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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a devil of a coincidence.
 
I had a reservation on a flight for Tegucigalpa, but a silly, painful accident playing kickball the night before forced me to defer the trip. The first thing I saw, while taking my seat on the plane the following Wednesday, was that you had the seat right in front of me.
 
I hadn’t thought of you in a while. No, that’s a lie. I had tried not to think of you. It hadn’t always worked. The finality of the end was far too painful not to want to forget. Yet you were embedded somewhere far too deep to forget easily.

​You stood up and smiled. You looked about the same, though the reading glasses you now affected gave you a slightly different appearance. Your coiffed hair and formal dress told me that you were traveling for work.
 
Before I could barely say a word, you spoke to the flight attendant and had your seat changed, next to mine. In a second, the insinuating aroma of Calandre took me several years back.
 
I was new to Washington and, back from my downtown office, I had stopped for dinner in a Moroccan restaurant and, not finding a table, seated myself at the bar.
 
The woman sipping a dry martini at the next stool politely moved her stool to make space for me. When she said Hello, a conversation started.
 
I remember she said that she lived near the restaurant and often stopped there for a meal, for the Moroccan cuisine pleased her. We had right away hit some common ground.
 
I ordered a martini too but specified a Golf Martini. You asked what it was, and I explained that I preferred a martini with bitters. You threw your head back and laughed when I added that Mencken had called the martini the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.
When I finished my martini, you asked if I cared for another sonnet and ordered Golf Martinis for us both.
 
We had dinner together and I was amazed how good the food was. I had cautiously ordered some Couscous, but you had ordered Pastilla, and we shared our portions. It was still early evening and you invited me to your apartment.
 
You found you had some leftover pie and we shared a few pieces with coffee. We continued talking for a long time. When I finally returned home, I knew it was quite late because the night guard’s brows went sky-high as I turned the key.
 
We saw a lot of each other. We even went out of town on long drives to inns you fancied in small towns nearby. Occasionally I drove, but you did the bulk of the driving. You seemed to like it and I liked to sit back and watch you drive and listen to music. We both liked the winding roads in the nearby mountains; the scenes were ever-changing and breathtaking.
 
The best memory I have is of the time we rented a cottage on the Potomac and spent three ideal days together. In the quiet of that lovely cottage we came the closest together. We also, sadly, began the process of moving away from each other. There was no reason. Nor was there a way to slow or stop the steady breach we felt overtaking us. We gingerly talked about it. We didn’t know how to prevent the pain that waited for us both. We just had to recognize it and accept it as an irresistible fault-line. Finally, came the bleak day when we hesitated even to call each other.
 
All this went through my mind as we chatted amiably and ate the modest dinner the airlines served. It seemed like the old times, except that it wasn’t. I have no idea why relationships end, but, when they do, it is futile to try and recapture the lost thread. We knew; we did not try. We made the best use of the time we had together.
 
The flight landed on time. A car had come for you from Marriott where you were staying. You asked where I was booked, and I said I had a reservation at Clarion. I took a taxi.
 
I hadn’t spoken the truth when I said I was booked at Clarion. My reservation was also at Marriott.
 
I checked the conference website and came down to the banquet hall at the right hour. The hall was packed, and I took a seat unobtrusively in the last row.
 
You looked splendid in a black dress with a red leather jacket, your hair in a bun. You did a splendid job too: a succinct speech with a pitch perfect delivery. The audience was spellbound.
 
I left as quietly as I had come. That was my last view of you.

I am in a new home. It is new in both senses. It was built recently. And I have just moved in.
 
I live in a country where people change homes often. It is supposed to be a sign of upward movement. There are things called ‘starter homes.’ I guess people start with those and then move up, first to a townhouse and then to a detached home. Then, if you are anything like Oprah, you graduate to a $55 million mansion.
 
I have done just the opposite. I lived for years in large detached houses. The government placed me in grand homes, with reinforced doors and round-the-clock guards. Then I receded into a charming three-story townhome in a Washington suburb where tall trees and short shrubs were my heartening company. Now I hope I have made my final transition: to an ultramodern apartment with decent spaces, large windows and the vista of a manicured lawn.

​As before, I live alone. I like it that way. I am not averse to company, but I like an unimpeded place of my own. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, I think of my place as a reassuring refuge, familiar, with a message of comfort and convenience.
 
I have been dreaming for a while about a life of less clutter. It was comfortable living the way I was living. But I had a hard time finding some books I wanted. Worse, I overlooked some books and had forgotten that I had them. Not just books, I possessed more things than I knew or remembered. More than once, I bought what I already had, whether it was a brand of crackers or a box of dishwasher detergents. I had too much space and I had bought too many things to fill the space.
 
Then came the day of reckoning. The van was at the door, to take away my things to my new home. And three more trucks to move away the things, four-fifths of my treasure, that would go to charities. Frantically, I sorted things, casting a last, lingering look at the multitude of objects I had to part with, shirts and shoes to beds and desks. I realized what a fool I was, how much I was invested in the tchotchkes around me. It was painful for me to get rid of the thousand things that were around me, things that weren’t important for my existence and were probably obstructions to a cleaner, simpler, happier life.
 
I did not sell a single thing. All clothes, furniture, electronic equipment went as gifts to mostly anonymous recipients, all books and stationery to students and libraries who I hope will find them worth preserving. The measure of agony to dispense with them is of course no way to guess the measure of joy it will bring to the recipients. I wish they could know that I had cared for them; I wish even more that they would care a little for them.
 
I thought of my pain and the reason for it. Every one of those things, a book, a picture, an old letter, represents a chunk of memory. In that way, it was an anchor of my undistinguished life. It gave meaning to my brief existence on earth, it provided a context for my loves and lusts, hopes and dreams, tenuous but tenacious aspirations. No use telling me they represented the past and needed shedding; they were the past that defined my whole being and forged what remains of my future.
 
It is perhaps foolish to debate the virtue of retaining or relinquishing the million trifles that gilded our days. They played a role in our life-drama, or were a critical prop, and thus gained an entry into our heart. We ascribe them an undeserved value – my dearest school friend gave me that keychain or an unforgettable redhead handed me that watch before saying the cruelest goodbye – that doesn’t stand the test of time, but they surely overwhelm all niggardly calculation about what has an iron grip on my weak heart.
 
The trucks were loaded with my blings and blankets, my radiators and refrigerators, my beloved books and belittled bookracks. The painters were ready to repaint the walls to make them look new; the floor polishers stood poised with their foul-smelling paint to give a new shine to my much-trodden floors; the expert cleaners held their brooms and buckets ready to give my weather-beaten home the renewed glamor of an elite home.
 
I could stand it no longer. I placed my suitcases in my car, donned my favorite weather-beaten jacket and started the car. The realtor, virtually a counselor and guide, placed two untouched bottles of Grand Marnier and Glenlivet in the passenger seat and, in return, I placed the key of my home in his hand and pressed the accelerator. I couldn’t bear to see the last of my old home.
 
A new home waited for me. A bright new apartment, modern and sophisticated, with shiny floors and dazzling lights, brand-new furniture and finest kitchenware. An apartment with no memories at all. It will be for me to create radiant new memories.

What do things mean to us?
 
I had a lesson recently when I moved from my twenty-year home in Virginia to an apartment hundreds of miles away in South Carolina. The move meant a lot of changes. From a large house to a spacious but not-as-large apartment. From a charming old residence with a hardwood floor and a fireplace to an ultramodern place with the latest gadgetry. From a picturesque, pastoral spot to an urban, elegant location. I gave up something I loved and got something that amuses me and, I hope, in time I can get to love.

​The biggest change was leaving behind the things that were associated with my past life. Every little thing seemed redolent with memories. When I needed to buy a bed, I walked thoughtlessly into a fancy designer store in Washinton and found a simple but unusual bed that fascinated me. But the price was double what I wanted to pay. The saleswoman was a charming person and I candidly explained my limited budget and walked out. She called me the next morning and said that she had bought the bed with a huge employee discount, and I could buy it from her at the low price! I took her out for lunch and went home with the bed.
 
Even the bed in the guest room had a story. Two newly acquired friends, an unmarried couple, were visiting me but they didn’t remain friendly between themselves during the night. Unhesitatingly, the woman came into my bed to sleep. I considered it a little drastic, let her have my bed and went downstairs to sleep on the sofa. We had a normal, lively breakfast together in the morning.
 
The house had a charming balcony on the second floor at the back, but the balcony was so small that I was in kissing distance of any woman I invited to take a look at the wooded landscape. So I got an engineer to lop off the balcony and construct in its place a superb terrace with the thinnest rails that wouldn’t obstruct the view. Now I could invite more than one woman – several, in fact – to come and have a drink and see the landscape.
 
I had a comfortable velvet-bound sofa in the living room that I treasured and invariably prostrated on at various angles to read the New Yorker. It represented the last word in enjoyment and ecstasy. It all ended when my daughter entrusted me with her pet kitten, Sancho, when she went on a two-week cruise. Sancho promptly monopolized the sofa, normally the eastern end but the western end in the afteroon so he can enjoy the afternoon rays; he didn’t care a bit for the preference of the master of the house. When Sancho left, the entire burgundy sofa was embedded with Sancho’s white hair that no cleaning device could eliminate. I ended by eliminating the mutilated sofa itself.
 
I had entirely remodeled the kitchen and filled it to the rafters with crockery and cutlery, glasses and gadgets, and all manner of frozen food. Nothing would travel with me, except perhaps a plate or a bowl, a fork or a spoon, the bare essentials. The spectrum of special knives, the collection of cocktail glasses from Romania, the precious Japanese tea set, all would adorn some other kitchen. The granite counter where my girlfriends sat on high stools and imbibed my Russian vodka and ginger liqueur cocktails will thrill the granite-hearted person who buys my erstwhile home.
 
I have consciously, deliberately decided to scale down and proceed to my new home with no more than one-fifth of my current possessions. Most shirts will fall by the wayside, most jackets will endow charity organizations. Since I move to a warmer clime, all twelve overcoats and leather coats must remain behind.
 
All this I can bear easily though uncomfortably. What hurts me is to shed the hundreds of books, in nine languages, that I have punctiliously gathered over fifty years and carried, like an earnest wet nurse dutifully carrying a helpless baby, from the Philippine archipelago to the Hispaniola coast and then to Himalayan foothills and the Big Apple and New World. Shed a tear I must for the Nepali thesaurus crafted by a Canadian missionary, the Pali text of Dhammapada gifted by Sri Lankan mendicant, the Catalan classics I assiduously gathered in Latin America. I can’t take my huge collection of Zen literature nor my complete set of Bengali poetry, contenting myself with a sampling of Indian festival editions of journals. I remember Dmitri, a naval officer, describing his exit from Walter Reed hospital leaving his gangrenous left leg behind. I too am leaving a precious limb behind.
 
That is what things mean. At least, that is what they meant yesterday.
 
Now I look at my shiny new apartment, five hundred miles away, glistening in the morning sun, my disorderly packages strewn all across the floor, welcoming me to its brand-new portal, its smooth new floor, its gloriously generous windows, its bright newly painted walls, its reassuring promise of a new era, perhaps a new life.
 
I will be happy. I have placed on the polished marble countertop in the living room what always stood at the center of my huge, antique rolltop desk in Washington: the small framed photograph of my mother.