Awaken

7Boston Blues

On one of my solitary evenings at home in Boston, I received a phone call from a Nepali friend from International House in New York. She had brought a high school friend from Kathmandu to my farewell party in New York a few months earlier. She asked me, “Do you remember my friend Shailu? Would you like to meet her again?”

I remembered her, though we had barely spoken at the party. I told my friend that I would be open to meeting again. “Can you go to East Lansing, Michigan?” she asked. “She is about to graduate from Michigan State University.”

I was quite lonely in Boston, so this seemed like a godsend. It was near the end of the semester, so I had time for a trip.

I spent a pleasant few days in Michigan. Shailu and I talked late into the night. Her family was Nepali of Punjabi origin. I found her lively, intelligent, well read, and fun to talk to. She had completed a master's in communications and was about to complete a second master's in labor and industrial relations. We discovered some similarities in our backgrounds; she had spent part of her childhood in the United States, while her father was ambassador to the United Nations and then to the United States. The family had returned to Nepal when she was seven. She asked if we could drive to Kalamazoo, a couple of hours away, to meet her sister and brother‐in‐law, a Pakistan‐born marketing professor at Western Michigan University. I found them both to be gracious and charming.

On May 15, 1985, I called my ...