large bag, I have no idea. Not even the shadow of a hypothesis. He goes in different directions at different hours though mostly with the same parka and the same stride. I have no notion what he does, where he lives and why he walks at odd times with a large bag.

​And what is that bag about? What does it contain? Snacks and water? The unusually hefty dimension of his bag makes that unlikely. The contents would be enough to feed Napoleon’s army. Spare clothes or uniforms? His age makes an active, sweat-drenching sport an improbable theory. Could it then be the instruments for an uncommon trade? What trade would require implements of such dimension? Photography does not need more than a tripod and a few extra lenses. A surveyor has more streamlined folding gadgets. A cosmetologist carries a large assortment of stuff but in a more compact container. Even an arborist carries smaller implements that fit into a reasonable bag. My wild fancy has made me even recall Chestorton’s classic story of an ‘invisible’ assassin, who don’s a postman’s uniform and carries out the victim’s body in a large bag. But, fancy apart, I cannot think of a good reason for that oversize bag.
 
So, there I stand, on my deck or in my living room, the perennial coffee cup in my hand, watching the weekly apparition of an old man following the trail with a mammoth bag, mystified as ever by the man’s mission and his genuine identity. I realize, after many weeks, that I will never know the answer. It is unthinkable that I should walk out and accost the man and start asking invidious questions. No, I will never have my curiosity satisfied and know why he walks this way.
 
Then, suddenly, the significance of the whole business dawns on me. There are many questions to which we will never find the answer. There are many, many mysteries in the world of which we will never know the solution. Of course, where our knowledge or understanding is limited, we should try to extend the frontier; that is what science or technology is all about. But we should know that mysteries will abide, to excite and entrance us. To challenge us to make the best use, if not of our gray cells, at least our imagination on the winding road of life. That is what our life is all about.

You are always with me.
 
As I sit duly strapped and the pre-takeoff roar of the aircraft rises, my thought is not on the flight, nor on the chores left half-done at home or the tasks that wait at my destination. It is on you. I imagine you sitting in your sun-swept living room, taking a break from your many errands, to look at the drifting cloud flakes on an azure sky. Just as I look out of a small, round, three-layer window and watch the same white clouds sail by.
 
Are you also thinking of me? Of course, you know the hour and direction of my voyage. You never get those details wrong. Could you be mulling over my listless wait to be airborne, to get moving toward a new place and new experiences? You know me so well, how I hesitate to break a routine, my lingering reluctance to venture into a new, even welcome, rollout. You know the way I shrink from tourist ventures, my bent for an easygoing if restless savor of the unseen and unknown.
 
I know that you marvel that a person, who so recoils from travel, still manages to be on so many trains, boats and planes, often ending in unknown cities and unfamiliar lands. You don’t quite understand why, were it so contrary to my nature, I would consent to be drawn into so much travel. You may not understand, but you seldom question. You quietly accept, though you often want to know. I like it that you do. It makes me feel you care and now, at this moment, it makes me feel you are with me. 

With a nearly imperceptible jolt the wide-body Airbus lifts from the tarmac and steadily rises. A few of the clouds obliquely glint in the afternoon sun and the pilot corrects the slight dip on the right, making us comfortably level again. In a few minutes the lights are on again, the attendants take off their belts and start scurrying. In a while more a Cavernet Sauvignon is thoughtfully placed in front of me, and I can unfurl the El Tiempo I picked up at the airport.
 
I glance at the headlines, but I realize my mind is not yet ready for the daily reality of accidents, strikes and demonstrations. You are still on my mind and I sip casually on the wine. Am I moving away from you? I am not sure, and I blame myself for not making sure of the answer. Little does it matter though, for I am forever so far away from you, in my home country or the countries I usually visit. You are always, paradoxically, a distant and near presence. I can’t touch you, for you are thousand miles away; yet you are the nearest reality of my heart.
“Excuse me,” with an uplifted hand the young woman next to me, whom I haven’t even noticed so far, draws my attention. “Do you know the time difference at our destination?”
 
I think back of the notes I make before every trip and say, “An hour – sixty minutes behind Washington time.”
 
It occurs to me then that I am really moving a little further away from you. Yet every time I lose contact with the ground, I feel closer to you. Probably because every time I leave home, I also leave behind a whole bagful of work and responsibility and feel freer to think of other things. To think of you.
 
There is some turbulence and the captain wants our belts on. I tighten mine, and then notice the anxious look of my neighbor and say, “It happens often. Nothing to worry about.” Her fingers nevertheless wind and unwind a rubber band.
 
When the turbulence subsides and the meal is served an hour later, she still eats little. I eat even less, for the pasta tastes tasteless, though I gratefully sip the mediocre wine. I turn again to the pages of El Tiempo and try to focus on the dismal stories of migrants from Venezuela streaming into Colombia and Ecuador. I close my eyes for a couple of minutes, and find my mind racing back to a pair of gentle eyes.

When the plane finally lands, I am lucky to be escorted out quickly, because the work I have come for has something to do with the country’s customs department. I have just the time to deposit the suitcase in my hotel suite and catch the government car to the downtown secretariat.
 
By the time I return in the evening, I am exhausted, partly by work but more by frustration. The detailed request I had sent in advance for chronological data of the last five years had not been compiled and would not be ready for another two days. I have to completely remap the work for the next five days. Perhaps my stay would have to be extended

​The road back to the hotel is crowded, and our trajectory is painfully slow. The room is large, reassuringly quiet. I take off my shoes and look out of the window: a bustling downtown, jerkily moving taxis, a thousand tired steps aiming for home, and, on the far darkening horizon, a glimmering sunset.
 
A long evening of work lies ahead. I open the suitcase, take out your small, framed photograph, and place it on the desk.
 
You are still with me.

It is one thing to hear the cliché that you are unique. It is quite another to find out that, in some ways, your life has been different from that of many others.
 
One remarkable difference is my unique fraternity, my two brothers. My mother wanted a daughter, she never had one. She had three sons, me in the middle.
 
That position bothered me. In most Bengali novels, the second son was the crafty, scheming one, who cheated the otherworldly older one and outwitted the naïve younger brother, to get away with the family wealth. Our parents had no wealth to pilfer, but I still felt mistreated by the world of fiction.
 
I was close in age to Number One. Number Three came distinctly late, an afterthought when mother went back to work and the family strongbox became stronger. That became an easy way to pull his leg: we called him an Accident, the Latin word suggesting a freakish fall.
 
He was, however, a freakishly smart kid, quite capable of holding his own against overbearing elders. He was deceptively coy with uncles and aunts, gaining a reputation for being becomingly shy, only to slink away the next minute and make sly, derogatory remarks about them. That trait has lasted with him. One minute he can disarmingly dulcet with people, followed by an ingenious putdown nothing short of a nuclear blowout.
 
I held an oversize grudge against Number One. He had no business being so visibly superior. He was handsome, sociable, murderously intelligent – actually in the reverse order – and perceived in that order. When father’s guests came or, more annoyingly, when my friends came, he would stun them with his winsome smile and witty palaver, leaving me to seem awkward and lackluster in the wake.
 
But if I seemed the prosaic, well-balanced boy, I flattered myself that I was the closest to my mother. I admired her no end. It wasn’t just a child’s love for his mother. I was amazed and impressed by her balance and judgment. I could tell her of anything, a bullying teacher or a treacherous friend, and she would surprise me with a different view, a new aspect I hadn’t considered. I have little doubt that this made me the punctilious, perhaps plodding, analyst I am. I want to look at all sides, I want to give the devil his due.
 
The same bent might have helped mother cope with her three sons, so monstrously different. This showed up in the diverse paths we took.

​Number One went to medical college, and then studied psychology to work in a clinic. To the shock of those who expected more respectable things of me, I went to work in a factory. Number Three upset our parents the most. After winning a scholarship to study physics, he decided education for the birds and decided to write poetry.
 
That is how we began, though we all swerved soon and violently. Number One left the clinic and went to a research organization where he started writing, prolifically, heretically, with almost wicked originality. His scholarship grew, and so did his outpouring and fame. Number Three wrote poetry at a furious pace, two to three books each year, designed his books and even initiated his own publishing unit to turn out books of unusual presentability. To make ends meet, he also worked in publicity and was soon a high-end advertising wiz. Impatient and impetuous, he left that in a few years to become a muck-raking editor and publisher, and a thousand scandals and exploits later, left that to start his own company and become a major Bollywood producer.
 
My own path swerved too. My staggering discovery was that business was hardly businesslike, it was rather tribal in rites and ritual. My interest in organizational pathology took me from two corporations to an international development agency in Washington and then to diplomatic service. After a spell of consulting work, two years ago, to my surprise, I started writing – stories, essays, memoirs – in two languages, occasionally a third.
 
How could this happen? Number One has been writing virtually all his life. How come Number Three too, after all these years of hard journalism and harder film-making, has again started writing poetry? After the hundreds of reports and memoranda I have written on weighty themes all my life, how come I should be writing about loves and hates and all that lies between the two? What mysterious process of convergence has brought us all to the business of putting pen to paper and staking our life on it?
 
I don’t really know. I don’t even know what is the mystical link that binds this band of brothers across time and space. For decades we haven’t lived in the same continent, let alone the same city or same country. We had once ambitiously bought three contiguous apartments in a new construction in Kolkata, hoping to live within a shouting distance of each other, but work dispersed my two brothers to the north and west, before I too strayed even further to Washington.
 
But the longing endures – and the link. We are never far from each other. Loves and lusts have come and gone, but few have come as close to me as my two siblings. After some trifling difference of opinion on some occasion, I must have expressed my exasperation with them, only to draw a gentle but pointed response from our father, “Nobody is perfect, son. Yet you must love them.”
 
I do, dad, I do.