A NEW ARRANGEMENT

As usual, Mike made coffee for me. I complimented on her talents as a hostess. She graciously accepted my compliment. I cannot display a table with flair. How do they do these things?

Even as a child, I picked flowers from their natural and their not-so-natural arrangement in my parents' garden. Then I rearranged them in a vase. Gathered and displayed this way, the flowers took on a new beauty. And yet, one could still see in each the individual beauty that had drawn me into plucking it from its bed. The arrangement gave me a new, yet familiar, pleasure.

On the M66 crosstown bus over to Mike's today, I was thinking that my work these days has to do with rearranging. Perhaps a variation of remapping, I thought. For it was not merely showing my friends Manipur, but showing my Manipur, that was my intention during that wonderful, engendering field trip a year ago. But now it is more than that. I turned to Richard during the meeting and responded to his query about 24/7 security for our coaching program in November. The people will protect, I said. The leikais will protect, if we build our baseball project from the ground up. The same leikais, I say to Richard, that we discussed with Peter. And what I am urging Bidisha now to make the lynchpin of her public health model for us. The leikais are there and have been there all along. But now we will use them.

So, as with baseball, as with leikais, I will pick and choose what I like from my Manipur, to make a new arrangement.

Jim called in from Tokyo for the conference call. MLB International is on board. I must travel to Manipur soon.