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wife had made.
    “What are you doing?” one team member asked. “We came into your house, violated your beliefs, and now you’re treating us as guests. Why?”
    “I believe it is my dharma to not get inoculated because God ordains who will be diseased and who will be healthy. You obviously believe it is your dharma to inoculate me. Now it is over and you are guests in my home. This is the least I can offer you.”
    This story is the best demonstration of dharma I have found. For me the word “dharma” incorporates the elements of duty, creed, and ethics. As a child I certainly never suspected that my dharma would bring me to America and Harvard Medical School, but I followed the path that was laid in front of me. My family’s roots in the Indian soil can be traced back centuries; planting new ones in another part of the world was never part of my plan. But the actions of fulfilling my dharma have brought me honors in my profession and in my life. As a result, I embrace both Eastern and Western traditions. I speak American slang with an Indian accent. I’ve spent my life in medicine, relying on the tools of science—experimentation, discovery, testing, and reproducible results—but being brought up in my culture also left me open to other possibilities, ones that might not be scientifically proven or easily understood. I am privileged to lecture annually to as many as fifty thousand medical professionals in the United States and around the world, and each time I do so I feel I am fulfilling my dharma.
    When my parents first traveled from Bombay to London, it took them about three weeks by ocean liner. Now I can get on an airplane in Boston and be anywhere in India in less than a day. When I’m there, walking the streets of what is now Mumbai, I see many of the same international chain stores that I’d passed hours earlier in Boston. Growing up, we didn’t have television, but now I can turn on the set in India and watch some of the same shows I enjoy in the United States. Once, the only news we got was from All India Radio or the BBC. Now I can simply log onto Twitter, where I follow CNN, NBC, and the New York Times, instantly receiving the latestnews from around the world. Because of advances in travel, communications, entertainment, and business, the world has gotten much smaller; the once distinct cultures of the world are blending, perhaps too much. But I’ve always found great comfort knowing that the core values I was taught by my family as part of our Indian culture still make an impact. They have allowed me to become a successful husband, father, grandfather, physician, and lecturer, in America.

3
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    Charmed Circle
    Deepak

    Deepak and Sanjiv win first and second prize at a fancy-dress competition, as a snake charmer and as Lord Krishna, Jabalpur, 1958.

I MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT THREE and a half when my earliest memories were formed. Being frightened and abandoned sticks in the mind. I was sitting alone in a city park, guarded by a magic circle drawn around me in the dirt. I watched the trees, not yet terrified, even though it was certain that, if I crept outside the circle, demons were waiting in the shadows.
    The family had hired an ayah, or nanny, to look after me and my infant brother, Sanjiv. One of her duties was to take us to the park every afternoon so that my mother could have a few moments of peace. Was our ayah named Mary? Names are easily lost, but not feelings. In Pune, where my father was stationed (he hadn’t yet traveled to London for advanced training in cardiology), the ayahs were often young girls from Goa, a part of India settled by the Portuguese, where Christianity strongly took hold.
    Whomever she was, our ayah kept looking over her shoulder every time we arrived at the park. At a certain point she would plunk me down on the ground and draw a circle around me in the dirt. She would warn me not to stray—outside the circle were demons—and then disappear. With or