My brother Ashis was to receive an international award and I made a quick hop from Iceland to arrive for the ceremony in Germany.
 
Bochum is one of the larger universities in northern Germany, located in a curious region that combines the pastoral with the industrial. That is where a major foundation had decided to honor him for his lifelong work on creativity, culture and mass violence.

​Many years ago, I had gone to Essen on the invitation of a mining company. I saw a highly industrialized area that bore the oversize footprint of the Krupp empire. Krupp was Europe’s largest company and for 400 years Germany’s main arms maker, producing tanks, ships, guns and cannons. Naturally, during the Second World War it became the top target of allied bombers. I saw huge destruction and massive reconstruction and came away with the impression of a mainly industrial Rhineland.
 
Now I was seeing the other side of the region, the softer, bucolic side.
 
An hour’s run from Dusseldorf, I was ensconced in a charming hotel. Away from the main road, and a few steps from a golf course, you walk up to a modern building that looks from afar a bit like a chalet. The view from my room consisted entirely of oak, fir and pine; I could go for a shower leaving my trousers on the bed.
 
A cool but bright day. I walked down the bluff where the hotel is located. A bricklayer and a mason, working on an annex of the hotel, sat sipping beer during lunch break. They politely took off their cap and waved. A young woman pushing a baby in a pram and crooning passed by and nodded.
 
I reached a side street and walked on. A caressing breeze, a long series of tall pines. A real pleasure to walk on the cleanest, smoothest sidewalk I have ever seen.
 
“Are you tired? Would you care to join us for dinner?” asked my host from the foundation.
 
I was tired after the briefest nap on the plane, but I was also hungry. I loved the salmon and salad, along with the suave Riesling.
A brief drizzle in the morning, a cooler air.
 
“Would you like to join us for a visit to an industrial museum?”
 
My past decided: I can’t skip a museum that has to do with mines, for I spent time in coal and metal mines in India. The museum was an ingenious one, housed in the gigantic coal washing plant that served the major factories of the area. The huge machines remain, and the three floors have been imaginatively converted into three linked exhibits: Memory, that depicts the ancient land; History, that tells the story of its industrialization; and Present, that offers a fascinating view of its fast-changing face from war production to peacetime industry.
 
I kept wondering if defunct factories in India, like the one I worked in, couldn’t be converted into a museum this fascinating.
 
The event in the evening was well attended. A large hall, many dignitaries and scholars, and a hearteningly large group of younger people. I do not endure long speeches well; the loss of time is seldom made up by a measurable gain of wisdom. There were three of them, telling us of the foundation, its purpose and activities, and the larger goals of the area’s universities. Then, somebody narrated my brother’s life work in the social sciences, his huge studies of media, violence and societies in transition.
 
Finally, came the climactic moment when Ashis received the Hans Kilian Award and started his talk on the 1947 killing of a million Indians and displacement of fourteen million more. It was a telling speech, but my mind wandered.
 
I was thinking of the nine-year-old standing next to me at a third-floor window, while arsonists went about setting fire to our house. I was thinking of the boy walking with me to school and complaining that I walked too fast and missed the fun things on a Kolkata street. I was remembering an adolescent telling anecdotes to adoring, laughing friends in our favorite terrace. Eating in our aunt’s small kitchen and fancifully christening the egg casserole he liked. Hugging my disconsolate mother who missed his long absence in a faraway university. Telling me of his dreams to study scientists in a tiny Delhi apartment. His dramatic reappearance in my parents’ home with his simpering new bride. His happy, excited entry in a cherished research center. His long days and nights at work while I chatted and drank tea with his wife. Listening to Vilayet’s sitar together in his cozy but cold home in old Delhi. His endless writing and furious espousal of victims’ causes. The erupting hate of fanatics and our fear for his safety. His New Delhi home, the paintings on his walls that he loves, the torrential music that he adores, the overflowing books and research papers that fill every room. Our spirited walks on Delhi’s uneven streets. And our talk, unending talk, late at night, early morning, over tea, on rain-swept days and chilly nights.
 
Ashis finished, talking of the elderly Sikh who slit the throats of his daughters before they could be raped by invaders, and the thin ray of hope in the action of the gutsy few who tried to save the helpless many.
 
Time for the celebratory dinner and a joyous cocktail. Our last brief hour together. A plane waits to take him 4000 miles east. A very separate one flies me 4000 miles west into an alien sunset.

I admit I am biased. I prefer poets to politicians,  photographers to pilots, professors to promoters, actors to accountants, comedians to company lobbyists, band leaders to brokers, writers to realtors – and singers to soldiers.
 
I have met some military bigwigs I did not care for. I did not care for their assumption that because they sported a bunch of colors on their chest, they had profound insights into society or politics. On the other hand, my work has thrown me in close contact with ordinary soldiers, airmen or marines whose sincerity and simplicity have charmed me.
 
In both rich and poor countries, I have seen that the vast number of service people come from modest families. Affluent families send their children to fancy colleges and expensive universities. They would like their children to work in banks, insurance companies, investment firms and corporate headquarters. It is the poor and middleclass families whose sons and daughters look desperately for jobs in factories, workshops, retail stores and delivery companies. They join the military in large numbers.

That is how Orville joined the marine corps. And that is how I met him, an Indiana farm boy, in a Central American country.
 
He was a part of the marine guard in our embassy. His uniform and his manner spoke of a person out to do his duty well. But his young face and earnest voice spoke of a simple, inexperienced lad from the countryside.
 
I found an opportunity to speak to him and learned of the tiny town where he grew up. His father and two uncles were farmers; none had attended college, nor had his mother. But Orville liked to read and wanted to go to college. And see the world. How does a farmboy get that kind of an ambition?
 
Orville extracted from his hip a small well-thumbed pocketbook of Dr Seuss’s poetry, ‘Oh, the Places You'll Go!’ I read: 
 
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
 
The direction he chose was this place in Central America. He was carrying a Spanish phrasebook and tried bashfully to exchange a few sentences with me. He said he was enrolled in some online courses toward a degree.
 
Every time I met him afterward he tried a few more Spanish words on me. He was looking for more exciting opportunities and, when he tried to translate ‘moving mountains’ I remembered Seuss’s couplet,
 
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!
 
I returned to Washington and had a card from Orville, on his first deployment to Afghanistan. He was happy and excited, though he reported how baffled and anxious were his relatives in Merom, Indiana.
 
When he returned from his second deployment, he called and narrated his experiences, both harrowing and thrilling. I remembered his gentle face and advised him to be careful in all circumstances. He assured me he was in a very good team that would protect him.
 
He sent out a card to his friends just before leaving on his third tour. It spoke touchingly of his parents and younger brother and the fun he had with his uncles and their children. He was going again to serve his country and he wrote, “There are games to be won.” I recalled that was a quotation from his favorite author, Dr Seuss.
 
That was his last deployment. A roadside explosive device blew up in his face in the Helmand province when he bent down to examine something suspicious he saw. Dr Seuss had warned:
 
Things may happen and often do
to people as brainy and footsy as you.
 
His family went to the Seattle airport when his body was flown in, though they were advised not to see it. They would have liked him interred in Merom next to his grandfather where they could easily visit his graveside, but they knew Orville preferred to be buried in Arlington Cemetery near Washington along with his comrades in arms.
 
So it was on a bright summer afternoon, on Memorial Day, I went to Arlington and met Orville’s father, mother, brother and two uncles. We sat on the grass next to Orville’s cenotaph and shared memories. Happy memories, comic memories, proud memories, memories that made a young man come alive again.  
 
I thought of the eager youthful face longing for adventure, as Orville’s uncle handed me a cup of coffee. As I sipped, I read the last bit of Orville’s epitaph from his headstone, inscribed with words from his beloved book:
 
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!
 
Wars have been fought and will be fought again. Historians will speak of win and loss. But for Orville’s loving family and the people like me who cared for him, there will be only an irredeemable loss.

​500 miles separate me from my daughters.
 
I live in Washington, on the east coast; they live in Charleston, in the US deep south. I have a house there too, but it seems a stretch to think of it as home, so rarely I am there. No longer I enjoy driving the distance at one go, and so going there entails planning ahead and using a hotel as a midway stop.
 
The bigger reason for my rare trips is that I have become accustomed to my home and my town. It is a pleasant enough house, larger than my needs. I rarely use the ground floor and am content using only the kitchen, one of the bathrooms and the large bedroom I have made my study. A smaller bedroom I use only to sleep, and the deck outside is my favorite haunt, to read and to daydream.
 
Even the city, Washington, though I live on its fringe, has its fascination for me. It is a busy city, always vibrant, resonant with memories of the places where I have lived, worked, eaten, met with friends, watched plays, heard concerts. Its streets evoke memories, its hotels have histories for me, its old buildings fascinate me. Its free museums are an eternal charm, its think tanks with their talks are an enticing draw.
 
Yet my daughters are there. At 500 miles. When I see them my heart takes a leap.

​My life is peaceful. My work was just the opposite. I started with business but in a sizable corporation. Life wasn’t topsy-turvy from day to day, my livelihood did not depend on a weekly revenue. Yet clashes and conflicts were a daily occurrence. The uncertainties of life are one thing, but quite another were the personal fights, turf wars and departmental skirmishes. When I went to work for an international organization, these clashes were compounded by ethnic biases and national discords. These came into the open when I started my diplomatic career. Little prejudices and large assumptions lay behind the gloss and glitter. It amazed me that big people seemed to have such small minds. Large issues remained unresolved because of petty antagonisms.
 
Now I live a more tranquil life. It is largely a life of quiet study, sustained exploration and a peaceful probe of troubling matters. I am happy in my home, relaxed in my fitful interviews and at home when I travel to unfamiliar shores. But it is all by myself. If I am happy, there is scantly anyone to share my happiness with.
 
My daughters are 500 miles away. In another world.
 
Of course, I love to see them. I take breaks from whatever I do and spend a few days with them. I would have preferred them to be a little nearer; I could visit them more often. The distance is a bit more than I care to drive in a day, and the pandemic makes it harder. I am forced to stay overnight in a hotel, where it is hard to avoid other people in a hall or maintain social distance.
 
For months I have not seen my daughters. I speak to them on the phone, even see them periodically on my computer. I miss feeling close to them. I miss holding their hands or hugging them. They tell me of the improvements they have made in their homes. They have bought shiny new cars. I haven’t seen any of those. It frustrates me, even when they send me photographs or try to show me on the phone. I am old-fashioned enough to want to see it all directly, standing next to my daughters, and be able to tell them what I think of them. I want to be able to share, in my limited way, their life with me. I want to feel a part of their fast-changing life.
 
But they live 500 miles away. A huge expanse of space between us.
 
No longer. Last week I took an impulsive decision. The decision to take a risk and drive the 500 miles and visit them. A Hilton hotel offered to give me a sanitized room, exempt from all service staff.  I stayed there a cautious night and drove through the southern countryside to Charleston.
 
As I came closer, each hour I reminded myself I was an hour nearer to my daughters. The drive felt easy, the traffic insignificant. I drove at a steady pace, resisting the lure of the rest stop cafés on the way, and finally entered Charleston.
 
For my convenience, they are both waiting in my Charleston home. They have brought food, plenty of it. They have chilled the wine. They have placed the covers and cutlery on the large dining table. But first I must hug them and kiss them and peer at their beautiful faces. They are smiling and my heart is bursting. What did I do to deserve such loving, charming children!
 
But, wait, what else have they placed on the table? A big tray with a large, luscious birthday cake. They remembered it was my birthday! I invite my daughter’s tousle-haired little girl, just three, to come and help me dice the cake. Excited, laughing, she comes and places her soft little hand on mine and steadies the knife as it enters the almond-chocolate cake.
 
All the 500 miles have simply melted away, like the butter and sugar in my birthday cake.

​When Ted and Viviane moved in as neighbors, they brought along their new baby, barely a week old. I looked at the baby, Nyla, and felt nostalgic. My baby, now eighteen, was in college, hundreds of miles away.
 
I would see Viviane every other day, her long hair in a braid and a small teddy in her hand, going on a walk with Nyla in a stroller. Sometimes she would stop to say hello and move on. In a while, I saw Nyla sitting up in the stroller and looking at everything, including me, with large, limpid eyes. Then one day Viviane came out without the stroller, with Nyla holding on to her hand and tottering forward, step by slow step.
 
There was no stopping the baby after that. I visited her parents for a cup of tea and saw the baby endlessly rushing from room to room. Occasionally falling, getting up and again lurching to her next destination. She had discovered the strength of her little legs and the joy of moving them, and nothing would inhibit her explorations.

Finally came the day when Nyla could walk by herself on the sidewalk bordering our homes. You had to see to believe how fast she moved, as if to make up for her pintsize limbs. Along with her parents, I watched in amazement as she ambled, virtually ran, the entire length of the sidewalk.
 
Thus began my special relationship with Nyla. On a weekend, I had just put down my first cup of coffee and opened the voluminous Sunday paper, when I heard a soft noise on my front door. There was Nyla, too small to be able to reach the calling bell, banging her little fist on my door. Viviane stood nearby, looking a little abashed, and explained apologetically, “Nyla wanted to see you.”
 
I opened the door and Nyla toddled right in, followed by Vivian. Nyla came to see what I was doing on the computer and then went to the living room and closely examined the large white teddy bear astride a chair, a memento left by my baby. She caressed it, smiled and, with what seemed like a nod of approval, went out with her mother.
 
After that, our relationship grew. Nyla went out regularly for a walk with her mother, sometimes accompanied by her father too, and periodically strayed to my home to meet her two friends, me and the teddy bear.
 
Over the years, Nyla grew into a pretty little girl, exploring the streets near our homes, playing in the park near our home with other children or in the park farther away where there were tempting slides. She learned to hop, skip and jump on the sidewalk, the squares marked in chalk in her progressively steady but still uncertain hand. She kept visiting me too, now by herself, flaunting her independence. If I was working on the laptop, she would sit on my lap and watch the letters appear in sequence. When she left, I would plant a kiss on her chubby cheeks and place a Lindor chocolate in her hand.
 
Ted and Vivian home-schooled her for several years. When she started going to a neighborhood school, I would see her run to the yellow school bus with a large backpack. I signaled to her from my doorstep and was rewarded with a huge wave and large smile. I began to see less and less of her, doubtless because she started spending more and more time with new friends. I saw even less of her when she graduated to high school, for she began to swim competitively and volunteer as a lifeguard.
 
This was nothing new, for I remembered how strange it seemed when my daughter went to college. Something seemed to be missing in my life when I would come back from work in the evening and the home seemed unnaturally quiet.
 
However, Nyla was always warm and scrupulously pleasant when we met, and I loved the limited time we had together. She would tell me of her friends, the ones who were cordial and the ones who were unaccountably catty. She told me of her new activities, the school play she was acting in and music lessons she was taking.
 
I told her that I was going abroad on an assignment for seven months but would return just in time for her birthday. I would love to take her out for dinner.
 
When you return to the country after a long stretch, there are always many chores to attend to, but I remembered my commitment to Nyla. I made a reservation at a French restaurant and told her. She said she had a tea party in the afternoon with some friends for her birthday and would meet me at the restaurant.
 
I was waiting at a table when Nyla walked in. I almost didn’t recognize her for a few seconds. She was wearing a floral tie-front maxi and her hair looked stylishly piled. High heels contributed to a more adult look. I said, “Nyla, happy birthday! You look splendid.”
 
But it was much more than the look. She had grown up. She wasn’t the little girl who would casually hop into my lap. She looked charming and she acted charming in every way, but she was now different. She now talked in a different, maturer way; she even said my name differently. No doubt, she had grown up.
 
I recalled the day my daughter returned from college. I loved her as ever, but she was different and grown-up. She was set to take a job, to start her own home and begin a new and separate life. Good luck to her, but on my desk was still her school graduation photo.
 
They all grow up. I almost wish they didn’t.
 

​Mr. Blanchard might be the happiest blind man alive. He is certainly the happiest man I know.
 
He is in his late eighties, I estimate. He sits ramrod straight. He walks with a cane but is still erect. A white-haired man who projects an air of self-assurance. He is always well shaved and nattily dressed, as if he is going for a date. Once, when I tell him this, he laughs and says, “Indeed I have a date. I have a date with the world.”
 
For me, he is a surprise. And I have told him why.

​When I was a young boy in Kolkata, I used to see every morning a youth guiding an old man across the street and seating him on the curb near a market corner. Next to him was placed a metal bowl where passers-by dropped a coin or two. The old man would sit there until dusk, hoping for alms, and occasionally muttering a plea for pedestrians. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew it was an abject plea, asking for pity and help from people who passed. Most ignored him, treating him as an easily disregarded apparition, but a few gave him small change. That was my first experience with a blind person.
 
When I grew up and went to work in a large factory, I met a blind man who worked close to me in the cycle tire shop. At the start of the shift, a young woman would bring him to the factory workplace and seat him down next to the machine where he worked and hand him the small packet that contained his lunch. It was considered very progressive of the company to have hired a blind man and made a minor adjustment to the supply line so that he could work there safely. I got to speak with him and he told me he had lost his eyes in an accident in the small car repair shop he had worked earlier without protective goggles. He felt grateful that the tire factory had hired him and paid him a decent wage. He was neatly dressed, very polite, agreeable to talk to, and fully reconciled to his present life. I found him a decent man but at the back of my mind was a murmur of discomfort. An educated man, doing a humdrum, repetitive job for seven years and set to do it seven years more perhaps, solely to earn a living. It seemed less than ideal. He might have been content, but I could not imagine him happy.
 
Mr. Blanchard, whom I met in my Washington apartment building, is a stunning contrast. He is neither pitiable nor content. He is a vibrant man, seemingly set to live a significant and happy life. I met him when my life was a bit of a mess; to talk to him, I felt, was a lesson in how to live such a radiant life.
 
As a young person, he had joined a public relations firm and worked in its advertising group as a copywriter. His interest changed over time and he started doing the graphic work for the copies. He ended up as the principal graphic artist of the company. He was a successful executive for nearly two decades when he started having problems with his sight. He experienced no pain or irritation in his eyes but found his vision begin to dim after a few hours of work.
 
First two eye doctors and then a famous specialist. The specialist read the reports, examined him for a long time and then, gently but firmly, dropped the hammer.
 
“I was to lose my sight,” explains Mr. Blanchard. “Something to do with my nerves. There was no remedy. I had four months, at most six, of quickly declining vision. Nothing after that.
 
“It was like a thunderclap. I could only think of my future days with anxiety and fear. I could not think straight. It was a week of sheer agony. Perhaps it was that which brought a slow measure of clarity. I was to lose vision, not my life. I did not want to forfeit my whole life because I couldn’t see any more.
 
“I set myself to learn braille. I took others’ advice and filled my home with equipment that helps sightless people, speakers and scanners and sound recorders. I bought a more powerful computer and added the right software. I subscribed to audio programs and records.
 
“I also joined a group, of people who had lost vision fairly recently. I heard their stories and drew support from their survival stories. Hearing them, I had the idea of going back to copywriting. I had the advantage that I could visualize the graphics and provide sketches of the design that could go with the copy. I created a new part-time career.
 
Mr. Blanchard laughs and adds, “It was the last thing I did that turned out to be the most sustaining. If I had only a few more months to see, I wanted to see the most – the things I most cared for and with the most care. I got up early to see the sun rise; I watched the sunset the way I had never done before. The park in the corner I reconnoitered as if it was to disappear the next day. Of my apartment I looked at every nook and cranny. My son and his children, every friend, I peered at their faces as if my life depended on it.”
 
He laughs again, “Indeed my life now relies on the most wonderful set of memories. I can clearly see the things I loved and wanted to see. I took the trouble to hold on to the sights and sounds and memories that others let go by. Perhaps a tad too carelessly.”
 
I look at his gentle, smiling face, and sit wondering. Then I hear these astounding words, “You think I don’t have a picture of you. I have met you recently, but we have spoken from the heart. And, my friend, I have a most beautiful picture of you.”

​I never wanted to be Superman.
 
I did not grow up with Superman comics. My first encounter with Superman was as an adult. I saw him in a movie. Yes, he could do strange things, lift a huge bus or fly like a bullet. That did not appeal to me: I was content to simply ride a bus or take a plane to go somewhere. Sacrilegious as it may sound, my affinity was with his other self, Clark Kent, the quiet, diffident newsman who pined for Lois Lane but couldn’t dare to take her in his arms. The Lois Lanes in my life didn’t even know I pined for them.

​For more than a year, we have been battered by a disease that honors no frontier and brooks no relief. A supercilious army of medical specialists, who had so far inculcated our false faith of invulnerability, have been brought to their knees. By a malady that has slaughtered over 4 million and haunts the 180 million that have recovered with undiagnosed ills. Businesses have collapsed, families are ruined, people rendered paupers, economies laid to waste. The world certainly needed a Superman to save it.
 
In this catastrophe has finally arisen the hope of a remedy, the miracle of a protective shield. A vaccine that can save you from the menacing virus. You will not have the disease; if you have it, you will be spared its worst depredation. All you must do is extend your arm, receive a mild jab or two and you are saved.
 
My friend Tanya, who volunteers at a center where the drug is administered and had herself received two doses of the vaccine, said, “You feel like a Superman. One moment you are weak and vulnerable, the next instant you are indestructible. You can go anywhere, meet anyone, do anything.”
 
On a frosty winter morning, I drove twenty miles to a large hospital complex and marched into a large building ironically titled the Sports Health Center. In a vast hall, a few hundred people were greeted by red-shirted volunteers and quickly shepherded to small, numbered tables. I went to a corner table, where presided a woman in her forties, in a turquoise blouse and a gray skirt. A pale blue mask covered the lower half of her face, but her eyes twinkled as she gestured me to sit close to her in a half-turned chair.
 
She said her name was Ann and asked me to introduce myself. I gave her my name and confirmed the particulars I had sent in earlier. Then I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeve. The cleaning, injection and taping took hardly five minutes. Then Ann requested me to sit and rest for ten minutes, to make sure that I did not have a strong reaction. I didn’t, and in five minutes I was again in my car, on my way home.
 
I was now a Superman. I could now choke a little eating a bagel and cough, and people would not scatter for fear of catching a virus. I could now pass by the woods near my home and sneeze a little, and others around me would not run for life, fearing I was a potent Covid threat. I was now special, pretty close to royalty.
 
Royalty, as Meghan Markle has now abundantly shown, has its downside. I realize with shame that I have become special because I live in the US, one of the richer forty countries, mostly in Europe, that have stockpiled the vaccine and will probably overcome it by the year-end. Another 150 less affluent countries will take another year, if ever. As the New York Times says, a person of 70 can’t have the vaccine in Shanghai, nor one of 80 in Kenya or one of 90 in South Korea. A person of whatever age can’t have it in Haiti or Papua New Guinea – or in 67 countries of Africa.
 
Even where it is available, wildly diverse groups are entitled to the vaccine: a legislator in Lebanon, but not a pregnant woman in Germany; a prisoner in Florida and a smoker in Illinois, but not a smoker in Georgia or a prisoner in Texas, nor a diabetic in Connecticut or an immigrant in Arizona. In India, the vaccine is shamelessly given to the well-off who can register on a smartphone and can pay a decent fee.
 
This is monstrously parochial and insane, for we well know that the virus does not honor state or country borders. Our distribution of a royal privilege adheres more to our idea of who deserves to be selectively indulged and saved, though we also know that we have no safety unless we are all safe.
 
I feel a special kinship with Superman, for he was born the same year as me. Legend has it that he was born on another planet, Krypton, but he was really born in the US town of Smallville when writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster imagined him for DC Comics. He was possessed of incredible strength and a sense of mission – to rid the world of villains.
 
While I never wanted to be Superman, perhaps now, in a world ravaged by a mysterious scourge, I will have the strength of invulnerability. As for the villains, of whom there seem to be many (some at the very helm of my motherland) -- like Lex Luthor, either a greedy businessman or an unscrupulous technologist, or even a power-seeking, Machiavellian politico – perhaps I should raise my voice and see what I can do.

Like everybody else, I like to live among people who like one another. That is hardly the situation in the country where I live now. Americans never despised one another so much for their political views. Such polarization is a common subject of talk. Nor is the situation any different in India, my land of birth.
 
“It pains me,” said Rabbi Goldberg, “to see young people in Israel marching with a sign saying Death to Arabs. Where do they get such hate?”
 
We were talking in a quiet Washington hotel lobby. He was in town to speak in a seminar on political divides and the hate it generates.
 
“So many of our poems and movies are about love,” he said. “Our religions talk a lot about love. One of them goes to the length of saying, ‘Three things last forever, faith, hope and love, and of these the greatest is love.’”
 
“But,” he continued, “what we seem to see much of the time is its opposite – hate. There is explicit, rabid hate or there is controlled and covert hate. It is hate all the same. Utter repulsion and rejection of the other person. Total aversion for the other side, their creed or country, their party or principles, their values or even their value as human beings. Some want to see them stamped out, eliminated.”

​The Rabbi was in his seventies, a tall, athletic man. A respected scholar, he spoke at a think tank briefing and later we lunched together. He had visited India in the sixties as a young student and heard horrid stories of Hindu-Muslim butchery during pre-partition violence. He had again visited India recently and visited the reopened Nariman House where Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife were killed by Islamic terrorists.
 
Rabbi Goldberg sipped his tea and said, “Of all types of hate, surely the most hateful is religious hate. For it is the most pretentious and hypocritical. We pretend to act on behalf of a loving God, but spew hatred against other children of God. We pretend to do good for society and we do the most abominable things. We pretend to stand up for noble principles and we do ignoble, unprincipled acts.”
 
Clearly, the terrorist violence in Mumbai bothered him, for he knows the city well and felt close to its Chabad center. He recounted the dozen coordinated bombs of 1993, the bombing of markets and bus stations in 2003 and the murderous railway bombs of 2006, all by Muslim groups. He understood the impatience of Indians who wanted strong punitive action, not only against Pakistan but against all groups in India they suspected of sympathy for such brutality. He mentioned the friends he had among people who had to leave their homes in West or East Pakistan and seek refuge on Indian soil – and restart life painfully.
 
“Where do we go from here? Are surgical or massive responses the answer?” he asked. He quoted the Hasidic leader Kotzker Rebbe: peace is only when you let it in.
 
He believed the divide between India and its biggest neighbor could be bridged and the initiative had to come from India. It had the resources and people and imagination to do it. And its history and tradition to back it.
 
I read Sanskrit and it amazed me that Rabbi Goldberg was such a master of the ancient Indian texts to which most Indians give lip service. He cited Gita’s 14th chapter that spoke in the same breath of charity and authority in the role of the warrior.
 
This is what the people of India had done in the past, accepted and absorbed other cultures and made them part of India’s magnificently varied culture. Occasionally hesitant, but fearless, it had broadened its repertoire of knowledge, art and statecraft, given home to different faiths.
 
Rabbi Goldberg said, “It pains me that there is a new air of intolerance. A new attitude, endorsed officially, to separate and discriminate against minority groups. A new mentality of Us and They. They can’t be trusted, must be cornered and punished for being different. Now, you draw attacks if you say the Ship of State is going the wrong way – a very dangerous way.”
 
He had been astonished to find that even young children were being brought up on ahistorical textbooks that denigrate ancient Emperors of a different religion or modern leaders who fought chauvinism and fanaticism in their time. He quoted Krishna’s famous diatribe to Arjuna against ‘demonic inheritance’ and said the country would make a mistake to take that hideous turn and move away from what Krishna had called a ‘divine inheritance.’
 
“This is not the India I had fallen in love with as a young man,” he said ruefully. “Such hate is a bigger threat to people than a terrorist waving an AK-47.”
 
Rabbi Goldberg took a last sip of his tea, shook my hand, smiled warmly and shuffled toward his room. I waved goodbye. The lobby was now getting noisier by the minute with the advent of tourists and tired executives on their way to the bar.
 
Dusk was approaching. I would have loved to have a drink too, but I knew I had to wend my way through heavy downtown traffic. As I drove slowly home, the shimmering last rays of the day seemed a sad reflection of the Rabbi’s forlorn words about love and a lot of hate.

We move a lot these days, and often beyond the borders of our countries. We need visas to do it. Mostly we need visas for short periods, known as non-immigrant visas.
 
For a while, I was a Consul issuing such visas for the US in a poor country. It was an unforgettable experience. People needed visas to enter the US to study, invest, receive training, transfer to a related company, transit to another country, be a part of a sports team or an entertainment group, do temporary work, and most of all visit for pleasure, business or a combination of both.
 
Some were savvy or had past experience. They gave crisp replies, presented relevant data or documents. Most had no idea and came with vacuous dreams or half-baked ideas. When they came for an ‘interview,’ they possibly expected a leisurely chat. They were taken aback to talk to a grim-faced interviewer, standing, through a thick plate of glass. They were discomfited by the direct, brusque style of the consular officer, eager to get it over in two minutes or less.

​When they said they wanted to study business administration in the US, they often could not say why they wanted to study the subject, let alone why in the US where it was expensive. If they claimed a business purpose, such as exports, they could not say how they planned to promote exports or which US companies they targeted. Even if it was just a pleasure trip, they had a hard time giving specifics of what they were going to see or do.
 
Many had curious assumptions about the procedure. Some assumed that the result depended on the consular officer or his mood. If rejected by one, they wished to try their luck with another officer or even another consulate, overlooking that all officers go by the same guidelines. A rejection was marked on the passport and the next officer would check the record. Some went to the length of getting a new passport, but the centralized record still showed the earlier rejection. Then there were the gullibles who trusted con artists among travel agents who promised fast processing and good results.
 
I sometimes felt sorry for the people who applied. They paid a lot for their applications to be processed, not to mention the huge time and effort they devoted to the act. Even when they got the visa, they often felt ill treated. Those who did not, were often mystified – a reason they wanted to try their luck again, essentially wasting their labor and money. No question that among the rejected were some who deserved a visa, who could not articulate their case quickly and well, and were shunted cavalierly aside.
 
I was, of course, on the other side, in the role of what ex-president George Bush called “the decider.” I sat on a high stool, on the other side of a thick glass divider, settling in minutes the fate of an applicant. I felt humble and uncomfortable in that role, knowing what I did not know about the person standing before me in hope and trepidation, and pretending to a certainty about my decision that I did not feel.
 
It did not help ease my discomfort that the other consular officers I knew were quite comfortable taking swift decisions and invincibly certain that their decisions were perfect. Most seemed to think the entire world was trying to gatecrash into the US, and it fell to them to resist those barbarians. Poorer people, which meant most people from poorer countries, they believed would lie, cheat and dissemble to enter the US and, once in, would never leave. They should keep saying No until they encountered the rare case where they had to say Yes.
 
The US Congress had laid the basis of that reaction when it decreed that anyone who applied for a nonimmigrant visa would be assumed to be an intending immigrant. The arrogant decree presumes the US to be the El Dorado where everyone in the world is trying to trespass. If a Japanese says he wants to see Disneyland or a cancer-stricken Peruvian to consult Sloan-Kettering, the presumption a US consul should start with is that he or she is feigning that interest to get into Los Angeles or New York – and stay there.
 
With this perverse presumption, if you want a nonimmigrant visa to the US you must prove what is impossible to prove: the negative proposition that one has no intention to stay on in the US. It is expressed of course in more plausible-sounding words: you must demonstrate links that will compel your return to your home country. It is in fact the basis on which a vast number of applications are denied.
 
Yet one has only to ponder the criterion for a moment to realize how laughable it is. What links can compel a return of the native? A wife and children, followed by old parents and siblings, seem most probable. Wrong. Thousands from poor countries live in exile for years; they feel they do better for their loved one by sending them money from abroad, rather than starve with them at home. A longing for one’s relatives, community or homeland may be real, but are hardly compelling, given the prospect of penury or violence.
 
If social circumstances are not compelling, far less are the economic circumstances. An executive in Chandigarh can earn more as a clerk in Chicago, a nurse in Colombo can do better as domestic caregiver in Columbus. A decent job in homeland is no incentive for a hurried return. A large bank balance is easily faked; short loans from friends and relations are easily obtained. A large house does not mean the owner will return to it; it can be easily sold in absentia and the money transmitted abroad. The compelling circumstances consuls delve into, the sheaves of documents they collect as evidence of domestic ties are no more than a joke, ridiculous make-work to display consular diligence rather than a reliable indicator of who will return home after a US visit.
 
Fortunately, issuing visas was a small and very temporary part of my work. It remains a telling reminder of how a country, especially a rich and powerful country, can remain oblivious to social and cultural aspects of other countries. In the process, it continues with a system that neither serves its purposes nor creates friends or friendly repercussions abroad.

I had just spent three pleasant days with an old friend, Dietrich, in his second-floor apartment in Chicago. We visited museums, splurged in restaurants, explored the streets and talked endlessly. Since he had to catch a flight very early the following day, Saturday, he suggested that I sleep longer, have a decent brunch somewhere and catch an evening shuttle back to Washington.
 
Saturday afternoon I dressed and packed, deciding to leave early for the airport. Suddenly there was a call from a cousin, whom I had met a day earlier, saying he had to come to the hospital after a car accident. I rushed out, took a taxi and went to see him. Fortunately, the doctor said he would be fine in a day or two. I returned to my friend’s apartment to pick up my suitcase and leave for the airport.

​No suitcase. I realized with a shock as I searched the apartment. I had left in such a rush that I could not recollect precisely what I had done with the suitcase. I hadn’t left it in the apartment surely; it would have been there otherwise, for I had the only key besides Dietrich. I must have rolled it out of the apartment into the foyer and absentmindedly left it unattended before rushing out to the hospital.
 
In that case, I reasoned, it must be with the building’s caretaker, who spotted an unattended suitcase and took charge of it. Or a resident reported the item to him and the caretaker gathered it. I felt sure that, in either case, it would be safely in storage, for it was a well-guarded apartment building. Then came the shattering discovery that it wasn’t in storage either. The caretaker searched high and low with me. No suitcase. I had to leave for the airport without the suitcase.
 
It was a disaster. The clothes I lost and the gifts I had bought for friends was a financial loss, no more. But the loss of a large number of documents and work papers was a major concern. It was professionally awkward and embarrassing. It took me more than two months and enormous expense to retrieve store cards, change credit cards, get a new passport, get an extra pair of glasses and sunglasses, order new suits and shirts, pajamas and shoes.
 
Ten weeks later I again had some work in Chicago and Dietrich invited me for a drink. He listened quietly when I told him of my misadventure and the mystery of the missing suitcase.
 
Pensively, he commented, “Since you are sure you didn’t take the suitcase with you to the hospital – why would you! – and it wasn’t in the apartment, it must have been left in the foyer. Yet the caretaker did not find it. An outsider cannot get in and certainly cannot leave with a large suitcase.”
 
He pondered with furrowed brows, “Where could the suitcase be, I wonder.”
 
I was about to say that it was a closed chapter when Dietrich stood up and beckoned me to follow. He walked out of the apartment into the foyer and looked at the entrance of the three other apartments on the floor. He thought for a few seconds, chose the nearest apartment and rang the bell.
 
A young woman opened the door ajar.
 
“Karen, this is my friend who stayed with me three months ago. He lost a suitcase on this floor, a black Samsonite. Any chance you could have seen it.”
 
Karen opened the door a little more to let us enter and then pointed to a corner, “This thing was blocking my way to the elevator. I pushed it there.”
 
It was my suitcase.
 
Dietrich’s jaws tightened, “It never occurred to you to report it to the caretaker? Not in three months! Do you realize the misery and loss you caused, quite unnecessarily, for my friend?”
 
We left brusquely as Karen kept muttering apologies.
 
I flew back home with the suitcase the next day. Three days later a note arrived by mail from Karen.
 
“I got your address from Dietrich. I am sorry for what I did. I know regrets are no use. Please try to forgive me. It may help you to do so if you know that a man I expected to marry for seven years told me that very morning that he was leaving me for another woman. I was not myself.”
 
I was not Sherlock Holmes but I could have said “Elementary” to Dr. Watson. The curious case of the missing suitcase was finally solved.

I was in downtown Washington to hear a lecture at Brookings and it was close to one when I came out. People were streaming out of their offices to grab a quick lunch. I wasn’t hungry and walked desultorily down 19th Street. It was a nostalgic jaunt because I had lived in an apartment on the street before I bought a house and moved out. The street had changed; several stores and restaurants I knew well had changed hands and names. I walked some more blocks and came to the Pennsylvania Avenue corner. I looked up at the large colonial-style building on the left. The two windows on the second floor belong to a large office room I occupied for some years.
 
“Manish!” I was startled to hear my name called out. friendship
 
I turned to see a tall, gaunt man in his fifties, chestnut hair graying at the temples, in an incongruous combination of dated khaki chinos and a fashionable blue blazer. His horn-rimmed glasses helped me place him, though his appearance hadn’t changed much beyond the color of his hair.
 
“Hugh!” I exclaimed happily. Hugh was always an interesting person.
 
“What are you doing at the scene of your crime?” he asked, in his typical jocular fashion, referring to the fact that we had both worked in the office I was looking at. This is something I like about Washington: one often encounters interesting people.
 
When I told Hugh that I was doing nothing of importance, Hugh promptly suggested that we have a drink together and celebrate our chance reunion. He led me to a small Peruvian restaurant where, it came back to me when I entered, I had dined a few times. I ordered what I always order in a Peruvian bar, Pisco Sour, and, when Hugh followed suit, we also asked for two plates of Lomo Saltado.
 
Hugh knew that I had joined diplomatic service and asked me what I had been doing. As I was talking, the waiter, a young Mexican, brought the food and drinks and placed them between us. When I finished, Hugh called the waiter and said he had served only one drink and one plate of food. I was taken aback, for, though I was not paying close attention, I thought I had seen him bring a pair of drinks and food. Hugh pleasantly suggested that the waiter might have absentmindedly left the other drink and plate on another table. The waiter came back in a moment and said apologetically that he had indeed left them on another table by mistake and served us both.

I was still confused and told Hugh that I had the vague impression that the waiter had initially brought the order correctly. Hugh then confused me further by saying that the waiter had indeed brought the order correctly in the first place. Hugh fixed a gaze on me and suggested that I check the order again. While I held my drink in my hand, I noticed that my plate of food had disappeared. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I said it.
 
Hugh said, “If you can’t believe your own eyes, I suggest you close them for a minute, then open them slowly and check what you find.” I did. When I looked, I saw two drinks and two plates of Lomo Saltado!
 
I sat speechless. I wondered if two sips of Pisco Sour had made a curious difference to my vision – or my mind.
 
Hugh sat in front of me with a benign smile. Then he said, “Let me tell you what I do these days. I do magic.”
 
I felt spellbound. I muttered, “How can it be? You didn’t even leave your seat once.”
 
Hugh offered a gentle reproof, “You didn’t notice. I got up to take off my coat and hang it up.”
 
I was still mystified beyond words. How could a whole plate of food appear and disappear, not to mention a glass of Pisco Sour! I didn’t ask Hugh how he did it, for by now I was even more fascinated by the question of how my friend, a competent economist, had turned himself into a skilled magician.
 
It was quite a story. Hugh had taken his young son some years back to a school event where a magician performed. The son was greatly intrigued and wanted to meet the magician. Hugh took his son backstage and met the Turkish magician who went by the name, The Magus. The conversation was spirited, and the magician invited Hugh to a performance in a nightclub. This time the repertoire was quite different from the fare that the magician had presented at the school. Hugh was impressed; in fact, he was hooked. Later, he had several drinks with the magician and broached the idea of taking lessons.
 
He performed with the magician in a few clubs and got a good reception. The Magus lived in California and preferred to perform on the west coast; he went to other cities rarely, only when the remuneration was attractive. He graciously invited Hugh to come to California and perform occasionally with him, but advised that Hugh should hone his skill independently in his own town.
 
That is what Hugh has been doing, apparently with notable success.
 
Hugh was always an interesting person, but now he had a huge collection of amusing anecdotes from his performances with a large variety of groups. We sat and drank for a long time and when we left Hugh made it a point to tip the Mexican waiter exorbitantly.
 
As we said goodbye, he asked how I intended to go home. I disclosed that I had a car in a nearby parking lot.
 
He smiled and said, “My friend, you can’t drive home unless you use your car key,” and placed the car key in my palm.
 
I had no idea how and when the key had moved from my pocket to his.