I went to Srinagar for a vacation once a long time ago when I was in the Peace Corps. I anticipated that there in the vale of Kashmir, Duffy and I would chart new territory. I didn't know it would be to such an unexpected destination.

We had left our Volunteer sites on the sweltering Deccan Plateau of southern India and travelled north to Bombay, Delhi and Amritsar by third-class trains and overcrowded buses. Now we were treating ourselves to a flight on a decrepit DC-3 through mountain passes to Srinagar. Rugged peaks, some softened by snow. I looked over at Duffy. One hand on his stomach, he was turning sallow. I'd always thought men were supposed to be tough.

Poor boy, I wanted to say. I wanted to hug him. He groaned and rested his head on my shoulder, but only lightly. Like the Indians, we'd grown uncomfortable with public displays of affection.

"Be landing soon," I said. It still felt strange--strange yet wonderful--just the two of us alone without Maryann.

It had been during Peace Corps training that the three of us had bonded, odd though it was. Two home economists from the Midwest and a B.A. in psychology from somewhere near Boston.

Back then, 1963, training was not in-country but in the U.S. usually at a university. On the St.Paul campus of the University of Minnesota (for me, not far from home), Maryann and I shared a dorm room. She was the one, shortly after we arrived, who first met William Duffy. I remember the day she bounced in.

"Have you met the one with the dark hair and the great accent yet?" she asked. "He reminds me of somebody but I can't think of who it can be. Oh, Carol, you're just going to love him."

She'd already said the "you're just going to love him" part about half dozen other guys.

I knew who Duffy looked like and that I loved him the moment he introduced himself to me in the cafeteria line that evening. I stood there like a country bumpkin.

"He looks like the President," I told her afterwards in our room.

"The president of what?" she asked, brushing her medium-length black hair which she wore turned under in a page-boy. A hundred strokes every night, she'd said.

"John Kennedy," I said.

I'd only known Maryann a day and a half, but had decided certain things about her. She was pretty with her bright eyes and clear, fair skin. She was vivacious too. But sometimes she was dense. I'd also decided that I liked her.

Before long, Maryann, Duffy and I started sitting together in the cafeteria. Bundled like Eskimos against the cold March air, we took walks, made a snowman once and threw a lot of snowballs. On weekends we frequented a hamburger joint just off campus. Maryann and Duffy drank beer while I preferred Coke. They danced sometimes. I guess I was a wallflower, but I didn't mind. They couldn't dance all the time. He always came back and we'd talk, our elbows touching on the table.

He said he liked us because we had no pretensions. We were down to earth. I didn't tell him why I liked him, but decided it was because, to me, he was a mystery.

"I've never known any one like you, Carol" he said one evening at the hamburger place while Maryann was in the Ladies' Room.

"Ditto," I replied.

We went to classes and studied hard. We sweated each of the monthly selection board meetings after which some of the trainees were told they were not suitable for the Peace Corps. As our numbers dwindled, I dreaded the thought that any of the three of us would be sent home.

At the end of our training, our little "family" still intact, Maryann and Duffy whooped when we heard she and I would be posted together and Duffy would be only about fifty miles away. I beamed.

Three months of training but we still had no idea what India was really like. I was nervous as our PanAm flight landed at Palam International Airport. Maryann and Duffy seemed so cool, he sandwiched there between us, me at the window, Maryann in the aisle seat.

It was early June. The monsoon had not yet begun. The earth was parched. Dust particles, turned rose by the dawn, filled the sky. I stepped into a furnace, heat hitting me in the face. Such fetid air! The aroma of strange cooking spices and the smell of vehicle exhaust fumes mingled with the stench of animal and human excrement.

In the hotel's spacious dining room, breakfast. Carrying plates, bearers in starched white uniforms with crimson cummerbunds and turbans padded soundlessly across Oriental carpets in bare feet. I picked up my spoon. It was heavy. Real silver. I returned it to its place on the stiff white table cloth. Soup bowls filled to the brim with cornflakes appeared before us along with a large silver pitcher of hot milk. Duffy and Maryann and I looked at each other. They told me to go first. As I tilted the pitcher, the film on top of the boiled milk slid into my bowl.

Duffy said, "Oh, Carol, yuck."

I brought the big silver spoon to my mouth. The cornflakes tasted like mush.

Sparrows flitted about in the ceiling rafters, twittering, building nests. They fascinated me. What were they doing here? What was I?

Duffy said, "Sir, sir, I do believe I have a sparrow turd in my porridge."

Maryann giggled behind her hand and then whispered, "Be quiet, don't say anything or else everyone will want one."

How could they be so unaffected, so natural? Or was joking just their way of dealing with the strangeness.

Later, I went with them, braving a walk beyond the cement wall that enclosed the hotel's tranquil garden. In the road, cacophony. Thin, determined men perched on black bicycles rang their bells. A pair of bullocks--curved horns, sagging grey hides ancient as India--dragged a creaking cart. Its huge wooden wheels banged the pavement. Black and yellow three-wheeled rickshaws darted around it like bees, their motors a high, steady drone. A cow meandered into the melee. Taxis screeched to a halt, rickshaws and bicycles swerved in a mad dance.

We'd been told to be careful crossing the street. Traffic drove on the left. Taking in the scene, I didn't feel ready yet to attempt a crossing.

But, giggling, Maryann and Duffy hopped into the street, dashing and backtracking as in a game of dodge ball. I watched their progress around cars, small and black.

Then an American car--a white Chevy--lumbered through the chaos, horn blaring. Low slung and large as a yacht, all wrong here.

I had an inkling even in the fog of a strange fatigue (who ever talked of jet lag then) and in profound culture shock that India would cause all three of us to see many things differently.

I drifted along, sweat seeping from my skin. A beggar on the road's edge harangued passersby, men in dhotis or pants, women in saris with a red dot in the middle of their foreheads. A group of budding girls in flowing skirts and fitted blouses clutched their books and hurried on their way, kohl-rimmed eyes averted. After they passed, the scent of the jasmine flowers in their shiny plaits remained. But soon it was overlaid by a stronger smell from the compound walls along the sidewalk where men, their backs to the road, squatted and urinated.

Instead of turning back, I darted down a side street. Here a family lived, their life open to my gaze like a house lighted at dusk. Wrapping the end of her tattered sari over her head, an aging woman stirred a dented, soot-stained pot on a small charcoal stove, her glass bangles tinkling. An old man slept, curled up in a filthy sheet. A mother, one hand clutching her head, nursed her tiny infant from a sagging, worn-out breast.

Then Duffy and Maryann were at my side again, seemingly exhilarated by their run across the street, yet silent as I was. Overwhelmed by the need around me.

I was looking forward to getting to our site and starting work, except that it meant I wouldn't see Duffy everyday anymore.

In southern India, Maryann and I lived near a sizeable town on the campus of a center where young Indians learned to become village-level workers. Later, they would help villagers improve all aspects of their living standards. We taught the female trainees what we knew about sewing, nutrition, gardening and hygienic baby care. In their spare time, they taught us Indian cooking and helped us perfect our skills at eating with our fingers, including getting soupy yoghurt up off a flat plate with a deft twist of the wrist. They giggled as we got tangled up learning to wrap a sari. They practiced their English on us and we inflicted our Kannada on them. There were Indian girls (those days we were all "girls") in and out of our small, white-washed house all the time.

Maryann and I became like sisters, although sometimes I felt like her big sister. She didn't like picking up after herself. And her sewing skills were pretty dismal for a home economist. Sometimes I had to rescue her projects.

I awoke one morning feeling that maybe I was adjusting to living in India. I also realized we hadn't seen Duffy in over two months. I missed him.

Two days later, he made his first trip to town from his overgrown village. His living conditions were pretty primitive. He'd lost weight. He was happy to see us, his smile full of relief and gratitude.

Afterwards, he came often. Sometimes he said it was to shop for food, luxuries like tinned jam he couldn't buy where he lived. But we knew differently, Maryann and I. He came for our cooking and the company. It must have been lonely for him at his site pedalling his bicycle in the hot sun to visit surrounding villages and teach the farmers about modern poultry farming.

Before training all he'd known about chickens was that they came wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. Those were the heady days of Peace Corps when they thought all that was needed was a caring person with some education willing to rough it overseas and teach people about "community development." Whatever that meant.

Oddest thing was, many of us did make a difference. Still, perhaps we were the ones who learned the most.

Duffy had settled on chickens, he said, because the villagers seemed interested and, since chickens had few if any brains, he couldn't mess them up with what he'd learned in college about psychology.

Maryann cracked up. I just smiled and spread some of our home-made peanut butter on a hot chappati. Then I plunked a whole peeled banana on top of that, sprinkled it with coarse sugar--all the sugar in India was coarse--rolled the chappati up and handed it to Duffy.

"Ah, the specialty of the house. Thanks, Carol," he said and then devoured it.

He and Maryann continued to tell jokes and laugh while we ate, playing off each other.

"All I need now is to find a dental hygienist, marry her and bring her back to work with me on the poultry stuff," he said.

We looked at him, confused.

"She'd be perfect. Chickens don't have any teeth either."

I thought Maryann would fall off her chair, laughing so hard. When she finally stopped, she said, "Now who'd want to do a silly thing like that? Marry you and have your chickens!" Then she roared again.

Later, after Maryann went to bed, yawning and stretching, Duffy and I talked on softly beneath the slow rhythmic creaking of the ceiling fan.

He told me about his family--large because they were Catholics.

"Mine is large too," I said. "But that's because we're farmers. My mother and father needed a brood of us to grow the corn, milk the cows and feed the chickens."

"It's not that I don't appreciate what my parents did. I know they sacrificed to send me to parochial schools and B.C. but...I've had it with Catholicism. All this guilt stuff. Going to confession every week and spilling your guts. And how can I believe after coming here that it's the only right religion. That only Catholics can go to heaven when here there are millions upon millions of Hindus---"

"Some Moslems too," I reminded him.

"So many good people. Surely they should have a place in heaven."

I didn't bother to remind him that maybe Hindus weren't concerned about heaven. But I understood what he meant. I too had met many gentle people. The fatherly principal of the training center and his wife. Village families in mud and thatch huts. Cups of tea always appeared. And above them brown faces with black eyes that silently communicated kindness.

Although I still couldn't keep all their gods and goddesses straight, I knew people so holy, so devoted to something beyond this material world that I could almost see God in them.

"I'd never raise my kids Catholic," he said. "It would be hypocritical."

"But Catholics have all that ritual. Latin and statues and incense and stuff. Some...passion. You should try being a Lutheran for a while," I said, thinking this might be the first time I'd ever said the word "passion."

He laughed. "You're wrong about the passion. All the rules we have leave no room for passion. I want to do what I want without feeling guilty about it."

When his eyes started to droop he would spread out his olive green Peace Corps-issue sleeping bag on the floor. After he crawled in, I would tuck the mosquito net we'd rigged up--using nails and string--all around under the sleeping bag to keep him safe from those insidious carriers of malaria, elephantiasis and God knows what else.

Duffy's visits became more frequent. I loved seeing him but sometimes I wondered what Peace Corps staff would think if they knew how much time he spent away from his site. He wrote us letters too, sometimes to one of us, sometimes to both. Occasionally I shared his letters to me with Maryann. She never did.

Still, I was sure I was the one who knew him better.

During one of our late night talks while I sewed a button on his shirt, he told me about his post office, a tiny one-room cement building.

Duffy's bare chest and shoulders were white. His arms from where his short sleeves ended were tanned down to his hands. So was his neck. Like a Minnesota farm boy in summer. It made me homesick. But Duffy looked too aristocratic to ever be a farm boy.

"The postmaster sits cross-legged on the floor in the midst of a shambles of letters and parcels. Some of them look like they've been there since the British Raj. I'm glad someone warned me to wait until he cancels the stamps. Otherwise he removes them and resells them to someone else. You'd never hear from me. Don't know if he does it because he's desperately poor or just dishonest."

"Tsk, tsk. Definitely not going to heaven," I said.

He smiled at me warmly, his best John Kennedy smile. I didn't joke as much as he and Maryann, but I had the feeling he appreciated it more on the rare occasions I did. I returned to my sewing. Looking at him half-naked was distracting.

"I practically have to beg him for my mail. Stand there in the doorway for what seems like hours and wait while he shuffles through everything, blowing dust off the old parcels. Stalling so I'll give him a baksheesh, no doubt."

"That's too bad," I said, biting off the thread. Maryann had misplaced our scissors again.

"I'd gladly pay for your letters," he said as I helped him back into his shirt and smoothed out his collar. "I'm not sure what I'd do without you."

"I saw the most interesting thing the other day," he told us one evening in early November over dinner. I'd made muttonburgers. "I went into this hut in a very remote village, invited for a cup of tea, of course. And there on the wall were three framed photos, big ones, you know, eight by eleven or whatever. One of Gandhi, one of Nehru and one of, get this, John F. Kennedy, each draped with a garland of orange marigolds. Can you believe it?"

We couldn't. But it was November, 1963 and it was nothing compared to the surprise that would soon stun America and us too, even though so far away.

A few weeks later, the day after Kennedy's assassination, Maryann and I were on a train returning from Bangalore, the state capital. We sat there in the crowded third class car, numb. Strangers spoke to us, offering condolences. They loved him too.

A few times a year, Peace Corps/India would get all the Volunteers in our group together for a conference at a posh hotel. Our first was at the Malabar Hotel in Cochin, our second--the most memorable for me--at the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur in the midst of the Rajasthan desert. At the Rambagh the bathrooms were marble, high-ceilinged and almost as large as a house.

During the conferences, we'd talk with the Peace Corps staff about our work, our adjustment to India. The doctor would jab us with needles and make us give stool samples to see if we had worms or amoebas. Maryann and I were always fine. We took great care with our hygiene. But others, like Duffy, sometimes looked drawn and thin.

We sat around drinking Cokes, nimbu pani or Kingfishers, listening to each other's tales of "near death experiences" caused by intestinal parasites. The State of Our Bowels was always the hottest topic even at meals.

Indira Gandhi came and spoke to us. Then, she was only famous as Nehru's daughter. Still, we felt special.

But mostly I felt special because of Duffy. The other Volunteers watching the three of us must have thought it was Maryann and Duffy who were a thing and I was along as camouflage. But I knew better. Sure they goofed around, they danced, but I was the one he talked to.

One afternoon during the Jaipur conference we were supposed to go sightseeing together, the three of us. It took longer for me to get my shots than I thought it would and they didn't wait for me. Dashing off, I imagined, the way they had crossed that street in New Delhi way back last June, nine whole months ago, when we'd first arrived. There was no one else around so I just went back to our room and read.

Maryann apologized but said little else when she returned, and when I asked Duffy at dinner how it was, he shrugged and said, "Seen one palace, you've seen them all. Seen one camel, you've seen them all."

They both seemed as if they were made out of wood. He was still glum later after Maryann had disappeared to play poker, of all things, with some other Volunteers. He and I sat alone in the shadows on the veranda. Just happy to be with him, I figured he'd tell me eventually what had happened that afternoon. But he never did, not exactly, not that night anyway.

"Have you ever thought of checking out?" he said into the darkness around us.

"Terminating from Peace Corps, you mean?"

"No," he said. "I mean checking out. Committing suicide."

I considered it an academic question and made a quick sweep through my past. Like everyone who reached the age of twenty-four I guess I'd had my low moments. No one had asked me to the Junior Prom. I hadn't been accepted at my first choice college. But I'd never thought of killing myself and somehow I knew I was the kind of person who never would--no matter what.

When I looked into his eyes I realized why he had asked the question.

He began to speak, softly at first, then with more self-assurance. He must have known I wouldn't judge him or think him awful no matter what he did.

"It was sometime during our first couple of months...before my first visit to see you and Maryann. I just couldn't adjust, you know. I was lonely. Missing everybody. Day after day I never got to speak a word of English. I think I started talking to myself."

He glanced at me and we both laughed softly, then hunched closer as if we were plotting a conspiracy.

"Then I got this roaring case of diarrhea. I had the most awful cramps and a fever. I just lay there burning up. I think my brain got fried," he said.

"You were probably dehydrated," I said.

"I took a bunch of pills from our trusty Peace Corps medical kit."

We'd all gotten one. It was medium grey, molded plastic with a handle, somewhat like a briefcase. I still have mine.

"God knows what I took," he said. "Anyway I got better, you know, after a while but I was so damn depressed." After a long pause he continued. "I was going to do it with a rope, from the rafters of the latrine."

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then he said, "Poetic in a way, don't you think?" He lifted his hand and spread it before us like a headline. "Diarrhea-induced Depression Ends in Latrine Suicide."

If she'd been with us, Maryann would have roared. I only smiled at him, then pressed my hand against his cheek and left it there a long time. Finally he took my hand in his, brought it to his lips and kissed the center of my palm. It was the most erotic thing anyone had ever done to me. Yet somehow it also seemed reverent, the way he might once have kissed a cardinal's ring. Or the wounds of Jesus if he'd been alive then.

I was grateful he was alive now. Deeply grateful I was the one he was falling in love with.

The next evening he said, "I'm going to take some leave in May. Can you? How does a trip to Kashmir sound? Our secret."

Already overflowing with anticipation the minute he said it, I didn't know how I would get through the rest of March and all of April until the glorious month of May. Until our wonderful trip.

Finally, our Indian Airlines flight landed safely in Srinagar, the capital of the state of Kashmir. A mythical, mystical, magical Shangri-La.

"Thank God," Duffy said, barely above a whisper. He wasn't holding his stomach anymore and his face was returning to its normal color.

Soon we found ourselves on the shore of Dal Lake. Baggage in hand, we were deluged by shikara wallahs. They tried to grab our bags bellowing that their boat was the very best one to take us. I disliked the yelling but was charmed by the shikaras. Long, lean, pointed at each end, with little canopy roofs, each boat had a name.

"Srinagar's challenge to Venetian gondolas," Duffy said.

He threw his hands up because there were so many boats and the men were still fighting over us. I pointed to "Jasmine."

We sat side by side under the canopy.

The surface of the lake was like glass reflecting the snow-crowned mountains. The sky extended all the way to heaven. Slowly we slipped through the water. Instead of the heat of the plains, refreshing, cool air surrounded us--scented by roses and jasmine. After the hustle and bustle of the cities, I loved the stillness. Broken only when our shikara wallah called out to another as we passed.

So beautiful, so quiet. I almost shushed Duffy when he started to speak.

"I don't see any point in waiting any longer," he said. "This seems as good a place as any." He was beginning to lose his Boston accent. Still, I would always think of him as a young Kennedy.

"I mean, it is beautiful here," he continued, looking around. "And the boat gives me an excuse not to get on my knees."

He fished and fished in his pockets and finally came up with what he was looking for. He opened the small box and extended it towards me. "It's only a star sapphire. I hope it will do for now." He cleared his throat. "Will you marry me, Carol?"

We threw out all our cross-cultural training and embraced not exactly in public but with one witness. The shikara wallah was still grinning when we reached our houseboat.

The shikara rocked as we climbed out. I thought for a moment we might both end up in the lake which I was sure was not as pristine as it looked.

"Shouldn't I be carrying you over the threshold or something?" Duffy said.

I thought then that I would always love him.

On the houseboat, Duffy and I lounged, read and talked, lulled by its gentle motion. We spoke of marrying soon, wondered what Peace Corps would do about our postings, knowing they would have to put us somewhere together. I might get his chickens after all.

I knew my parents would be disappointed that I didn't wait and get married at home. But, hey, we could have a big party when we got there and invite the whole town. It wasn't that large.

The market came to us. A floating bazaar. We bought strawberries from a hawker in one shikara and flowers from another. Looking up at the mountains, breathing in the fresh air, I found it hard to concentrate on bargaining. I did remember to tell the cook--he came with the houseboat--to soak the strawberries in disinfectant before serving them. Later, I hummed as I used all the glasses for our flowers.

Although it was May, mornings and evenings were chilly. I felt the cold in the oddest places. My nipples got tingly, so I stuffed socks down inside my bra. The past year in India had accustomed me to heat in a way I found unimaginable for a tough girl from the snow-swept Midwest. It seemed everything about me was changing. How could I have envisioned I would be here in the shadow of the Himalayas, lolling on a houseboat in the arms of a man like Duffy.

As if they were dolls, we spoke of children we would have, how many, which sex. How we'd bring them up religion-wise, though for that we could find no easy solution.

As we watched raindrops plopping into the lake, we discussed graduate school and careers in overseas work or in other helping professions. When the rain ended, we saw that it had been snow in the mountains and had crept half way down the peaks.

Despite all our plans, the future seemed surreal. Only these days and nights were real.

Occasionally, a strange expression crept over Duffy's face. One I had never seen before, and I thought I knew him so well. But then how could I expect to in fifteen months. "It takes years to know a man," my mother had said. "And then sometimes they still surprise you."

"Sometimes...it doesn't feel like it will ever happen," he said one evening as we ate. I thought I knew what he meant.

After dinner, our cook lingered on, squatting on our sitting room floor, huddled over a small charcoal stove completely hidden beneath his voluminous cloak. I envied Ali's warmth but worried that he might burn up his...you know whats.

"We were sorry to hear about the Prime Minister," I said, unsure whether Ali considered himself a citizen of India or not.

It was he who had brought us the news of Lalbadhur Shastri's death while attending a meeting in Tashkent.

He shrugged. "Old man," he said. "Not like you young president. So sad you young president." He moved his head slowly from side to side with a dipping action I'd never seen before coming to India. Now it seemed natural.

"I guess if it weren't for him we wouldn't be here," I said.

"Pretty wife too," Ali said and then turning to Duffy, he spoke behind his hand, "like you wife, heh."

I blushed. Here men didn't comment on other men's wives. But for Americans, perhaps the rules didn't apply.

With light brown hair and a parade of freckles across my nose, I was no Jackie. (Maryann was, maybe a little, but not me.) Ali was being kind. Or was he just sly? I was in charge of the kitchen and possibly the source of a little extra baksheesh. I wasn't totally naive.

When Ali shifted his body, a little puff of smoke and the aroma of charcoal erupted from beneath his coat. He looked around the room at all the flowers and addressed Duffy again. "Tomorrow, Sahib, take Memsahib to Shalimar Gardens. Plenty flowers. I get shikara. No problem."

It was in Shalimar Gardens that Duffy told me. But not before we spent a pleasant afternoon strolling through the terraced gardens in the sunlight. We passed men in ones and twos, followed by a gaggle of women, sometimes spanning three generations. Some of the women wore saris, others churidar-chemise. Still others were in long skirts. Head scarves tied under their chins. The young boys often looked bored but the little girls flitted around their mothers, their glass bangles jingling.

Shalimar Gardens. Bright blue sky, clouds that hung there like God's clothes, flowers of every color opening to the fresh rarified air. Amidst the beauty all around me, I felt my life force surge.

It seemed to be having the opposite effect on Duffy. Sometimes he hung his head. How could he miss one second of this. I had to persuade him to take some pictures.

Feeling as beautiful as Jackie, I posed, sitting on a green lawn, my full skirt spread around me like a fan, a rainbow of flowers everywhere. I'd include this photo in the long letter to my parents. Along with one of him of course.

"Stop being goofy and smile," I called out to him when I had the camera. "Don't you want my parents to like you?"

We sat together on a low wall. I took a deep breath. Wanting to inhale the now--the garden, all of Kashmir--and hold it until I thought I would burst. Then, only then would I let the breath out but still not completely as if to store up inside me this moment here with Duffy for all time.

For a long while, neither of us spoke.

"You know the thing I like best about you, about us," he said, "is that I've always been able to talk to you about everything."

We gazed at each other and smiled, but his face was different somehow.

"Being honest with you is important to me," he said, looking away.

"That good Catholic upbringing, still alive and well," I answered, winking at him. I was pleased, for I too considered honesty essential in a relationship.

Again a long silence.

"Why are you grinning?" he asked me finally.

I looked up at him, at his dark hair surrounded by so much sky. "I was just thinking how surprised everyone will be. Especially Maryann. She doesn't even know where I've really gone. She certainly doesn't know with who." I touched his hand.

"With whom," he said.

I thought it was a question. "Well, with you-mm," I replied, giggling.

"With whom not who," he said.

"Whatever," I said.

He rubbed his hand over his face, then over the back of his neck.

"She knows," he said.

"How could she? I never said a word. Our secret, remember?"

Silence, then he let the words fall, hard on the ground like a rock. "I told her."

I looked at him quizzically.

"I saw her the week before we left."

My mind raced, trying to recall the last time he had come to visit us. It had been longer than that.

"We met in Bangalore," he said.

Then I remembered her trip. Thoughts assaulted me. I swallowed and tried to banish them.

He lowered his eyes, then clutched his head in his hands. "I don't know how to say this." His voice was choked.

All around me now, only blackness. I wanted to run from this place.

"I had to give it one last chance to make sure she hadn't changed her mind," he sputtered. "We had this big fight in Jaipur, but..."

Stunned, I couldn't think straight. My head went in circles, imagining things. Suddenly an image of Maryann in her nightgown creeping out of the bedroom we shared, crawling under Duffy's mosquito net. At a conference, Duffy checking over his shoulder as he slipped her into his room.

When I spoke my voice trembled. "Change her mind about what?" I asked, not looking at him.

His words were barely audible as if they came from far away.

"About me," he said, like he was crying.

There's a part of me that would like to tell you that after Peace Corps I went on for an advanced degree, then got a job with UNICEF or the Agency for International Development, or became a Senator or some such thing, like many RPCV's--Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. But I didn't.

After India, I came home to Minnesota and married a childhood friend. He had wanted to ask me to the Junior Prom but he was too nervous or so he said when he proposed, his blue eyes earnest. As young newlyweds, we bought a small farm. Side by side, we breathed life into these acres. There's something about the sun on a tawny wheat field and the swoosh of a breeze blowing through it. And we raised four kids--two handsome sons and two lovely daughters. It was hard work but satisfying.

Now the children are grown. I'm so proud of them. And I'm a grandmother. You should see my grandkids.

While sometimes I reign like a maharani, I could never interest my family in Indian food so I rarely cook it. But, several years ago I did convince Gordie to agree to rename our farm Shalimar Gardens. I told him that Shalimar Gardens was a beautiful place. "And besides," I said, "if it weren't for Shalimar Gardens, I might not be in our kitchen right now!" He looked at me quizzically, nodded his still blonde head and said okay. (He's never been a talkative man, but, you know, for some reason that never bothered me.)

Sometimes, I mix a cup or two of whole wheat flour with a little water and a little oil. I leave the ball to rest a while in a bowl covered with a cloth. Later, I roll out circles, rubbing white flour on the rolling pin and the board. One at a time I cook them on both sides in a very hot frying pan. Then I spread one of the warm chappattis with peanut butter. I place a banana on top and roll it up slowly and carefully, gathering my memories.

If the weather is nice I sit out in my little flower garden. If it's cold I sit at the kitchen table looking out upon our farm. While I eat, I think about the people I knew and what they meant to me. Sometimes, I feel their presence.