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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Would you like to look at some scarves?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My older friends complain that the young people don’t listen to their advice. I congratulate the young people for that. Never listen to anybody’s advice, including mine. They are not you, they don’t know what you want. Their advice is at best irrelevant, at worst misleading. Maybe you don’t know yourself what you want. You need to find out what you want, what you care to do, what you would like to be. Not listening to others’ advice is just the first step. There are many more steps to follow, but one has to begin by disregarding others’ counsel.
 
I have probably made a hash of my life. Most people do. Without a dress rehearsal, you don’t expect anybody to offer a peak performance on the opening night. At least I can say I created my mess mostly by myself. It would have been a double tragedy if I had bungled things on other people’s advice. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have lived my life in my own light, however dim that light may be. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to live a life according to others’ choices. The mistakes are all mine, and the credit for occasionally avoiding them is also mine.
 
This is the fun part of having reached the latter stage of my life. No one has much leeway when he or she is at mother’s breast or father’s feet. Even in school and college one’s freedom of choice is quite limited. When you start working, the choice is a little broader, at least for some. Still there are too many rules to observe. That ends when you stop working, or – as in my case – you start working for yourself. Your choice is much broader. This is the time to live for yourself.

​This is, therefore, the time to ask yourself: Who are you? You are somebody’s son, somebody’s spouse, somebody’s father. You are also somebody’s employee, somebody’s neighbor, somebody’s friend. If that is all you can say about yourself, you have nothing but a derived existence, dependent on others. If you strip away those dependencies, you are getting closer to the answer. Is there something you care for, something you have ever loved, something that has seemed worthwhile to you? Those things are closer to your bone and, to an extent, might tell you who you are.
 
You could also ask yourself: What have you ever enjoyed doing? Perhaps there was something you had pleasure in doing, making, creating, listening, writing or performing. Perhaps it was in the distant past, nearly forgotten, and is now merely a fragrant memory, but it could be worth recalling and exploring. The world has an insidious way of encroaching on our loves and sweeping them away like a discarded toy. Now may be the time to retrieve that plaything and play with it again.
 
I write this not as a prescription for others to follow, but as a tentative guidepost for myself. Nobody can tell me what is best for me today. I don’t know it either. But to live my life must mean pursuing the butterfly that catches my fancy.

​When I was a kid, along with my brother I produced a handwritten family news bulletin for my parents and us. I wrote in my school and college magazines. Those were fun pieces my friends loved and talked about. Then I started work. For decades I wrote nothing but thousands of letters and reports and memoranda. Some created waves, but most sank quietly into deserved oblivion.
 
Then last year I started writing a few pieces that had nothing to do with my work. Some essays, some memoirs. Even some stories. Some I write in my first language, that of my birthplace. Others I write in the language of my adopted land. I have also written some in a third language that has grown closer to my heart. In each idiom I feel a unique sense of freedom that I can’t seem to find in others. I am not trying to impress people with my versatility; I am just struggling to speak my heart. It is amazing how different the languages are, and how differently they let me express what I feel.
 
Nor am I trying to be Proust or Tolstoy, a great auteur. I am simply eager to express the ideas circling in my mind. That is my way of staying happy. Which is another way of saying: That is my way of living my own life, doing something that seems pleasant and meaningful.
 
Like many of our other assumptions, the great assumption that life is the best when one is young seems increasingly false. The ups and downs of youth, its uncertainties and acute miseries, often overshadow its buoyancy, and researchers are telling us aging brings a bigger share of peace and joy. It certainly allows a closer move toward your deepest values. It lets you do what you have long deferred: find yourself.
 
I would not take my dog’s admiration as proof that I am quite wonderful. Nor would I, as Goethe once said, if I were to find myself, I would want to run away. Wonderful or not, I just want to live my own life, uncluttered by others’ expectation, undaunted by others’ demands. Just my life.