I live in a bucolic place a few miles outside Washington and every day I like to go for a walk. Sometimes I walk around a lake nearby and sometimes I walk through the woods. I watch the geese crisscrossing the rippling waters or I hear tiny birds singing a chorus. Today I strayed.
 
There is a playground near my home. Children are playing there usually, their parents often hovering around. I avoid the assembly and invariably go past the playground. Strangely, it was different today. Nobody was there. I looked at the large playground, covered with a thick carpet of grass. The huge expanse of green suddenly made me nostalgic.
 
In a second, I went back years. Our father liked flowers, and the gardener put fresh flowers in a vase in each room. Except for mine – for everybody knew I preferred trees and plants to flowers. The gardener had placed a coy little plant in a corner of my room. I had nothing against red, yellow or purple, but green was my favorite color. A towering tree was incomparable, but an expanse of a green lawn was the prettiest thing imaginable.
 
For a while, we lived in a house that had a lawn next to it. It was my favorite place. I could wander there; if nobody stopped me, I could lie down there. Then we moved to a larger house that had many charms but no lawn. Fortunately, it was next to a university that had a large lawn. Some students periodically loitered there, but early morning and late evening nobody lingered. The guard would be busy making his breakfast or dinner – I could see from the outside – and I would comfortably slip in unobserved. It was a large lawn and its manicured grass was a feast for the eyes. For the feet too. I would leave my shoes aside, then walk barefoot on the dew-softened lawn.
 
Father had an endless interest in whatever I did and, when I told him about the lawn, he came along early morning with me one weekend. Instead of avoiding the guard, he just walked up to him and said, “I believe you have a beautiful lawn. Could I have a look?” The guard not only opened the gate wide, he even saluted Father and welcomed him. While I ran barefoot, to and fro, across the lawn, Father kept walking briskly around the lawn. When we came back and Mother asked where we had been, Father joked and said, “I was running on the university lawn. But your son is lazy, he only walked.” As Mother turned to me with a questioning look, I said, “Why don’t you come with us the next time? Then you can see what happens.”

​Years later, long after Father had passed away, Mother came to visit me in Manila, where I worked and taught. My university students loved to come to my home for weekend parties, and they invited Mother to visit the university.
 
As we entered the university compound, we stood together at the edge of the extended emerald of a superbly-kept lawn and I said, “Ma, do you remember the large lawn next to our old house?”
 
“Of course, I do,” she said. “I got busy every morning making breakfast for our family before I left for work. I never had a chance to accompany you and your dad to the university and see the lawn there. I never knew who ran and who just walked.” She remembered!
 
I recalled Father’s joke and said, “He walked, and I ran. But that mattered little. We were together all the time. We did everything together.”
 
This breezy afternoon, I was glad I had strayed from my usual path. The lawn brought me a strange calm. I walked quietly. And alone. Not quite. Some antique memories, like old scars you barely see but can still feel, kept me company.

“A painful aspect of my divorce,” said Charlotte, “was that I lost half my friends. More than half, in fact. Friends felt they had to choose between Chris, my ex-husband and me. Friends who were far closer to me than Chris felt they had to stay in his circle, simply because they had known him before me. Which meant they had to abandon me.”
 
She looked at me and added, “That taught me a major lesson. There is no such thing as a derived relationship. You care for a person and develop a relationship with him or her. That is all. You do not develop a relationship with a person because that person is husband’s sister or a friend’s brother or a colleague of your beloved cousin. Your husband, friend or colleague may care for a person, but you cannot derive a relationship from that. To have a genuine relationship it has to be a direct relationship with you, not a derived relationship.”
 
It is a sad loss, for Charlotte lost a number of friends, who meant a lot to her. It was also a loss for those friends, who felt they had to leave her, even though their relationship with her husband, Chris, was no longer so close. They wrongly thought of their link with Charlotte as a derived relationship and let it dissolve. It is a pity, for we know how hard it is to find a good friend. Or develop a genuine relationship that endures through life’s many changes.
 
I know the loss well, for it has happened to me too. When I moved to a larger, better-known school, mostly because my parents changed home, good friends in the earlier school thought I was now in a more prestigious school and did not care to continue our friendship. I cared little for prestige and I certainly cared more for them than they realized, but our relations eroded. In college as much as in school, friends who broke up, for whatever reason, often insisted that others had to choose between them and could not remain friends with both. It was a great pity that I and many others lost valuable friends for such flimsy, factitious reasons.
 
At work our friendships are often transactional. We seek contacts which can be useful for some reason. To gain clients, to have access to power, to gather useful information, to have an indirect link to the boss. By happenstance we also acquire a genuine friend sometimes. However we acquired that friend, whatever the motive, if the connection is personal and genuine, it is worth taking pains to retain the link. It is frivolous to drop the relationship because it was sought and cultivated for a trivial reason that does not exist now. All that really matters is a human connection that mattered to two people.
 
Cynthia, my friend, used to tell me how happy she was that her son married Gloria after a brief courtship. She jokingly said she understood her son’s reaction perfectly, for she herself fell in love with Gloria at first encounter. She was just perfect: warm and friendly, ready to talk and share. When her husband was busy with work, she passed hours with Cynthia. Cynthia adored her, almost like the daughter she wanted but never had.
 
Sadly, perfect things don’t always last, and, in the third year of marriage, her son’s relationship with Gloria hit the rocks. They tried reconciliation, failed and divorced the following year. Cynthia was devastated. She felt she lost a daughter-in-law and a daughter at the same time. Gloria didn’t want to lose her and her last words to Gloria were, “Please don’t lose touch. I love you, and you will always have a place in my heart. Come and see me whenever you can, whenever you want.”

​She lived in that hope. But Gloria never visited or called, not even when Cynthia’s husband died and she embarked on the difficult first year of widowhood. In a lonely moment, she called Gloria. She told her how much she had missed her, how her heart longed to see her. Gloria listened but did not say anything that Cynthia could find reassuring.
 
When her son decided to remarry six years later, Cynthia was happy for him, but her first thought was about Gloria. She knew Gloria was alone and the news would hurt her. She longed to call her, offer her some words of solace. But the last three calls she had made in as many years had all remained unanswered.
 
She would drive past the house where she knew Gloria lived in an apartment. She longed for a glimpse of the woman who had had such a large role in her life for a few years. She wanted Gloria to know how much affection she still commanded in her heart. She wanted to say, “I have missed you. I will always miss you. I can’t forget you.” She never could say them. Luck was not on her side; she never once encountered Gloria.
 
Cynthia told me, “She lives in this town. Other people see her. How come I never get to see her? Most unreasonably, I keep wanting to meet her. But I never get to meet her. I feel there remains a hole in my heart. It can’t ever be filled.”
 
I can guess why Gloria does not call. She wants to leave behind anything that reminds her of a supremely painful episode. It is an episode she would rather disappear from her memory, but it never will. She prefers to step away from it as far away as she can, though its shadow haunts her forever.
 
But it is a loss for both Gloria and Cynthia. A grievous loss, of someone you cared for, someone whose special place will not be replaced in a thousand years. Someone who had an abiding and inscrutable bond with you but now must live at an immeasurable, painful, insuperable distance.

I was not unsocial, but I was shy. I looked on with envy as my brother started conversations with friends and strangers alike wherever we went. A wedding, a birthday party, tea and sandwiches with our parents’ numberless friends, whatever. I looked desperately for a familiar face, somebody I could talk to and not look as luckless, friendless as I felt.
 
Then, at my parents’ prodding, I joined a Pen Pal group where members wrote friendly letters to one another. I sent out two brief missives to anonymous members. They hit targets and quickly elicited replies. The first was a boy in Delhi, who wrote at length about things reassuringly familiar to me, cricket and novels. The second was from a kid who didn’t mention a location but poured out an abundant heart on joys and jerks of kid-ship and ended with a brief and informal nickname. I took it to be that of a boy, but mother pointed out the farfetched possibility that it could be the abbreviation of a girl’s name. Both correspondences continued unabated, but the feeling-laden one was no doubt more interesting. We both wrote feelingly, lengthily and with increasing frequency and fervor.

The shock came at the end of four months of animated exchanges. Mother called me to the living room and introduced me to a younger woman, who, she said, was the elder sister of my second correspondent. There, next to her, sat smiling a young girl of my age, in a yellow-white dress, toying with a book – which turned out to be a gift for me. I had admiringly mentioned an up-and-coming author in a letter and she had persuaded her escort to buy his latest novel on the way to my home.
 
An unheralded encounter! That, too, with a thoughtful gift! The cricketer in me mentally labeled it as an Overdrive and I was bowled over. Mother got busy to make a suitable response by giving them tea and snacks, leaving me to the fearsome task of dealing with two unknown women. The elder sister, who had clearly capitulated to an impetuous younger one, was very kind and tried to help two awkward kids initiate a halting chat.

​I mention this episode from my school days because it echoed years later when I worked for a UN group while my wife, Jane, served as a diplomat. We both traveled, but if I went to Switzerland, her work took her to Egypt; at the least, when I rushed to Thailand, she hurried to Singapore. We spent so much time apart that, in the absence of WhatsApp and Skype, we had to write copiously to each other to stay in touch. We needed to write, and we wanted to write. The letters were a vibrant link that made two lonely people, at two ends of the earth, feel that we weren’t quite lost in the overwhelming tide of distractions.
 
But at least we saw the other after a while. My parents lived thousands of miles away, almost in another planet, and it was impossible to visit them in the initial years. Father wrote a beautiful firm hand and his letters – though he was too diffident to speak his heart – conveyed his longing to see me. In the pain of finding my feet in an alien world, away from all relatives and long-term friends, those letters became my timely assurance that his affection was both profuse and perennial.
 
Then came the unexpected and devastating blow: in a bungled surgery, he died suddenly. Unknowing, I was traveling for work and came to know days later, after the last rites were over. Thus began a new epistolary episode with my mother. While my brothers took care of her immediate needs, I began writing regular letters from wherever my missions took me. These were not postcards, but long, detailed letters every other day telling her whatever was happening with me and my family. I wanted her to feel that she was a part of my family and could participate in every one of our decisions and choices. I told her whatever I saw in different cities, whatever we bought or did in Washington, whatever new words the baby was babbling. Often the days were packed with visits and meetings, and I would struggle sleepily at night to update my reportage and make sure that mother knew exactly what was happening in my life.
 
I told her what was happening in my work, what I had achieved and where I had flubbed. I told her of new friends I had gained and old friends I had lost. I described the color of the new curtains we had acquired and the metallic-gray look of the new car. I spoke of the Bedouin camps I had visited and said I would like to show her those. I wrote of the royal gardens and said I would love to take her there too. I narrated the naughty things my little daughter did each day and said how much I needed her to keep the child in line. I wrote detailed, descriptive letters, the best I could write, to make her feel near me, share my joys and regrets, become an intrinsic part of my life, and know for sure that she wasn’t alone, but close to me, however remote I seemed. I wanted her to sense that I was in touching distance.
 
Three years later, I was working in the Abu Dhabi emirate and I finally persuaded mother to visit me. A thinner woman, her hair turning gray, she was now getting adjusted harrowingly to her widowhood, and could at last bear to speak quietly of the murky days when she lived from hour to hour – and did not know how to live through those hours. Then, unexpectedly, she turned to me and said something that suddenly made my midnight toil over long letters all quite worthwhile.
 
“I did not know then how I could continue to live, but your letters kept coming,” she said and paused. “I read them. I re-read them, again and again. They were my lifeline.”

The Howrah Bridge is not just a bridge. And it is not just in Howrah.
 
The Howrah Bridge is Kolkata. The Howrah Bridge is Kolkata and beyond. Every fabled place you go to from Kolkata.
 
The Howrah Bridge, if it is a bridge, is a bridge to my past, my life as it has emerged. It is my bridge to memories, to childhood dreams, to imagination itself.

​I lived near the Howrah Bridge – on Harrison Road, now called Mahatma Gandhi Road. In a huge, red-brick building where lived a hundred people. It had the famous Overtoun Hall, where Hemanta and Suchitra sang, Utpal Datta recited poetry, Bijan Bhattacharya staged plays, Hiren Mukherjee and Nirmal Bhattacharya gave lectures. Sometimes the large hall was cleared for championship games of table tennis; international stars like Barna and Bergman played to our marvel. The building had a gymnasium, a library, a foyer where anybody could read four newspapers for free, and even a restaurant, where fawning couples could pull the curtains and hold hands.
 
It was a great adventure for us, the kids, to hop into a tram, pay five paise, equivalent then to the US nickel, to roll over the great Howrah Bridge to arrive at the bustling Howrah Station. To do what? Just walk around, look at the notice boards, trains, porters, liveried staff and a fascinating crowd of men and women hurrying to the platforms. The variety of the people intrigued us, the bustle gave us a sense of unspoken drama.
 
Later, I went to work for years by crossing the bridge to Howrah Station to go, past Chuchura, to Bandel. Electric trains were new then, the seats clean and comfortable, and I enjoyed the variety of vendors who offered their ware, peanuts, booklets and homemade medicines guaranteed to cure corns to cancer. The motley crowd who traveled daily on the trains, students, workers, clerks, salesmen and domestic employees, would sometimes glimpse my magazines and newspapers and strike up a conversation. I remember a young passenger from Serampore who held two jobs in the city and dreamed of being a business tycoon and an older woman who recommended the very responsive deity in a Sahaganj temple who could restore my normal eyesight and save me the bother of glasses.
 
The Howrah Bridge was also my pathway to the Howrah Station which remained, for a long time before I ever took to an aircraft, the starting point of my travels, for work or vacation. I loved visiting my aunts, who, for their work, periodically moved among towns in central India. For years I visited Nagpur, my city of birth, and smaller towns such as Narsingpur, Seoni and Jabalpur. It was great fun to explore new towns in the indulgent company of my doting aunts, the local markets and museums, or simply wander around with no parent to check on me. Since my grandmother lived with them and somehow considered me malnourished, I would instantly get whatever special thing I wanted to eat.
 
Then came the express trains to New Delhi and Mumbai and I would buy an inexpensive window seat to cities that seemed then the ultimate in elegance and sophistication. How I loved those excursions! Some of the enjoyment came from the long anticipation during the journey and dreams of what I might do. Later on, when I would receive invitations to lecture at conferences, even though the sponsors were willing to pay for an air ticket, I would take a train and think of it as a romantic exploration of life in India. It was a delightful experience, for I would meet unusual people and have unconventional talks. One time, when I arrived late at the platform, thanks to traffic snafu on the Howrah Bridge, the porter simply threw my suitcase in the compartment and then ran with me until I could run and mount the moving train. He looked ecstatic when a large bill flew down to him from a window as his reward.
 
I was just out of school when one of my father’s many friends, manager of the local cinema, invited my brother and me to see Shakti Samant’s movie Howrah Bridge. I loved OP Nayar’s paean to Kolkata, sung with verve on the Bridge itself. I adored the reigning heartthrob, Madhubala, looking her best and singing – it seemed directly to me – “Welcome, my gracious guest (Aiye Meherban).”
 
I have walked across or driven over dozens of bridges in scores of countries. What is so special about Howrah Bridge, just another structure of steel across an expanse of water?
 
For me, it is more than an engineering feat. Wherever I am, I can look at a photo of the Howrah Bridge and know it for what it is. It is a bridge to my heart, a quintessential symbol of my aspiration and imagination, for unknown places and little-known people, unattended events and unencountered experiences. It spells life’s bounty and sings heart’s aria.
 
In the end, its best badge is Madhubala, a paragon of beauty and a joy for ever, an emblem of my childhood fantasy, adolescent dream, youthful eros -- and my lifelong yearning for loveliness beyond reach, companionship beyond compare, fulfillment beyond the wildest, craziest expectation.

Our parents never had money enough to buy a home or an apartment. Fortunately, our father had a job that entailed an apartment. It was a coincidence that, when I came out of the university, I found a job on an industrial estate away from the city. It too entailed an apartment.
 
Perhaps that is why the idea of owning a home was alien to me. I was quite content to live in a rented place. It would leave me free to move to another place if I wanted a change. That kind of freedom appealed to me. Who knew if I wanted to move to another city or country? I liked living in Kolkata, but I did not feel impelled to live there forever. A college friend, Ramaprasad, who was later to join the Indian Foreign Service, promptly sold his share in the large home his affluent father had bequeathed him and his brother, saying, “I didn’t want to be tied to that mansion, like a cow tied to a post.” He explained to me that he had noticed with his parents that all planning, whether a trip or a vacation, had to start with the house, its safekeeping and maintenance, “It seemed my father didn’t own the house, the house owned him.” He didn’t want to be strapped to an anchor. I felt the same way.
 
It was quite a surprise when my younger brother sprang a surprise. “A new building is coming up in a prime area in the city. It will have decent apartments. Would you like to consider buying one?” He made the proposal more appealing by suggesting that we, the three brothers, could all buy apartments on the same floor and live close to one another. I found the idea irresistible. I bought.
 
When I came to the US, my American wife, who had never owned a home, was keen to acquire one. The tax laws were on her side. Once again, I became a home-owner. I have to admit I rather like the place where I live. There are lakes and woods and gardens, and you regularly see birds and geese and deer. It is urban enough to let me buy next-door whatever I need and pastoral enough to let me walk among trees and shrubs. But do I need such a large house of which I use only a fractional part? And do I need to own it?
 
I rather like the idea of the capricious billionaire, Howard Hughes, who could buy any mansion he chose but preferred to live on a secluded floor of a hotel. Somehow the idea appeals to me, though many find it bizarre. I worked once for a large company that offered me a charming leased house and was quite startled when I asked if they would pay for a furnished room in a local club. Not having grown up rich, perhaps I have never had the opportunity to develop a taste for opulent and wasteful space. I also like the feeling of freedom of not having to look after a brick-and-mortar structure that evokes no strong passion. Of course, I know others who like to lavish their care on curtains, carpets and colossal chandeliers. I prefer some free time to read Murakami or listen to Mahler.

​My industrious neighbors, Suzette and Ivan, take punctilious care of their garden and front yard and I can only look on with admiration. I cannot emulate. In truth, I would not. It would take too much of my time and attention. I have to sadly reflect that life is a matter of choices. If I have to choose between the perfect home and a decent-enough home, the balance is loaded on the side that lets me pursue my stronger interests. My brief exposure to flying and longer experience of long-distance driving suggest that I would have greatly enjoyed learning to fly a small aircraft, but I quickly dropped the idea for the same reason. The investment of time and effort, besides the expense, would have barred other, dearer pursuits.
 
A juvenile friend told me the other day that the fact that poor people largely play football, middle-class people choose tennis and rich people prefer golf, shows that affluence reduces the object of your affection – the size of the ball. Age or experience may have jaded me enough to transfer my affection to something even smaller, the printed word. But the passion has been potent enough to overlook the imperfections of my home. I don’t need a massive edifice to read the few books and magazines I read. I need no more than a tiny table for my laptop to write the few things I write.
 
And there lies the supreme reason for my aversion to a commitment to a permanent home. No home is perfect. Worse, no home is perfect enough – just as Elizabeth Taylor reportedly said of her seven divorces that no husband was perfect enough – for lifelong attachment. I would like a modest variation of the so-called American Dream: a home not bought but just occupied, for just as long as your heart revels in it. Live in it, make use of it and enjoy it. Then,  when the untamed devil that lives in every human heart prompts you, move on to another home, large or small, ancient or modern, that soothes your mind and delights your heart. Perhaps, in my lazy soul, there still lurks a craving to be unanchored, an undying, unregenerate gypsy spirit.

Ordinary people are not important, we learn from childhood. We are taught to admire kings and presidents, generals and politicos, big bureaucrats and bigger bosses, movie stars and sports champions. No matter that many of them are undeserving, who got to be where they are because they are the children of bosses and generals and movie stars or other rich and privileged people. They had advantages and opportunities ordinary people dream of but seldom have – barring an extraordinary fluke.
 
Ordinary people are the people who serve us. Our cooks, gardeners, handymen, cleaners, chauffeurs, plumbers, home aides, nannies who turn up at dawn to do our chores and disappear at dusk to rest in a princely hovel in a royal slum. Sometimes they are served a repast in their place of work, which they consume solely, silently huddled in some corner or they slink to a street vendor to buy the cheapest meal available. We call them when we need them; otherwise they are practically invisible, nearly indistinguishable from the pantry wall or garage corner.
 
At last comes a monstrous, unreasonable pandemic, if not to make these hapless creatures fully visible, at least to make us sense their absence by the lack of their service. Our commodes are not sparkling clean; ours cars don’t take us, at the merest bidding, to the consoling whisky at our dearest club; warm chapatis don’t greet us at any hour of the day or night at our peremptory wish-as-command. It is nothing if not annoying to find that chores that we have long shunted to lower beings have to be undertaken by us, if only to protect us from their dirty, potentially infectious fingers. We have to pour gasoline in our cars and drive them ourselves and we have to cook daybreak to dusk, though less opulent meals.
 
I understand this well, for I grew up in India and cannot recall a day without encountering one from a long procession of domestic employees, who were brazenly called servants. There was Keshab the soft-spoken gardener from Odissa (working ironically in our house on a street named after Keshab Sen), Aziz the tall cook with a salt-and-pepper goatee, Bijan the tall gofer who dubbed anyone who did not speak his language a ‘foreigner,’ Molina who came to help mother when she took a job and cooked bizarre and horrid meals, Abdul the maintenance man who became very fond of my younger brother and turned into a male nanny, but two endure most in my memory.

​Karunadi came to work with us when we were young and father insisted that we address her as an elder sister. She was a child widow and had possibly never had a solitary joyful day in her life. She was pleasantly startled when we treated her as a family member. She was proud of her own room and undertook to learn even the few exotic dishes mother had acquired from her British friends and tried periodically on us. Her great satisfaction was when we said that she had done better than mother. We grew extremely fond of her, and  mother insisted on starting a savings bank account for her besides her monthly pay. My parents wanted her to have a safety net for her later years, but Karunadi showed scant financial sense: she withdrew her entire saving to help a glib nephew start a dubious business. Years later we heard the business had folded and we wondered if Karunadi got anything out of it.
 
Banamali worked for me when I was a young executive and lived in a large airy split-level bungalow. I had little interest in household affairs and Banamali took full charge. He was a slim, clean-shaven, articulate, good-looking man and promptly became the hero of all the maidservants of the neighboring houses. Their employers complained to me and were irritated when I responded that Banamali never advised me about my life and it would be invidious of me to advise him about his. His charm was unquestionable. My girlfriends were invariably enamored of him and one, a pretty, long-haired actress, when asked by a colleague whether she had any serious intent about me, went to the length of saying that she would rather consider Banamali as a groom. Banamali proved his worth in managerial skills; he later took a good job as a kitchen supervisor with a large company. Of his amatory skills, I failed to gather further details.
 
I did not feel comfortable the way most employers treated their domestic employees. I do not feel comfortable now. For less well-heeled middle-class people, it may not be easy provide many comforts to their employees. But human dignity, which any person would be entitled to expect of another, should not be that difficult to extend. The current code of conduct seems unfortunately to be a holdover from an earlier medieval era, which is a dispensable relic in our time. When a society declares a lock-down at a few hours’ notice, without a moment’s thought about thousands of day laborers who live hand-to-mouth, it reflects a brutal thoughtlessness impermissible in a caring land. It reflects a broad mindset of taking ordinary people for granted, as beasts of burden who will silently hew wood and draw water as necessary, but who can be sacrificed at a moment’s notice without compunction.
 
But the current long-lasting crisis has brought home the lesson that such inhumanity exacts a price too. The relationship of trust between the server and the served has eroded in many homes and quite severed in others. It is a loss unlikely to be quickly recovered.

When I visited Yad Vashem in Israel, I made it a point to look for Henryk Golddzmit. Yad Vashem is the famous memorial to holocaust victims and one is overwhelmed by the multitude of people from different lands the Nazis gathered and killed mercilessly. But I had a special reason to look for the name of a man from Poland few Indians would recognize.
 
Henryk did have a curious link with India. It was sheer coincidence that I had discovered it.
 
Henryk was an extraordinarily gifted man. A scholar and writer, he was also a doctor and human rights defender, especially an ardent childrens’ rights advocate. In truth, children represented the very core of his passion. Though he went on to write more than twenty books and a thousand articles, his very first book questioned the way most parents rear their children. He believed (as I believe), for instance, that for a father to foist his religion on his child, instead of letting him choose his faith later when he turns an adult, was nothing short of ruinous brainwashing.
 
He studied medicine and became a pediatrician in a children’s hospital in Warsaw. At the same time, he wrote for several Polish publications and gained a literary reputation for his adopted pen name, Janusz Korczak. For a while he served as a military doctor and studied in Germany, but eventually veered to head an orphanage for Jewish children. He invited a close friend, Stefania, to be his assistant and set about creating a new kind of institution for children.
 
Henryk’s orphanage, Dom Sierot, was a children’s republic, run entirely on democratic principles, where all decisions were collective, made through its parliament and court. Henryk even hired a novelist, Igor Newerly, as a secretary to help the orphans produce their newspaper, which came out as a supplement to a Warsaw newspaper.
 
All hell broke loose on 1 September 1939, as Hitler invaded Poland with 1000 planes and 2000 tanks. World War II had begun. Within months, the Gestapo created a small area as the Warsaw Ghetto and forced all Jews to move there. Henryk was compelled to move to a smaller building in the Ghetto with all the 200 children.
 
The tragic irony was that Henryk himself was a skeptic and did not believe in Judaism. He had numerous opportunities to leave Poland before the German onslaught, just as his assistant Stefania had departed for Israel. But Henryk did not want to go anywhere where he could not also take his children.​

​Now, with his children, he was cornered in the Ghetto, from which there were weekly shipments of people to the murderous death camps, gearing up their killing apparatus. Henryk knew his turn, and the turn of his children, would soon come. How could he prepare them? What message could he give children ranging from 3 to 13?
 
It was then that he took an astounding decision. He was abreast of European literature and the Nobel Prize probably brought Rabindranath’s name to his attention. He decided that his children would stage Rabindranath’s play, The Post Office, whose central character was an ill child, surrounded by other children, who struggles to fashion a world of his own.
 
In late July, in front of the Ghetto denizens, with whatever limited resources they could lay hands on, Henryk’s children staged a scintillating performance of The Post Office.
 
Nine days later, German transport came to take them to the Treblinka death camp.
 
Reports suggest that the Germans were prepared to let Henryk go or to send him to a less harsh camp. He would not hear of it. He would not part from the orphans. Witnesses saw him marching forward, with a young child’s wrist in his hand, followed by the entire phalanx of his beloved orphans, dressed in their best costumes as if for an outing in the countryside. To the horrific end, Henryk stood with his beloved children, unbowed. Janusz Korczak had written his last and best novel – with his life.
 
It was a bright summer day when I stood mutely in front of a statuette at Yad Vashem, of Henryk ringed by his dearly treasured children.
 
One hopes – as any discerning reader of The Post Office hopes – that the play gave them all a message of solace: the undimmed speck of assurance that lies in an indomitable spirit, be it even of an ailing child.

Last night I sat up and read a play, Rabindranath’s The Post Office. It was late, but I could not stop reading it. Reading it, I could not stop thinking about it. I felt it was my story.
 
I had twice seen the play staged in India, once as a musical. Reading it fifty years after I first read it, I realized how naïve and unseeing had been the performances. Maybe that is the way many react to the play, including those who put it on the stage. Of course, it is a brief opus about a sick boy’s longing for a royal letter. But it is also much more. It is a parable of the human longing for a real and meaningful life.

​The protagonist is Amal, whose very name The Unsullied, is a clue that he is more than an ailing boy. He is the untainted Every Person, you and me, craving for the grand, regal adventure that life is. The story is the drama of his resolute search for the road to his dream defying tenacious odds.
 
The odds are varied. At one end of the spectrum is his host, the benevolent uncle, who wants to protect him from all risks and therefore all life. Like many a loving but timid parent, he doesn’t want Amal to take any chances, talk to common folk, or venture beyond the restrained indoor life prescribed by his doctor.

​There is the doctor who prescribes that doors and windows should all be shut, lest the sunlight and fresh air of an unpredictable world should intrude on Amal’s safe, sheltered existence. He is ever ready to cite impressive texts rather than listen to his patient. Not unlike doctors of our time, he is obdurately certain of the regime, no matter the special circumstances of a child patient.
 
At the other end of the spectrum is the local leader, who is petty enough to report the child’s prattle to the royal court, vain enough to feel flattered when he sees the child is respectful, and obsequious enough to be intimidated when he expects a royal visit. Like many leaders, he has a niggling, self-serving bent, but luckily his ill-intended report turns out to be good for Amal.
 
If these are the odds, Amal counters them with imaginative use of the scant resources he has at hand. He makes friends of whoever enters his limited ambit: different vendors, street boys, a young girl and a friendly gaffer. These are not superficial exchanges. Amal absorbs everything they have to say and then extrapolates the most magical parts of their life or vocation.
 
As the dairyman hawks his yogurt, Amal talks with him and conjures up his picturesque village next to a river where women in red saris make the yogurt and the interesting towns where he sells it door to door. When other kids go by, he engages them and receives an offer from them to come and play near his window; he can watch them play, though he cannot take part. A young girl who collects flowers and makes garlands to sell is intrigued enough to promise that she would come again to chat – a promise she redeems -- and leaves a flower as a gift. The village gaffer, who has an amusing way of leveling with kids, becomes his best pal and parallels Amal’s endless curiosity with grace and fantasy. Even the tough watchman melts when Amal tells him how he admires the sound of his warning bells.
 
Amal is so receptive that he quickly builds a bridge and gets even the conniving village leader to relate with him. Amal first listens raptly to his visitors, then he draws them into his tiny universe with interest and charm, and, with whatever material they offer, weaves a make-believe world of color, sound and surpassing beauty. That world has azure skies, indigo mountains, green forests, foaming fountains, purple birds and all the beauty human eyes can behold.
 
Amal’s eyes are dimming, his torpid body is seeking repose, but the wondrous universe he has singlehandedly created out of the flimsiest stuff stays with him, and offers an unusual vision to the play’s spectator. Feeble though he may seem, Amal has preternatural strength. He overcomes his odds, communes with strangers and ventures into the great unknown: mountains and fountains he has not seen, villages and riversides he has not visited, playmates he hasn’t known.
 
Our unlikely and unique hero is wan in color, weak in constitution, but valiant in his search for the excitement of life. What he can’t see, he visualizes; what he has never experienced, he imagines; out of that, he builds a dream of what he can do, where he can visit, where he will find genial companions. He makes of strangers, friends; of the unfriendly, confidants; of salespersons, prized interlocutors; of the trivial and ordinary, something spectacular. The post office across from his home becomes a symbol of the world, a postman an emissary of otherworldly marvels.
 
This hero is Every Person, who has been dealt a bad hand but has the gumption to overcome it by the extraordinary resource that even the weakest can muster: the human will to dream and sprint toward the dream, whatever the odds.

The Kolkata I grew up in was a city of dhotis. Practically all men wore dhotis, except the red-faced foreigners and some strange visitors. If you were to attend a wedding or a major event, you had to wear a dhoti. I remember mother choosing a dhoti carefully and father wearing it as carefully for the sumptuous wedding of a cousin marrying the hotshot scion of some rich and reputed family.
 
Sadly, I was far removed from such sartorial elegance. Most of my school days I wore shorts, only lately to graduate to trousers. The acme of finesse was to cover my miserable short-sleeve linen shirt with an overused corduroy jacket. When I went to college, I won a scholarship and had the excuse to acquire two Oxford shirts – a style I fancied – and gabardine pants. That, for me, was the pinnacle of sophistication and I went to college with unduly enhanced confidence.
 
Appearance felt critical in college, no doubt because there were women in the class. We prized anything that would give us a visual distinction. So it was that Amal came to my attention. Not just mine, but of my friends too. The remarkable thing about Amal was that he wore dhoti with the elegance of a world-conquering megastar. Every crease was in place, every fold was perfect, the overall impression was nothing short of stunning. Amal was a dhoti wizard, a master practitioner of the dhoti-wearing art.
 
Amal was in another class, but I didn’t let that little thing stand in my way. I cornered him and took him to the nearest coffee house. On the way, I gathered the other co-admirers and broached the delicate subject. Amal had to tell us the secret of his mastery. Would he please, please teach us how he wore a dhoti and made it look like some royal apparel? From modesty or from sheer lack of self-knowledge, Amal seemed taken aback. Six fellow students, all apparently desperate to learn how to wear a dhoti like him! He could barely believe our eagerness, but we told him emphatically that we would like to learn his secret and as soon as possible.
 
“But I would need a place to show you how to do it. I couldn’t do it on college premises?” he said.
 
I had a ready solution. I lived right next to the college, three minutes’ walk. We had a large apartment on the third floor, and it was entirely mine the whole day because my parents both worked. On the day he was free, I could lead him and the other friends readily to my place. I would have a couple of dhotis ready for him, for lessons and demonstration.
 
Amal was by now quite impressed by our enthusiasm. “All right,” he said, “let us do it next Friday, when our classes end early, around three in the afternoon.” He turned to me and said, “I will meet you near the college gate and we will take it from there.”
 
The die was cast.

​I led the procession of Amal and five friends to my apartment on Friday. Amal turned out to be an excellent but strict teacher. He rejected summarily two dhotis from my friends as not adequately starched and ironed; I had to provide substitutes from my father’s collection. Then the lesson began.
 
First the unfolding, then the tying and creasing, and then the different steps of deployment. Finally, Amal emphasized, a thorough inspection to evaluate the result and troubleshooting to take out any glitches. The outcome simply had to be perfect. Amal went over the process twice, demonstrating how he manages each step punctiliously, and then wanted us to try, one by one.
 
Being the host, I went last and had the benefit of seeing others’ mistakes. Still I was the worst performer. But I am stubborn and kept going until Amal gave his seal of approval. After they had left, I practiced a couple more times to make sure that I had it right.
 
When father returned from work, I was determined to give him a surprise. I told him, “I want to show you something,” and returned within seven minutes, with a dhoti meticulously wrapped around me, Amal-style. He said what I wanted to hear, “You are wearing it better than me.” He must have mentioned it to mother, for that weekend I had a surprise. Mother presented me with a beautiful dhoti, with a black-and-chrome border, a kind rather unusual those days but which I had mentioned to father as the kind I craved.
 
I wanted to inaugurate the gift on a special occasion. It appeared three weeks later when our family was invited to the wedding of a son of father’s colleague. I wore the dhoti along with a silk kurta I prized. While my parents talked with their friends, I looked for a familiar face. Then the colleague appeared with a young British girl and said that she, the bride’s pen pal, was visiting India for the first time and attending the first Indian wedding. Could I please take her to the dinner and help her with the unfamiliar food? At the table, I went to fetch her a fork and a spoon, but she insisted she wanted to eat with her hand, like the other Indian guests.
 
She did reasonably well with the rice and some fries, but then she was served a large ladle of curry with little potatoes. I saw her struggling with awkward fingers trying to lasso the potatoes which kept slipping from her grasp. Then, as she made a determined bid, two potatoes shot out of her fingers, and, dripping with rich brown curry, landed on my kurta and rolled down my precious dhoti. The dhoti now had a new color, a broad, curved stripe of chocolate. The British girl apologetically exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” I looked at my favorite dhoti and my thoughts were less than divine.

My parents were rather different characters – in retrospect, it seems a miracle they got on so well together – and I suspect I inherited two distinct features: my gregariousness from my exceedingly social father and my admiration for precision from my scrupulous mother.
 
I remember an exchange between them, not because it was memorable but because it concerned me and the effect was longer-lasting than I could anticipate. It had to do with my admission to a new school, following our move to a new home in a different locale.
 
Father (with great satisfaction): I took Manish to the new school and got him admitted. Everything went very well.
 
I noticed that he left out the part about his long chat with the Assistant Headmaster about tennis and the three cups of tea he savored with him.
 
Mother: I hope you took all the papers from the old school I asked you to take with you.
 
Father: Actually, I forgot. But they didn’t need any of those. They gave our son a test and he apparently did well. He was admitted right away.
 
Mother: I hope you spelled his name right (father’s interjection, “Of course, I did”) and didn’t make a mistake about his date and place of birth.
 
Father: You think I am going to make a mistake about my own son! Certainly not.
 
And then he made the mistake of saying the place and date of birth. The first was right, the second was not; he had cited the next year. Mother’s face went grave.
 
Mother: How could you be so forgetful! (Then, the most damning thing a wife can say to a husband) I should have gone to the school myself.
 
Father looked mortified and quite repentant.
 
I am told he tried to get the date changed in the following weeks and had little success. It mattered little. My official and false birthdate rolled over from school to college, to university, and to organizations where I worked.
 
Until the day my wife, an American, asked for a visa for me to travel to the US where she worked. I received from the local consulate a large form and the demand for several documents, the principal being a birth certificate. When I explained that I did not have such a certificate, like many Indians born in smaller towns, and the Supreme Court had ruled that the school leaving certificate should be the age determiner, a young bureaucrat demanded that I get a hospital certificate stating that my birth was not registered. The demand was based on the heroic and totally unrealistic assumption that the hospital would go back four decades to check whether I was born in its premises. They would also have to research whether the birth was officially registered and a certificate issued. Still, I wrote to a friend, a distinguished lawyer in Nagpur, my birthplace, if anything could be done.

My wife, a diplomat, decided to use Yankee ingenuity instead of diplomatic finesse and approached a sympathetic and powerful senator from her district. The old man called the local consulate and insisted on immediate action. The next day, the consul received me personally and practically filled up the form himself. Wherever a needed document, such as the birth certificate, was missing, he authorized exemption and signed. All I did was to add my signature and thank him. I could not resist the temptation to suggest, to his irritation, that visa officers needed to be realistic about country conditions in seeking documentation. The visa arrived by a courier the same evening.

​Three weeks later, as I was leaving for Washington, I had a letter from my friend, the lawyer in Nagpur. Attached was a certificate from the hospital saying that my birth was not registered on the specific date and no certificate was issued. More interesting was the letter, which said, “Attached is the certificate saying that your birth was not registered on the given date” and went on to add, “If you want, I can also send you a birth certificate saying that your birth was registered on that date – or any other date of your choice.” So much for the value of documents.
 
Any day now, as I finish my unimpressive but enjoyable sojourn on this earth and arrive at the Pearly Gate, I bet I will be peremptorily interrogated – as everywhere else – about my date and place of birth. The place I can confidently say, but a huge problem faces me about the date. If I cite the date of birth now noted in every august institution where I worked (and recorded in every dismal document certifying my education, health, insurance, marital status, even mental competence), I would really be lying and be condemned to a lowly circle of hell. Were I to cite the true date, a year antecedent, I could not prove it, nobody would believe me, and I might end up in the same nasty place.