​Some say it is not a good time for older people.
 
It was perhaps never a good time for older people. You sense daily your waning strength; you cannot do now what you did, often easily, at other times. You cannot lift a packed suitcase or walk up four flights of stairs. Even to unscrew a tamper-proof medicine bottle you have to swallow your pride and beg the nearest youngster.
 
The humiliation does not stop there. Even your mind plays tricks with you. Forget about reciting the poem that you knew so well. You might start well, but experience has taught you that you will invariably stumble and forget some key lines. Invariably and embarrassingly, you forget the name of your nephew’s tall wife, the one who wears a shiny nose-pin. Sometimes even the nephew’s name eludes you.

​Yes, you have already lived ten years more than your father did, and, Heaven knows, you are in good enough shape to last another ten. Especially if you continue to gobble the eighteen tablets the doctor wants you to take. It isn’t such an enticing prospect when you remember that your urologist has warned of approaching incontinence and your dentist has twice talked of a couple of costly implants.
 
That cost business has real terror. You worked all your life, for what you thought was a decent wage. Nobody told you that what you earned and laid by would amount to a pittance in a few years. Your children laugh when they hear of your piddling accounts and what your life insurance policy is worth now. Once you pay the rental – for the same-size puny apartment you now pay three times what you started paying – you can barely cover your food bill and the occasional taxi fare.
 
You walk carefully, for you know that if you were to slip and fall, you have to turn to your children for what medical bills cost now. They are kind and helpful, but kindness can be tiresome after a while and you don’t care to be a help-seeking supplicant any time. You love your children, and you appreciate them. But you know well they belong to a different generation, with very different priorities. Looking after an aging parent occurs somewhere on their to-do list, but surely not at the top. You understand. Competition is fierce and demands on their time intense.
 
Also, they speak a different language, almost as if they belong to another world. You have tried, occasionally, tentatively, to hint at the void you sometimes feel and you have realized quickly that you were coming up against a wall. They would like to be of help, but they have no time. You would have liked them to explain an item in the newspaper that caught your attention or to help with a problem on your computer, but they rarely have the time to spare. They may quickly say a few things, but you may not understand, and you would prefer to give up than seem to be badgering them.
 
Essentially, you are on your own. One of your wisecracking friends used to say, “Aging is not nice, but the alternative is no better.” Yes, you are mercifully alive, which many of your friends are not. So many, your closest friends, have moved on; those that remain are often unwell, not quite mobile, or inaccessible to sensible conversation. It is good to survive, but not so good when the people you knew or cared for have not. There are few to talk to and nobody to talk with.
 
You don’t look at the mirror as often as you did earlier, but when you do you have to reckon with the aged face you see: a lined visage, an old scar or two, graying temples, hooded eyes. You are not the robust man you looked in yesteryears. You try to stride, without a stoop, and manage to achieve a relaxed but respectable gait. Yes, whatever the thoughts that gnaw at you, you are still quite a person, of poise and polish.
 
You don’t feel old at all. Strangely, you sense the person you have always believed yourself to be, sitting right there within you, watching, understanding, growing quietly. And as steadily as when you sat at a school desk and learned mathematics, or stood in a college hall and listened to a student politician. Or labored at your office desk in the beige hall and answered endless service calls.
 
No, you are not old. The years may have furrowed your face, sapped your energy, dimmed your eyes, enlarged your prostate, or robbed the value of your savings. You are alive, you are active, you have the grip of your world, you are taking in everything that is happening around you, you are making sense of the universe. You are a full human being, worthy and valuable, at par with the rest of humanity, titled for respect.
 
Didn’t somebody say that “an old man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick,” only to remember to add, “unless soul clap its hands and sing – and louder sing – for every tatter in its mortal dress.”

​Sing, for Heaven’s sake, and sing the loudest you can.

It is never easy to lose someone in your life.
 
We all know how painful it is when, through a misunderstanding or an inadvertent hurt, there is the end of a friendship, maybe 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. You 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 around 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 meager 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 twenty-one, 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 was 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 for cartel leaders.
 
Matías did not come home one evening. 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 several 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 became 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 fiber 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 normal 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.

​He had a gaunt face with deep-set eyes. Balancing his severe face was his rare but radiant smile, friendly and accepting. We liked him. I loved him.

​​The year was 1942 and the Japanese had started bombing Kolkata, trying to destroy the port and Howrah Bridge. Father had to stay in Kolkata for his work, but he suggested that Mother leave town for a while. Mother went, with two small children, to Bihar where she had brothers,.
 
When Father went to a doctor for tennis elbow, he encountered another patient in acute pain. Solomon, an American army officer, had cirrhosis of liver from regular drinking and was advised to stop hitting the bottle and live on a limited diet. In the absence of his family, Father had plenty of space in his apartment. He took pity on the man and offered to lodge the ailing American. He instructed the cook to serve Solomon only boiled, easily digestible food.

When Mother returned after eight months, two young children in tow, Solomon offered to leave, but Mother noticed his pale face, heard of his delicate condition and urged him to stay. Solomon had paid limited heed to the doctor’s embargo of his drinking habit so far. Mother now laid down the law gently but firmly. No booze, none. She served him bland, boiled vegetables along with lean meat and fish and his health improved. 
 
Years later, we pieced together the truth that Solomon was no ordinary soldier. He worked for the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA, and was in India essentially to monitor the British defense preparedness on the eastern front. He was posted to Kolkata but would disappear periodically to survey the situation first-hand at the Burmese frontier. The allied powers were concerned about Japanese incursion and wanted to ascertain the real situation, independently of British assurances, and wanted a US agent to monitor the position.
 
My parents knew nothing of this and took Solomon as a pleasant foreigner in ill health whom they liked and wanted to help. Solomon was a tall, lean man who spoke softly and smiled shyly. His brown hair was brushed back but always looked slightly untidy. He was a good tennis player, for I saw him beat father easily. He also played soccer with me, I suspect mainly to please me. He was a poor soccer player – he had never learned or played it before – and I enjoyed outwitting him in the field. Looking back, I marvel that he agreed graciously to play with me a game that he did not know and possibly did not enjoy. He played enthusiastically, ran energetically and cheered when I scored against him. In sheer sportsmanship, he had no equal.
 
In the evenings, he read, wrote letters and chatted with my parents and their friends. He was a quiet man, but by his smile and gentle, attentive presence gave a sense of participation. With us kids, he was perfectly at home, ready to talk and help. Father wanted me to call him uncle, and nobody could be more avuncular that this lanky man with a ready smile.
 
Solomon worked in the Fort William and would bring along all kinds of stuff from the American Commissary: powdered milk that tasted better than the milk we were used to, powder egg that let mother make deliciously soft and fluffy omelets, huge cans of pears, oranges and apples immersed in some light sauce that added to their taste, and large tins of cookies and chocolates that Father struggled to keep away from my hands.
 
He brought something else from the Commissary that made a great difference to my life. He brought home large cartons of pocketbooks, and I became probably the only schoolboy in Kolkata who had a massive collection of English literature, from Shakespeare to Salinger. He also gifted me a remarkable series of books, produced for the US Army, on English language and style. My entire school education was in my first language, Bengali, and those ingenious books, designed for low-level privates, changed my savor of the English language.
 
Mother’s diet had improved Solomon’s health, but his liver, long battered by his copious drinking, finally gave way. One morning he did not drink his coffee, and when mother made him some soup, he could barely take a spoonful. He was in great pain and father quickly summoned our family doctor. It was no use. Solomon died in the afternoon in Mother’s arms. Officials came from the Fort William to retrieve his body and probably forward it to his family in the US after embalming.
 
Solomon’s was a short, accidental presence in our life, but the guest room he occupied had turned into a cordial corner for me. His gentle presence, soft voice and unfamiliar cologne had become a lovable, reassuring part of my day. Like my brother and my parents, he was now an affectionate certainty in my life. Then, like a thunderclap, came the warm, overcast day when three burly men came and, silently, took Soloman away in a khaki body bag.
 
We had lost an unusual member of our family.

​My life as an international executive took a curious turn in Manila when a university and a management institute both engaged me as a visiting professor the same month. Thanks to my itinerant life, I had the opportunity to deliver special lectures or even courses in some universities in different countries. It was a pleasant scholarly fringe to my life as a business manager, but essentially secondary. This was different. The twin assignments meant lessons and lectures, students and study plans would be a major part of my life.

​There was a strange irony to this. I firmly believed that most teaching was useless. A well-known university had published a collection of essays in which mine started with the rebellious declaration, “There is no such thing as teaching.” In fact, I was convinced that a large part of teaching was quite harmful. Most of my friends who had been exposed to Shakespeare in college as a text, never read him later and hated him. I paid no attention to my professors of literature and took my lessons only from Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, loved Shakespeare and read him for fun.
 
How then to teach in a fashion that was helpful instead of hurtful? My unflinching decision was to make sure that the student should be at the center of the process, rather than the professor. The university decreed that a student’s final marks should depend on three things, a test, a project and class work, but did not prescribe the percentages. On the first day of the course, I told the students that they had the option of collectively choosing the percentages, in effect deciding what they wanted to give importance to. One class, for instance, decided 60 per cent should go to project performance and only 10 per cent to the final examination. Other professors thought it crazy to give such freedom to students, but I found students felt involved and committed to the course.
 
The Dean was fortunately a flexible person ready to go along with my innovations if she felt it would attract and motivate students. I let go of the classic lecture style and would begin a topic by inviting thoughts and questions from students. This in turn prompted students to study the theme in advance and prepare their mind. It also made the process highly participative.
 
The management institute was a different proposition. It followed, religiously, the case method of teaching and believed that that alone made the teaching process responsive to students. In reality, the culture of the institute was highly paternalistic and in class after class of other professors that I attended I found the process centered on the professor as the hero and savant. The students got the message and often focused on cultivating the professor and gaining an advantage. My inclination was to deemphasize the professor’s central role and place the ball back firmly among the students. I believed my role, both in the class and outside, was only to help the student’s own effort to learn.
 
The institute staff talked a lot about cultural differences, drawing ecstatic lessons from Japan whose upward curve was already beginning to sag, and, paradoxically, prided itself on its connection with a well-known US business school. It seemed to overlook that the case method, as practiced in a US institution, worked very differently in the Asian context, given pliant and overly deferential students. I argued with my colleagues that no method was a surefire guarantee of student enlightenment.
 
In both the institutions I tried to do two very simple things.
 
I took the course outline, largely modified and updated it, then wrote out a detailed framework, saying what really has to be learned and what the student can do to stay ahead of the curve. I suggested alternative texts but left it to the students to decide what they found relevant and helpful. I have never quite understood why educational institutions, who talk incessantly of student responsibility, seldom give them useful clues as to how they can prepare for a course, cope best with the oncoming stream of new knowledge and offer guidelines that can keep the learner from feeling overwhelmed. Pressure and tension seem to be watchwords of current practice. My aim was to make the student feel at home and find the peace and fun that true learning should entail.
 
The second thing I insisted on was to make myself accessible to the students in an extraordinary measure. I told them I would be available for consultation an hour before each class and two hours after. Since my university classes were in the evening, the ensuing two hours became a time for a party in my home salon. Students talked among themselves and with me, collectively and individually, when they wished. While I could not replicate the ancient Indian system of a student living in the Guru’s home, I tried to know as much as I could of their work and life, and it was the goldmine that let me shape every discourse based on their issues and problems. I have always disliked homilies that I could not relate to my life and experiences, and I wanted my students to know that education was worthwhile precisely because it would be germane to their life.
 
I am sure I failed in many ways and I could have done better for my pupils. But they were gracious and indulgent and showered me with affection I will never forget.

​I often get lost. Partly because I am absent minded. Partly because I am the opposite – present minded – and pay so much attention to what is around me that I overlook where I am going.
 
I am also good at losing things, books, pens, glasses, watches, phones and money. I haven’t yet lost my passport and ended up in detention. Curiously, I once got nearly detained for the opposite reason: I had too many passports – an Indian passport, for I was born in India, an American passport, for I lived in the US, an American diplomatic passport, for that was my status, and a blue UN passport, laissez-passer, for I worked for the World Bank.

​The good thing about getting lost is that is that you are not really lost, you are with yourself, and end up, however late, in a hotel or in your home. The bad thing about losing things is that it can cause some inconvenience – at least the inconvenience of having to search for the missing thing. The worse is the irritation of not finding the missing thing at the end.
 
So, it was a pleasure, at the end of a modest but pleasant lunch in a museum café in Bochum, Germany, to hear my friends talk of their Lost and Found experience.
 
Ashis, my brother, narrated that, on his way back from Turkey, airport security asked him to remove the iPhone from his person and he quickly inserted it in the handbag on the conveyor belt. The handbag looked like his but was someone else’s. Returning home, he could not find his phone, checked his computer and found where the phone had ended up, in Bangalore.
 
He called the person, a government clerk, who was relieved to find that the unknown phone in his bag was not a terrorist’s explosive device. But he was irritated that he had to pay a large sum to mail it back to its owner. Ashis mailed him the money and a token amount as his reward. He felt the poor man merited some compensation for his hassle.
 
When Dorothy exited a tourist bus in Rome minus her backpack, her Italian friends said they were praying that she would recover the lost bag. Her German compatriots said lost valuables are seldom returned in Italy and suggested she forget about it. Dorothy went ahead and bought a new laptop, the most valuable thing lost in her backpack. When she fired up the laptop, the first message that popped up was a notice from the Italian police: she was required to recover within 24 hours a brown backpack including a laptop computer, which someone had found and deposited with the polizia nazionale.
 
Ulrik, a museum curator in Essen, had lost his wallet some years ago during a visit to East Germany. Despondent, he perked up when he received a call at home from a woman in Leipzig to say she had found the wallet. He returned to Leipzig, but the woman said she was sorry she no longer had the wallet. She had, as the rules required her to, handed the wallet over to the local police. Ulrik went to the police station, but the police didn’t have it either. According to rules, they had passed it to the East German Lost and Found section. Ulrik then rushed to the Lost and Found section, but, no, they didn’t have it either. They had it forwarded it to the West German police. Ulrik returned home frustrated, planning to pay a visit to the police the next day, to find the wallet, neatly ensconced in an envelope, hanging from his door knob. She called the East German woman the next day, thanked her and offered some reward money. She refused any gift, again strictly according to rules.
 
Jonathan then said that it was hard, nearly impossible, to lose anything in Japan. He had traveled in train from Osaka to Tokyo, and, after alighting, realized that he had left his briefcase in the train. He had no hope of retrieving the briefcase, but since it contained his passport he was obligated to report the loss to the railway police station. The conversation was not easy, for the police officer spoke scant English but he insisted that Jonathan see him the next day, precisely 3.47 pm.  Jonathan did not understand why and was particularly confused at the precise time specified, but he did turn up at the police station on time. The police officer rushed with him to the train platform, where the Osaka-Tokyo train approached, and the officer entered the compartment Jonathan indicated. They both saw the briefcase lying untouched exactly at the spot Jonathan had left it in his seat, though the train had shuttled between Osaka and Tokyo for three days.
 
Losing may be disconcerting, often costly and discombobulating, but recovering a lost wallet, backpack or briefcase, against seemingly impossible odds, is certainly a great pleasure.
 
My mother, rather distraught, visited my father in the emergency ward of the largest hospital in Kolkata. When she returned, I noticed, with the typical perceptiveness of a ten-year old, that her gold necklace, inherited from her grandmother, was missing. Maybe the clasp at the neck came undone as she walked. The precious necklace, we believed, was gone for good. The next day I accompanied my mother as she went to visit my father. As we were about to enter the hospital, we saw, on the street in front of the gates, where at least 50,000 people must have passed since my mother’s last visit, glinting in the bright afternoon sun my mother’s glittering 24-carat gold necklace.

Now when I visit my hometown, Kolkata, I ask for an Uber ride and get my wish in five minutes. I pay no more than a dollar or two to arrive anywhere in the city. It is better than a chauffeured car, for the driver changes every time; given any luck, they tell me their unique stories, some sad and some upbeat, but always better than a stimulating podcast. In the past, when I used a company car as a corporate honcho, the drivers maintained a deferential silence. It was no fun. I preferred to drive my private car rather than endure their cagey company.

But most of my days in Kolkata had nothing to do with four-wheeled comfort. Nor with two-wheeled locomotion, for my mother firmly forbade riding a bicycle in Kolkata’s congested roads and erratic traffic. My family never had a car, and I would have laughed at the idea that it was a deprivation. Most of the places I wanted to go, my friends’ homes, I walked. Walking seemed fun; there was so much to see in a lively, bustling city. It was more fun if a friend was walking with me. The greater the distance, the longer the exhilarating talk we shared.
 
When I needed transport, because either the place was remote or the time was short, the first thing that came to mind was the tram – what Americans call a streetcar. The trams were clean, comfortable and quite plentiful. They moved slower than cars, which in reality lent them a stately elegance. Unlike cars that weaved left and right through traffic, they moved majestically along straight tracks. Because the tram was a metal vehicle that moved on metal tracks, it made an awful racket as it moved, but it was hardly bothersome in a perennially raucous city. I rather liked the tinkling of its bells as it stopped and started.
 
Like the society it served, the tram had a class system. You paid less than a cent for the privilege of first-class comfort; the second class, which did not have cushioned seats, was even cheaper. When I moved to a school further from home, I was given money to travel by the premier class, because Mother had a mortal fear of my rickety frame in a crowded conveyance. I often used the inferior class and saved the fare differential to buy candy.
 
The buses were a more proletarian affair, a ramshackle tribute to India’s rugged entrepreneurial spirit. The vehicles were of ancient vintage, invariably smelly and indifferently maintained. Their driving quality was highly variable, as too was the speed, from the excessive to the breakneck. Though there were assigned stops, they stopped wherever they liked, to pick up passengers to fill the buses to their rafters. Buses went anywhere and everywhere, and for many passengers they were a lifesaver.
 
My effervescent memory is of the passengers who traveled with me, their ebullient mood and witty asides on street events or the day’s headlines. Every venerable politician who had the misfortune to be in the news was given a sarcastic name and every screen star who had featured in a recent release became the center of a salacious story, the more far-fetched the better received. Every time I traveled with a female classmate from college and sidled closer to share a whisper, there would be jocular references to Romeo-Juliet or some such romantic pair. When I became friendly with an American girl, a neighbor’s daughter, our trips invariably drew notice and good-natured remarks. She sat usually in a seat marked, gallantly if unfashionably, ‘for ladies,’ and I hung on to a bar to be near her, only to hear tongue-in-cheek remarks about my ‘fidelity’ and ‘protectiveness.’ I resented those, but now I recall them with greater charity.
 
Just as vibrant a memory is those of the interesting people who worked on the buses and trams. I remember a tall, well-built Sikh conductor who always stopped the bus a little longer if he saw me coming and, as I came closer to the entrance, put out a hand to grab my wrist and help me in. There was an elderly tram conductor, bearded and elegant, reverentially called Hassan Sahib by all, who greeted passengers like a maître d’hôtel and patted me on the shoulder as he checked my ticket. On the route to Chowringhee, I made friends with a young conductor, Saha, who said he was saving money to go to college, so that he could become an engineer and educate his two younger sisters in the village. I hope he realized his dream.
 
Last year I was sharing these recollections with a journalist friend, Alpana, who suggested that we take an early morning tram and make a long trip to the northern part of the city where I lived for many years. We arrived in the tram depot at dawn, to be told by two conductors that the first tram would still take fifteen minutes to roll out. They graciously suggested a bench where we could wait. In five minutes, like a miracle on that cool winter morning, emerged another conductor with two steaming cups of tea. “Please drink our tea while you wait for the first tram,” he said.
 
Tea never tasted better. When I went to thank the host conductors and pay for the tea, they politely refused to take the money. They said, with a simple earnestness that will stay forever among my best souvenirs of Kolkata, “You are our guests.”

​The helicopter circled for a long time among mountains until finally I spotted a break in the range. We swooped down and I saw the little clearing where we could land.
 
Maxine traveled all the time but mostly to big cities and large airports. She was a hardy negotiator when it came to economists and businessmen, but was uncomfortable negotiating narrow mountain passes and landing in tiny rural patches. But this was the critical area for the energy project we were checking out, and she would not shrink from the adventure. Her negotiation was with the local government and its specialists; I was just a bureaucrat greasing the wheels of the deal.

​She asked me to come because she seemed to trust me. I came because I thought it was a good project and I liked her. She had bright eyes and short blonde hair. She wore a navy suit and sported a white scarf. At the last minute, I made her change her high heels for practical flat shoes, for the ground might be slushy. I carried my trusty tablet; she carried nothing. Quite a woman: she must have studied through the night all the files I gave her last evening and was carrying the figures in her head.
 
The helicopter landed with a mild thud. Sakya, the pilot made a signal asking us to wait. We got out after the dust had settled. I emerged first and lent my hand to Maxine. She ignored it and hopped out on her own.
 
When the noise subsided, Sakya asked her, “How did you like the ride?” He was proud of his skill and knew few pilots could have steered a track through those craggy mountains.
 
 “Very picturesque,” Maxine said, then added candidly, “but I had my heart in my throat.”
 
This was what I liked about her. She was both tough and vulnerable.
 
Maxine, who grew up in Saunderstown village in North Kingston of Rhode Island, was the daughter of a fisherman who could barely afford to send her to school. She completed college, partly on scholarship and partly by washing dishes in local restaurants. When she got a break and found a job in a government agency, she rose meteorically to the top. Now over twenty professionals worked for her in Washington. At some point, a high-school romance sprang into an April wedding, then wilted in a December divorce.
 
She was earnest and determined and liked to have the facts at her fingertips. We got along well, for, when she asked for the numbers on anything, either I gave them to her or said frankly I didn’t have them. I knew it was a fatal mistake with her to fudge or to provide spurious data. She would catch you for sure.
 
The ground was indeed muddy, for it had rained the previous night. Maxine and I had both donned boots, but I hadn’t intended to cover mine with muck up to the gills. But that’s what happened with a determined Maxine covering the entire project area doggedly, end to end, seemingly checking every inch. After an hour of relentless examination, she sighed contentedly, “I think this will do.”
 
Sakya seemed glad to have us back and said quickly, “I am afraid there is a report of bad weather coming this way. Quite bad. We better leave quickly.”
 
I had noticed a thick fog gathering and turned to Maxine, “Visibility is getting poorer every minute. Let us make a move.”
 
Maxine took a last look around and took several photographs to aid her memory. Then she said what Sakya and I wanted to hear, “Let’s go.”
 
The helicopter swung into action, but Sakya’s arched brow told me that he didn’t anticipate an easy return. We had to pass through narrow spaces between mountains and make quick turns, but the view started turning murkier every minute. There was no fog when we came, as was assured by the weather people, and now the fog was getting denser by the second. Maxine sat stony-faced between Sakya and me in the tiny cockpit, quite silent.
 
Then Sakya took another sharp turn and, uncharacteristically, spat an expletive. I could see through the dark fog how close we were to the mountainside, and then, without a warning, I saw Sakya straining suddenly to make another quick turn.
 
All of a sudden, the imperturbable, almost-stern Maxine leaned close and grabbed the lapel of my jacket with both hands and shrieked, “Are we all right?”
 
I wasn’t feeling comfortable at all but, seeing her acute discomfort, I suddenly had a strange burst of humor, “We are quite all right, Maxine. Either we will reach home all right, or we will reach paradise – in each other’s arms.”
 
Sakya did as well as his stellar reputation warranted. He piloted steadily and skillfully to land us at the airport in record time before a terrible storm broke. Maxine and I reached the airport without a hair out of place. I drove Maxine to her hotel and a downpour started just as we reached her room.
 
We did not quite end in each other’s arms. When I had escorted Maxine to her suite, she poured us a drink and then, after a sip, wordlessly gave me a hug of relief.

My life has a taken a curious turn. I am writing a lot now.
 
Of course, I have written in the past, sometimes quite a bit. But those were mostly letters and memoranda as an executive, and reports and aides-memoire of diplomatic work. Now I write essays and belles lettres. Occasionally stories and poems. A very different kettle of fish.
 
The other difference is that in my work the writing felt secondary. The real business was to get things done. Words were ancillary to that. The main thing was what you achieved. Now, what I achieve are words. Words, hundreds of them, are primary. I don’t have to think beyond them, the effects they produce. I just have to produce the words.

​This is a big change in my life. I was constantly doing things, calling people, giving instructions, driving to meetings, receiving faxes, sending cable, attending conferences. I was often on my feet, greeting people, shaking hands, aiming a pointer at a chart. Now all I seem to do is to sit at a computer and use my fingers. These days few use a heavy-weight tome, like a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia; those are all electronically accessible in a second. I am slowly, very slowly, getting accustomed to sitting at a desk for hours.
 
Richard Nixon, the disgraced US President, who retrieved a modicum of his respectability in the last decade by writing several books, summed up the requirement of his latter life in the coarse but pithy phrase “an iron bottom.” I seem to be developing it very sluggishly indeed.
 
I barely write a paragraph before I long for a sip of coffee. Another two, and I long to take a look at the headlines. Two pages down, I have a seductive itch for the breaking news on television. An hour or so later, the urge for a lunch break seems irresistible. I have come to see these as short escapes from the onerous yoke to which I have condemned myself.
 
That is not the only temptation of a starting writer. Sometimes I am eager to tell a story and the words tumble out quickly. At other times, the emerging words leave me with a gnawing sense of discomfort. Surely, I could have said that better! Isn’t there a simpler, clearer way to express that idea? Then I have no option but to turn to some lexical help and muddy the stream of my thought. I am torn between keeping on writing, no matter what, and stepping back and tweaking what I have written.
 
That is not the only dilemma. I hate doing what teachers tell you to do in schools: make a blueprint of what I am going to write and follow its guideposts while writing. I find the procedure painfully constricting; it takes the joy out of writing. I feel like I am separating my thinking from my writing and placing them in discrete boxes, depreciating both. I prefer the blueprint in my head, mainly because it shifts, sidles and switches, and leaves me free to write by instinct and follow the flow in my mind.
 
In this respect, I trail D. H. Lawrence who chose to follow what he called his daemon, his guiding spirit, untrammeled by his reason. Beyond minor corrections, he refused to edit his manuscript. If he disliked the result of his effort, he simply started all over again, giving another chance to his daemon to recreate a better opus. Only rarely do I transpose paragraphs or make a significant change to what I have written. Let the substance get the approbation of the readers or their condemnation on its merit.
 
On the other hand, I am seldom fully content with what has emerged. I can never go back to what I have written a month or even a week back without pruning an adverb or tightening a phrase. I am certainly perfectible. I want to write better tomorrow than I write today.
 
What do I mean when I talk of better writing?
 
The first thing I am trying to achieve is precision. I want to say just what I intend to say, no more, no less. I haven’t found such exactness easy to accomplish, but it is still my goal. I feel I haven’t done anything worthwhile if I have not said precisely what I meant to express. At the same time, I want to say it clearly. Nothing in written work exasperates me more than the need to extract the sense of a passage that remains defiantly obscure. I want to make it easy, as supremely easy as possible, for my reader to get what I am driving at. A third concern that I am aware of is elegance. Surely, I want to write some limpid prose that is easy on the eyes and the tongue. I want one to read me comfortably and enjoy it. I am not sure that I am able to meet all the three standards at the same time. In fact, I am quite sure I fail quite often. But I try and the guidelines remain in place.
 
It is a remarkable pleasure when somebody reads something I have written and likes it. Perhaps he or she takes the trouble to tell me. It is joyful news. Nothing, however, compares with the pleasure of completing something I have started writing. It is a miracle that, where there was nothing, not even a ghost of an idea, a piece of writing has sprung from within me. It is a miracle that never stops stupefying me. It keeps me writing.

Einstein said he had his best ideas when he shaved. How did he write them down? He must have been holding his chin with the left hand, as I do, and shaving with the right hand. Annoyingly, I don’t get any ideas when I am removing hair from my face. Rather, I think of Harjeet Singh.

​I had seen streetside barbers in India and admired the speed and panache they brought to their job. Speed I can understand, for occasionally they had waiting customers in the morning. But you had to admire the punctiliousness of their service. They left no stubble unturned.
 
I saw it day after day, and then, one day, unable to restrain myself, a little late in the morning when there were no waiting customers, I sat myself down before a barber. He operated on a street corner a hundred yards from my New Delhi home. I had noticed him many times and liked his pleasant aging face topped with a mop of abundant graying hair. He had a bright smile and a gentle, reassuring air.
 
Apparently, he had noticed me as much as I had noticed him. As he wiped clean the weather-beaten wooden chair I was to occupy during his ministration, he said, “You are from the big corner house, aren’t you?” I felt guilty, for I had wanted to pass myself as one of the day laborers who mainly sought his service. But, cannily, he sensed my unease and quickly said, “All kinds of people come to me for a shave.”
 
That was my first clue to the quick-witted person he was. He had swiftly gauged that I didn’t really need his service, but had come mainly to have an unusual experience. He asked if I wanted the quick service or a full-tilt treatment. I had come, out of curiosity for the experience, and unhesitatingly asked for the latter. He smiled, nodded his head and asked me to sit down and relax.
 
He wrapped my upper torso with a fresh towel, taking care to tuck the end over my collar. He poured warm water from a flask into a shaving cup and stirred some dry rose and sandalwood powder. He moistened my chin thoroughly and repeatedly with the perfumed water. The water probably included some other mysterious element, for I had a pleasant tingling sensation.
 
Then he began lathering my face inch by inch. Not just a layer of soapy water. He used some kind of pleasant-smelling mentholated cream and painted layer after layer of white stuff all over my face until he was sure my skin was ready for the blade. Harjeet brought out a glinting cut-throat razor and did several swipes over a leather strap that hung on the side. When he brought the razor to my cheek, its trajectory over my face was like a song. His hand glided from one side to another swiftly, surely, in confident strokes. In a few minutes, every trace of the overnight stubble was gone.
 
I now know that, as one shaves hair from the face, the process itself pulls out the remnant of the hair from its groove. So Harjeet did the right thing. When the shave was over, he lathered again and went through the entire process of shaving once more. When finished, he removed the enveloping towel, taking care first to brush away every shard of wayward hair, and helped me stand up. It was truly the end of a magical process. I felt genuinely renovated. I knew I was compensating Harjeet poorly when I paid him his charge of fewer than two dollars.
 
He smiled graciously as he took the money. I thanked him and said I was grateful to him for a wonderful shave. He did not ask me to come again, for he well knew that I had come for a unique experience.
 
Harjeet had done more than take away unwanted hair from my face. He had taught me a valuable lesson.
 
For most of us, who do not maintain a mustache or a beard, shaving is a daily imposition. It is a chore to be done ahead of the shower. It is something many of us do half-heartedly, often grouchily, as a boring task that had to be done before we face our day. We do it carelessly, desultorily, listening to music, thinking unrelated thoughts. Harjeet Singh made an art of what we are tempted to consider a lowly, tedious duty.
 
On that luminous spring day, at the busiest corner of a busy New Delhi market, Harjeet helped me see, in his quiet way and in only a few minutes, what I had never noticed in years. Shaving was a daily routine, but it was not trivial. Rather, precisely because it was a daily errand, it was an important part of my life, an activity of significance. I needed to treat it with respect. By doing it well, with care and flair, as Harjeet had done, I enriched my life and added meaning to my brief existence on this earth.

“Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes.”
 
Pain is the ultimate truth.
 
One moment you are thinking about God and poetry and poetic sunsets. You are talking eloquently about Thomas Mann and Thomas Merton. The next moment somebody delivers a huge punch to your stomach. Art, nature and providence disappear instantly from your universe.

It doesn’t have to be violence. You could fall from your bar stool and break your wrist. You might receive a text message that your child has lost a limb in a car accident. Your doctor could look up from a clinical report and tell you gloomily that you have three months, no more, to put your affairs in order.
 
Oh, sure, you have your moments of ecstasy. Your team wins the soccer tournament. You finally get the promotion you have been waiting for years. Your child tops the class and all the parents seem to think you are the architect of his success. But you know that your team was universally predicted to win. You got your promotion after many more years than unworthy colleagues. Your kid never accepted any of your suggestions and, who knows, maybe even scoffed at them with his buddies.
 
In any case the joy lasts for a few hours, perhaps a few days. After a week or two, what lingers at best is a vague sense of satisfaction. That seems the painful truth. Happiness seems slow to come and swift to evaporate. In retrospect, it looks fleeting if not trivial. On the other hand, misery seems eternal, at the least, intermittent and enduring. How do you forget your gorgeous dream-house that a cloudburst destroyed in an hour? Or get over the slip of tongue that wrecked your splendid twenty-year career? How will you ever uproot the ‘rooted sorrow’ of the beautiful child you lost to a bungled surgery? Such pains persist for ever, cloud your brightest days and haunt your ill-slept nights.
 
I did an exercise with my friends. I asked them to tell me of something joyful that happened in their life ten years ago. They had great difficulty recalling an event. When I reduced the period to five years, they recalled an event or two, but cited them hesitantly, as if they were embarrassed to cite something so trivial. In sharp contrast, when I asked them to tell me something tragic or disastrous that happened to them ten years ago, they instantly told me of an accident, a business reverse or a death in the family. Shortening the time range brought a flood of painful recollections. I don’t think of my friends as a mournful lot, yet the range of their memories and the speed of their recall left me in little doubt about what weighs more on their mind.
 
If this is our lot, what should we do when we suffer?
 
You have no doubt heard of the stoic response. Suffer in silence, bear your pain with fortitude. What does not kill you, they say, makes you stronger. Be brave and endure is the motto of all military training and the theme of many a popular movie. But we know that soldiers don’t return from wars quite intact. What does not kill you can still kill your finer side and bury your compassionate instinct. My friend Vinay in California told me of a ghastly car accident: he survived and is perhaps a more cautious driver now, but it has forever robbed him of the pristine joy of driving on the highway without a care in the world.
 
Nietzsche spoke of pain as a liberator of the spirit, but doubted that it makes us better, adding that it makes us “profounder.” I don’t know that pain has liberated my spirit, but it has certainly let me see things in a new light, even let me see new things. When my father passed away, the growing hurt made me realize how much of his breadth of spirit – varied people, unusual ideas – I had both imbibed and taken for granted. When, more recently, my colleague and friend Dilip closed his eyes, it dawned on me how much his quiet guidance had supported me in my darkest days. I have come to love Léon Bloy’s remarkable words, "People have places in their heart which do not yet exist, and into those enters suffering in order that they may have existence.” If you love and lose your love, you will know right away what the French gadfly meant about discovering new spaces in your heart.
 
Then there is the other way of looking at pain. The Italian coastal town of Herculaneum was excavated in 1765 from the ashes of Vesuvius nearly 1700 years after its interment. There, in the Villa of Papyruses, we can find the most eloquent statement of the view that happiness is the purpose of life, and the best measure of its quality is joy minus pain. Epicurus, who lived three centuries before Christ, thought that lasting happiness can only come from a peaceful mind, free of pain and fear. To achieve that, the keys he suggested were friendship, knowledge and a temperate life. The golden rule was: To live a pleasant life, live wisely and fairly, harm nobody and do not be harmed.
 
I think of all this with a sense of shock. Are we living wisely and fairly? Most of the things we now think of now, most of the time, individually and socially –  whatever else we do – seem hardly designed for wisdom or fairness. Not greater wealth, faster learning, superior technology, even better looks. None of these can reduce our pain and let us live happier than our neanderthal ancestors.
 
Sadly, our pain might continue a while longer.