Live from our front porch.

If all goes according to plan, tonight I will make a new friend. I’ve rigged it so he could arrive first. That is, weeks ago when phoning Jackie Robinson, I set the gathering time as 20 minutes ahead of the others. I might have coaxed him to stay for a one-to-one after Perween Warsi and Muhammad Yunus had left, but I didn’t want to risk offending the uncoaxed South Asians.

I've respected the chap for 61 years. Don't give me stuff about propagating the recent stereotype of the black male as ball player.

He's here. I boom out, “How’s your game?” -- meaning “I hope you’ll tell me that you are fine.” Jackie is either being oblique or his head right now is somewhere else. He says his best game was basketball. But during his twenties, with more opportunities beckoning in the “Pitch Black” (Negro) Baseball League, “baseball was the draw.”

It’s a warm evening, Jackie’s outdoorsy, and so before we sit in the shade of the porch, I pick up one of my sons’ bats. It happens to be laying around.

“I’m a little rusty. Check out my swing, could you?”

There's nothing worse than a complacent performer, and Jackie’s a performer who assumes a degree of responsibility to his audience, even an audience of one. He demonstrates how to take a wider stance. How to grasp the bat with the knob nearer the shoulder, higher and more erect. How to level the bat to the top of my imaginary strike zone. I do some moves, take some swings.

It's great that Jackie Robinson and I can be on this nostalgia kick until Perween Warsi and Barb arrive. Barb’s driving Perween here from our metropolis’s Little India. By his choice, Muhammad Yunus is arriving on his own hook.

I’m clueless about the Negro League. Jackie Robinson explains that bunting and base-stealing were emphasized. The game differed from the “less daring” Major League whose players all wanted to be Babe Ruth -- they put a premium on home runs and big innings.

Sitting here on the porch, we re-live Game One of the 1955 World Series. Jackie shows how he famously avoided the tag/lunge of the Cardinals’ catcher and stole home. He was the front end of a triple steal. On the front page of a newspaper in Bombay, where I was backpacking at the time, I saw the picture of Jackie’s big hook slide. Lots of dust at home plate.

Jackie stole home a record 19 times in the national league –- 19, just imagine. He also counts as a runner, hitter, and fielder. I pester for details on other peak moments, i.e., “How about that final day of the season in ‘51 season? The game had gone into extra innings. The Phillies had loaded the bases with one out. Remember?”

At the bottom of the 12th, Jackie had made a defensive play that saved the season. He dove for a soft liner to his right and injured his elbow. He converted the catch into a double play. Then in the 14th, Jackie hit the Dodgers’ game-winning home run.

We both guffaw over that and other glories of Jackie’s career. This proves not only that we revel in those times but that we’re relaxed and comfortable with each other. In effect, we say to each other, “Trust me, I’m a chum.” Of course, this may be a false bond, as when fans’ sentiments are directed from the grandstands in a positive way toward “their” team (until the team goofs up).

We touch upon the underbelly of sports, the hate pitched at Jackie because of the color of his skin. Jackie refers to the day when racial slurs flew around and Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ captain, walked over to place his hand on the black man’s shoulder. Pee Wee kind of sensed the sort of hopeless, dead feeling in me and came over and stood beside me for a while. He didn’t say a word, but he looked over at the chaps who were yelling at me through him and just stared. He was standing by me.” Then: no more insults. “I will never forget it.”

Our conversation rekindles feelings I had as a ten-year-old, when I’d hop over a barb-wire fence to watch a local team. (Got caught and thrown out once.) Now, I might scream at the TV when a team is on a winning or losing streak, but I’m not as passionate about watching. It’s not like it was back when -- when I was crashing a minor-league game, when Jackie was scoring all the way from first on a sacrifice fly.

“The tastes and flavors of your Little India are sensational, Perween Warsi tells me, getting into the car a little after the appointed time. “And your pushcart vendors -- their roasted corn is as good as anything you’ll find anywhere.”

It is not long before we two householders are discussing rising costs in the food chain. Perween precisely ticks off the causes, as if she'd been a delegate to this week's UN Food Summit in Rome. She particularly blames the rise on agricultural taxes and over-regulation of farms and organic growers.

Perween says she won her first big-store contract, to supply chilled and frozen dishes, through blind tasting. And through her persistence. Her company’s brand is confident: “Sensationally Better Eating.”

She tells me, moreover, that cooking is her hobby. She finds it therapeutic.

I know that Brits think of Perween as helping to create a new breed of Asian female entrepreneur. Sure enough, as we tool along the highway, I get that Perween sees herself as self-reliant. A true believer in economic freedom and open competition. She has the steel and drive to thrive in hercut-throat industry.

I brief Perween on tonight's other guests. Already she is in the know about Muhammad Yunis of Bangladesh -- Perween is from the nearby Indian state of Bihar. She and I hash out how Muhammad earned a doctorate at Vanderbilt, returned to Bangladesh to teach university economics, compiled a list of the 42 most impoverished women in the village beside his campus, and paid off their debts (which were crippling those villagers). The total payout to the money-lenders, from Muhammad’s own pocket, was $27. All that Muhammad asked of these often-illiterate peasants was to work hard and to repay when they could.

All in all, Perween seems thrilled at the prospect of soon meeting this great man. Along with partner organizations in Bangladesh and beyond, “He has helped make 4.7 million destitute families self-supporting,” Perween boasts. “His is not just a blown-up story that south Asians tell each other.”

When I identify our other guest, Perween Warsi appears, well, shocked: “A baseball player?!” She knows nothing about Jackie Robinson being historically the most significant player in baseball, ever. “He was the first African-American allowed to play in the major leagues. Baseball’s integration gave impetus to racial inclusion by other organizations.”

Some more background and Perween is no longer creeped out. She offers something of a long view about Jackie breaking the color barrier: “You can’t hold good people back forever.”

In-between my pointing out special buildings that we’re driving past, I give an account of Jackie’s early and later years with the Dodgers. Early on, as a rookie, he turned the other cheek to taunts from resentful teammates, opposing dugouts, and so-called ‘fans’ who sent him death threats. Later, as a well-established MVP, Jackie talked back to guys who hollered for him to carry their bags and polish their shoes. The forbearing Jackie is the guy many venerate. My husband is amused that less attention has been given to combative Jackie, the provoked one. The guy who could slide into second with his spikes high.

When we pull into our driveway, Jackie and Rick are there to open the car doors for us. No sign of Muhammad Yunus. Jackie gets a kick out of welcoming me to my own place.

Perween clutches Jackie’s hand and in a low voice, wishes she had been around to see his “controlled recklessness. Barb’s been telling me about your style of running bases. I heard that you’d drive competitors craaaazy. I love that.”

In a surprisingly high-pitched voice (which I had not expected), Jackie banters, “You got kind words, huh?”...

No way do I intend to reduce good-looking women to objects of sexual desire, but let me state that such women are a happy part of culture, as is the freedom to look at their goodness. When eyeballing such women for the first time, some chaps immediately check out their teeth or their legs or their breasts or their bums (if that isn't too 1940s a term). I focus on their faces. Just so you know, I go for quick eye contact, not possession. And when I'm around town with Barb, usually I restrain myself -- out of love for my wife, I forego out-and-out staring at every beautiful face.

So let me just say that Perween’s face has presence -- worldliness, supple smile, energy level, air of intelligence and interestingness, comfort in her skin, intensity in eyes. She looks great in a sari. South Asian women dress more colorfully than North American women. I ought to get Barb a sari.

Barb brings out the appetizers, crab Rangoon and oysters Rockefeller. Amid pauses, interrupted sentences, glances towards, and glances away, the conversation veers to national sports in Perween Warsi’s native land. When Perween remarks that India won a slew of Olympic Golds in international field hockey, Jackie Robinson slaps his palms together. His older brother Matthew had won a silver-medal at Berlin’s Olympics in ‘36, finishing 0.4 seconds behind Jesse Owens.

Jackie says his brother told him about the Olympic awesomeness there of Major Dhyan Chand, a.k.a. “The Wizard.” In the 1930s’ Games, Chand easily was the world’s most awesome center-forward in field hockey. Renowned for his brilliant stick-work and goal-scoring. Officials at the Amsterdam and Tokyo Olympics were suspicious: they confiscated and disassembled The Wizzard's stick, checking for magnets and special glue. Fruitlessly.

Jackie’s says that he’d heard that at the Berlin Olympics, Hitler was pissed that his “racially superior” home team was thrashed 8-1 by the team from India. Chand scored 6 of the goals. According to Perween, “Hitler relented. He offered Chand a Field Marshall’s rank in the Nazi army if he’d settle in Germany. “And Chand refused,” Jackie nods.

Perween announces that cooking was one of Chand’s favorite hobbies. For family and friends, the field-hockey legend would prepare fish, mutton, and halwa dripping with ghee (spelling?). “Chand had this habit of drinking milk while standing up. He thought that sent vitamins straight to his body system.”

Unlike Chand, cooking is not my thing. Now, however, when I come back to the group having popped two bottles of red wine into the fridge for the next 10 to 20 minutes, I inject a brag: the soup we’ll be having tonight is one I made. Tonight it’s potato soup with smoked salmon relish. I’d read that Bangladeshi, like our still-absent guest Muhammad Yunus, are partial to fish.

While driving here tonight, Perween Warsi and I had developed a certain camaraderie. Given that Rick and Jackie Robinson also seem to have developed that human connection, I grow emboldened. Current events are likely to crop up, and I hope we will not be reduced to talking pointlessly about vice-presidential possibilities in the States. Perween does not wish to talk about today's "horrible" stock market fall. She made that clear on our drive here.

“We’re all want to do racial and gender justice," I open. "But which animosity do you think has been more oppressive in the Democratic primaries? Racism or sexism? Both involve some fear of the other, the new.”

Right off, Rick attempts to add ageism to the mix of prejudices. He mentions jibes about John McCain’s 70 years. Rick wants people to recognize that septuagenarians like he and John can get out of bed in the morning, can get dressed, can have a life.

Jackie points to some anti-Muslimism in the presidential campaign too, even though no candidate is one. Religion, in the guise of Reverend Wright's televised sermons, may be reason enough for some whites not voting for his former parishioner Obama. Jackie also nudges us to consider the import of Obama's gender. "That may have been a sexist advantage for him. Likewise, it's possible Hillary’s race was an advantage for her."

Perween agrees, but first she wants to get some things off her chest about the England in which she settled 40 years ago. There were the ghettos, the inferior schools, and those “Go Home” messages aimed at non-whites. After 9/11, there was increased bias against “foreign” races and religions. Perween is concerned a pool of ethnic minority citizens does badly in the “marketplace as compared to mainstream society.”

Jackie asks her if Britain's prisons are as full of blacks as America's.

To myself, I think that being Britain’s first- or second- richest Asian woman must make Perween feel she is at home, as do those two Orders of the British Empire (MBE, CBE) that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, conferred on her before having lunch together. I sense that even although Perween may not have read Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational tract on feminism, she heartily sees herself as her husband’s equal.

At a soirée, spurs are not won by saying the obvious. Tonight the most obvious campaign point probably is Rick's, who helps move us back to American politics. That guy who held up that "Iron My Shirt" sign at a Clinton event "was a jerk." We are such pitiful conspiracy theorists, though, that we consider whether that guy was Clinton plant, provoking sympathy for a woman who was smart and competent.

Perween’s across-the-Atlantic impression is that putting aside paramount concerns like the war, racism trumped gender in America’s discrimination sweepstakes. She attributes that to 1) racial profiling, 2) police brutality against blacks, and 3) discomfort in certain quarters with presidential candidate Obama’s “blood lines,” affecting his ability to win over white voters. Granted, only Perween's last point bears directly on the just-concluded primaries, but a host can not very well police a guest who goes off-topic. And anyhow, who am I to delimit our topics? And with regard to blackitty black blacks, maybe profiling and police brutality do factor somehow into the political scene?

Dear Rick is still thinking baseball. He says America has come grandly far from the ‘50s when guys in the bleachers mocked Jackie by wearing mops on their heads. And when Jackie was at bat, members of the Phillies team tossed watermelons and black cats onto the field. Jackie’s view of that era’s national sport is rueful: “No black was given the chance to manage a ball club or to run its front office.”

Jackie says that, until recently, he had not given credence to a gender barrier for progressive leadership in the America. After all, his wife Rachel has been a working Director, not merely a symbol, for the Jackie Robinson Foundation. “Education is our pitch,” Jackie says of his Foundation that collects and gives money to needy members of minority groups. He is so proud, rightly proud, of that Foundation that I find myself almost hoping he will give us its web address and toll-free phone number.

Hillary's withdrawl is expected tomorrow and Jackie’s second thought is that sexism has been "the colder wind." He perceives a woman losing out to a black, his fellow-Americans having a problem with women as leaders of grit and iron. He did not care for the media featuring photos that showed her looking weak and vulnerable. She deserved a lot more respect.

Perween surprises with a Hollywood ‘take’ on the campaign. She suggests that Hillary C. -- with her mantra that she was a fighter to the end -- patterned herself on Million Dollar Baby. Specifically, she resembled the boxer that Hillary Swank played. The champ of the working-class, striving to make it in a man’s world.

Jackie is bothered that while other nations have had effective Prime Ministers who were female, 1) put-downs are common against a woman’s plausible campaign to succeed 43 white males in the American Presidency, 2) male supporters of the bi-racial Obama often are facilely portrayed as gender-neutral, while 3) women are damned if they vote for Hillary (“gender bias”) or damned if they back Obama (“no gender pride or solidarity”).

One of this blog’s first commenters, back last year, requested that we invite a poverty fighter. Acting on that suggestion, we invited Muhammad Yunus, but he has not yet presented himself. He could certainly add his two cents worth -- or his $27 worth on sexism or racism in a poverty context. Maybe that will come up later.

Before we move on, tired of this topic and of one movement overwhelming another, we reach something of a consensus: when race or gender cards are played, attention gets diverted from candidates’ skills, outlooks, dispositions, platforms, and track records. Well, if that is not much of a bright resolution, so be it.

Through all this, Rick and I cannot hide which candidate we are rooting for. We have come to identify with our candidate so much that we worry about certain friends of ours. How can Margo and Bob stay together when they are so split over which one to favor?

Back to you, Rick. I cut out for the kitchen, still in earshot at first. I overhear Perween pondering if “a female-led business has to be better than its male competitors to fare equally well in the marketplace.” Jackie speculates that testosterone levels increase as you progress up the business. Rick, in your next post, please jot down what else they say about this...

A week ago, after we nailed down a visit, Muhammad Yunus phoned back to ask if he could be helpful in facilitating tonight’s party. “Much obliged,” we’d said, “we’re taking care of it.” He asked for the name of the nearest hotel.

Now, he drives up in a haste on a foot-pedal bike from that hotel, leans that two-wheeler against our porch, and sweeps us away with his vitality. I suspect his force is internal, not because of any milk he drinks standing up. Muhammad bemoans his tardiness and wishes that Mapquest had a guide for bike routes. Its online (car) directions misled him.

Jackie Robinson is impressed the hotel rents bicycles. Muhammad explains that it tries to be eco-friendly for travelers. “I get to see more communities that way.” Muhammad’s not eco-preachy in making that point.

En route he was taken by the fair number of our locale's hardware stores. He passed a plumbing supply store that was holding a seminar on solar heating.

Perween Warsi says, "Coming here tonight, I saw a fair number of construction bins in driveways. I figure your neighbors are buying renovation goodies at those stores and fixing up their houses."

Jackie had noticed a home where half of a pile of logs was split and stacked for firewood.

I venture that after our hard winter, this year’s spring is exceptionally brilliant. This is the best time of the year to see our neighborhood in its green gladrags. Cool weather plus abundant rain have yielded rich colors. I allow as how our young neighbors think our foliage isn't all that special. Because Barb and I are the geezers on the street, these neighbors joke that our verdict stems from our advanced age, weak eyesight perhaps.

"After the rain, good weather/In the wink of an eye/The universe throws off/its muddy cloths." That's Perween. Reciting a poem Ho Chi Minh wrote while in prison.

We demand more. "...All the birds sing at once/Men and animals rise up reborn/What could be more natural?/After sorrow comes happiness."

A young neighbor from up the street ambles by with his 4 or 5-year-old daughter. They both wave.

Perween turns to Mohammad. “The whole world was very happy in 2006 to hear you’d won the Nobel Peace Prize. I even gloated.”

A quick intake of breath and Muhammad shares the moment when he and his fellow-citizens first heard. He was at home, in lungi (sp?), which I assume is informal clothing for Bangladeshi men. To acknowledge the thousands who had rushed to congratulate him, he came out of his house so fast that it was difficult to change clothes.

Jackie sees me drawing a blank. “‘Lungi’ means ‘loincloth,’” he says.

On prodding, Muhammad says he shared the Prize with the Grammen (village) Bank that he founded. It loans an applicant just a little money, about $200 US. In the under-developed world, that’s been enough to lift most applicants out of poverty.

Perween lauds her fellow-South Asian for giving his share of the $1.4 million for other anti-poverty measures including an eye bank, a health scheme, and a system for drinking water in rural Bangladesh. She’s especially delighted that he’s harnessed market forces in a start-up that’s developing low-cost, high-nutrition food. That initiative supplements his Bank’s selling of penny packets of different seeds. Grameen is the country’s largest supplier of seeds.

Barb fishes for more personal data: “Did your parents live to see your marvelous successes?” Most did.

That discussion reels in data about everyone’s childhoods. The grandson of a slave and a sharecropper’s son, Jackie was the most disadvantaged. Grew up with four siblings and a single Mother who worked 12-hour days as a domestic. Jackie did odd jobs, joined a gang, and (as he admits) stole food from grocery stores.

When she was living in Bihar state, Perween was part of a cohesive, well-off family with an amply stocked kitchen. She doesn’t say if she was high-caste.

From his tiny ornaments shop, Muhammad’s Father struggled to send nine children to higher education. Mohammad’s memory of his Mother, before her mental illness, was of her reciting stories and poems. He doesn't remember any by Ho Chi Minh.

All three guests seem at home answering questions about their other selves. Muhammad has a daughter who is a Bangladeshi-Russian soprano, working in New York. Perween is a doctor’s wife in an arranged marriage. Jackie’s son, Jackie Jr. was wounded in Vietnam, got hooked on drugs there, beat back the addiction, and died young in a car crash.

Our guests gesticulate a lot. About the only time this threesome slows their hands is when hoisting glasses of iced tea. In time, Jackie says he is not a snob about drinking or eating. He will devour anything people put in front of him.

As if we were a focus group for her company, Perween prompts us to swap notions of foods that are seriously under-rated. Some of our visitors’ nominees are almonds, guava juice, and red kidney beans. Then they go back and forth on their guilty food pleasures, including guacamole, cheese, chips, cookies, and chicken tikka.

They must really be hungry. Worse, none of their preferences are on tonight’s menu.

I ask everyone to follow me into the dining area, and they do. I put finishing touches on a grain salad that is a medley of organic quinoa, barley and wild rice tossed with toasted pine nuts. I had already prepared its topping, a briny relish of olives, capers, and peppers.

Now I pan-sear the whitefish to be served over pearl couscous and garlicky Swiss chard. I want to counter the bland taste that fish can have. Celia next door says that one should eat the bottom of the seafood chain. For the sake of our health and the oceans’ health, I hope whitefish is better than predators like tuna and seabass.

I try to pour good will into every pot. But as a cook, am I trying too hard?

Rick says to the group that marrying me is the best thing he ever did. I have no idea of why he says that to them now...

Barb opens the dining room’s windows to spring. Muhammad Yunus pulls out a chair for Perween Warsi to sit in. She appears to enjoy his gallantry, disagreeing with Hillary supporters who, at the end of one of their candidate debates, turned on Obama. Allegedly he was sexist in pulling back her chair.

We are not done yet with the campaign. Jackie Robinson alludes to comments Hillary received for a debate blouse that showed a little cleavage. Barb points out that the comments came from male pundits who were thinking sex. Jackie recalls Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the Grand Canyon. When his translator asked the Soviet boss what that Canyon made him think of, Nikita replied, “It makes me think of sex. Everything makes me think of sex.” Muhammad laughs at that more than Perween.

Somewhere, somehow along the way -- okay, I eventually bring it up -- we value Sardar Patel, the Iron Man of India. When Jackie was debuting with the Dodgers and when the British were preparing to relinquish control over the subcontinent, Patel was the statesman charged with forging a united India.

I bend our guests’ ears about Sardar. He’s a hero of mine. Hero? I just mean he was important. At my age, it’s easier to pick the easy words rather than the right ones.

In 1947, some 565 princely states had the option of merging with Pakistan, or becoming independent, or joining up with India. More to Jackie than anyone else, I say, “By combining persuasion, bribes, threat, and force, Sardar convinced the maharajas and maharani that their independence would be imprudent, especially in the face of opposition from their subects. Sardar’s as central to India's founding as Ghandi and Nehru. Wish I could have been his aide or something.”

“I’ve understand your fascination,” Muhammad Yunus declares. “That was before my time, but I know about Sardar. He organized relief for refugees. He was an early proponent of free enterprise in Asia. And I agree, Rick. For India, Sardar avoided fragmentation and a weak central government.”

Perween cites a downside to strong central government, the autocratic Prime Ministership of Nehru’s daughter, Indira Ghandi. “Bihar was a center of resistance to Indira, to her authoritarianism, and to her gross interventions in a free society.”

In a drawer. god knows where, Barb and I have a long, narrow wall-hanging that’s from Bihar. We could have/should have hung it up for tonight.

As Barb takes something out of the oven, she reveals that I was so impressed by Sardar’s diplomacy that I even wanted to name our first-born son after him. I’d imagined our lad someday explaining with pride the doings of his predecessor. Our Mike was born decades ago, back when Barb was more traditional, and she resisted the exotic South Asian name. Now, however, after hearing guest endorsements of the Iron Man’s successes, Barb emits a hint of regret she’d said no. “Almost, kinda sorta sorry” are her words.

Jackie: “You brought me back from the dead. So invite your Sardar to next month’s dinner.”

Fork in hand for salad, Perween advises us to instead invite Dr. Rajendra Prasad, an independence activist, chair of the Constitution’s drafting group, 1st President of India. And like herself, a Bihari.

“How many blacks have you invited to supper here, Rick?” We are not jolted by Jackie Robinson’s equal-opportunity challenge. As the son of a sportswriter, Rick knew Jackie used to chide journalists in the ‘60s with ”How many blacks on your sports staff? I thought so.”

Rick has no rhetorical acrobatics to spin. Blacks have been under-represented at our table.

“Jackie,” my hubby mumbles, finishing a chew, “give me a break. I was there with you on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Actually Rick did not see Jackie there in August ‘63, but we know the guy was there, a friendly face in the friendly crowd.

“That morning," Rick resumes," I remember Nancy Dickerson on the morning news."

Perween Warsi and Muhammad Yunus do not seem to recognize the name, and so I put in a good word for her: "Nancy broke a glass ceiling as CBS-TV's first Washington reporter. She was a Washington Insider."

"Anyway," Rick takes back the floor, "Nancy discouraged viewers from walking anywhere near the route from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. Trouble was expected. A quarter million people and I went anyhow. We passed thickets of FBI agents snapping our pictures.

“I hung out there for five or six hours, listening to singers like Mihalia Jackson, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Speakers like Walter Reuther, Ralph Abernathy, and Charleton Heston, who I mis-remembered for years as Burt Lancaster. Plus James Farmer, John Lewis, and other chaps pushing for meaningful civil rights legislation.” Just to pronounce these names brings gravitas to tonight’s party.

“I’d forgotten to wear a hat, and after five hours standing mostly in the sun, around 3:15, I went back to where I was staying. On the evening’s news, I learned about the final speech, the ‘I have a Dream’ one. Greatest speech of my lifetime. Hearing Martin Luther King unfiltered would have been worth a sunburn.”

Jackie is okay with my ramble. He adds that he supported King’s non-violent strategy for achieving equity, just as he respected the mobilizing talents of the ‘60s other charismatic leader of American Negroes, Malcolm X. “When I disagreed with Malcolm’s strategy of hating whites and wresting freedom by any means necessary, black militants labeled me an ‘Uncle Tom.’” Well, I saw through their tactic -- it was a case of 'If you can't play the hockey puck, play the man. If you can't win on the merits of your argument, discredit the person you're arguing with.'..."

Perween Warsi likes my cooking. She goes back to the buffet for seconds.

Yesterday our neighbor was telling me that it takes guts to prepare food for a woman who owns a posh restaurant in London. And who has an international, experiment-minded team of chefs whose meal packages are distributed to hotels, delis, caterers, airlines, pubs, and major supermarkets. Her company tests 7,000 new food products a year, launching the 300 best. As I heard driving in with her earlier tonight about the fare in the England of 1986, Perween recoiled from store-bought samosas filled with ”mangy bits of potato and carrot.” It was bland, boring, inauthentic. “Somebody needed to take responsibility for bringing tasty and wholesome Indian food to people. So why not me?”

Tonight I try to be on a different playing field than Perween. No dal, curry, pakora, chapatti, khorma, or chicken tikka.

Jackie Robinson digs into the salad and probes Muhammad Yunus about "life before Nobel-ization." Muhammad recalls spending seven years in the US universities, first as a Fulbright student, then as an assistant prof. Meanwhile, half-way around the world, West Pakistan occupied East Pakistan’s capital, not far from Muhammad’s family home. The Pakistanis’ killings, rapes, and looting were absolutely ghastly. In the States, Muhammad organized other Bangladeshi expats for the Bangladesh Information Center.

All that I add to this conversation about that War of Liberation is what I retrieve from Salmon Rushdie’s clever novel Midnight’s Children. Our book-club read it. The narrator’s doings mirror India’s agonies, some of the grimmest parts centered on the civil war between Pakistan West and Pakistan East (Bangladesh). My South Asian companions tonight fill me in on selected details of that agony, including India’s intervention on the side of the rebels. As I observe in reply to Perween, it was a slog to read Rushdie’s 500-page satire and to abide his elitist stance. Rushdie’s novel has its funny parts and, as I emphasize, it stirs a desire to visit India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh...

Muhammad Yunus has been quizzing Jackie Robinson over whether baseball is truly the superior sport that philosopher John Rawls proclaimed. "There's the beautiful symmetry of the diamond that footall and tennis lack." And Jackie Robinson has been quizzing Muhammad Yunus on extending credit to those who have nothing.

“Banks gave me an extremely negative response,” says the banker to the poor. Money men had mindsets that the risks of not being repaid were too high. However, I thought that making micro-credit loans could be a viable business model,” Muhammad is pleased to explain. “Once I offered myself as the guarantor, banks did loan me some cash…

"Ultimately I negotiated with the government to become a full-fledged bank, eligible for loans from government and other banks…Leftists thought we were exploiting the poor. Conservative clergy told women that if they borrowed money from us, they’d be denied burial.”

Perween Warsi says she understands something about the difficulty of prying loose funds for business. In the ‘90s, she had to fight to regain control of her business after a buy-out had fallen into receivership. Her anxieties weren’t over. In 2003, her cash flow tumbled from the loss of an account with Safeway Groceries. She had to lay-off 400 loyal workers.

That vignette is the basis for the economics professor and the company owner putting their heads together now. I largely tune out, but I do hear something about supply creating its own demand. And scrappy words like “investment,” “expansion”, “re-hires,” “putting debt behind S & A,” and “returns to profitability.” Perween utters that last phrase triumphantly.

Conversation partners shift. Rick ask Perween Warsi about the 20 awards that her foods have won. My ear grows larger for the side talk Jackie Robinson is having with Muhammad Yunus. The American presses for additional details on Grameen’s financing.

“We do get it back,” Muhammad insists. “All told, 99 percent of Grameen’s borrowers have repaid their debt, and the bank makes a modest profit. What we have are ‘solidarity groups,’ informal teams who apply for loans together, act as co-guarantors, and encourage one another to advance economically. Nowadays, 70 percent of the money for business and housing comes from the borrowers themselves: people save their money in Grameen, and they borrow it from there.

”I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we want to [within two generations]…In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the Poverty Museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhumane condition…”

Jackie resonates to Muhammad’s idea that credit enables a poor person ”to unwrap that gift of one’s self and find out who he is.” The Baseball Hall of Famer reflects, “Have to say that your approach for wealth creation sounds better than mine. After I retired, I started the Freedom National Bank in Harlem. You know, maybe Grameen also beats my company that built houses for low-income families...”

Over desert (fresh strawberries with port wine sabayon, a recipe from Barb’s Aunt Elsy), I proclaim, “I’ve called us all together to say how great we all are.”

Back at committee meetings that I used to have to attend years ago, that was a ‘laugh line’ I’d deploy. I’d make that crack that after some of us colleagues had over-waited for our convener to appear. From tonight’s colleagues, though, silence.

I get serious: “Barb and I are pleased to spend time with you tonight. Everybody has potential, yet you three exemplify folk who’ve profoundly taken advantage of yours. I’m not asking you to boast, but I'd appreciate if each of you could give us how you pulled it off. How you actualized yourselves.”

“This sounds like something out of a bad short story,” Jackie Robinson says.

From the others, nothing. Is that Strike 1?

I hadn't said anything about a story. I was simply inviting some 'handles' from guests who have 'made it.' To my brand-new chum, I muster, “A bad story? Jackie, how so?”

“Simple. You and Barb have brought together three very different people, from assorted cultures. Food’s good, we have our moments, and nobody’s stepping on anybody’s toes. For a good short story, though, Rick, what you need is a fight, a contest, a car chase, or something adversarial. That’s not going to happen here. We're too polite. Besides, you’re asking us to toot our own horns, which grounded people don’t need to do. Don’t like to do.”

Sometimes you don’t fight. You try harder. I reply, “You know how a parent always worries about his kids and grandkids, wants them to have the best guidance. Right along with Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son and grandson, giving counsel is a thing that elders feel they ought to do. Up to now, a lot of what I’ve told my family are tired old bromides, like ‘Aim high.’ ‘Save money.’ ‘Find a work/life balance.’ 'Overcome your flaws.' 'Discover your inner self.' 'Serve others.' ‘Dress conservatively so folk will be fooled into thinking your progressive ideas are conservative too.’”

Muhammad's interest had been egging me on in this litany, but he cocks a critical eyebrow at my last prescription.

"Anyway, chaps, I'm not asking for anything as ambitious or arty as a narrative about yourself. No big deal like that. I'm just soliciting a couple quick truths on how you composed your lives. How your careers are happy expression of yourselves... Is that too vague?"

Again, blank faces. Game practically over?

As Rick pours another red wine for Jackie Robinson, I wade in: “Our kids ignore advice. They are plugged into their own worlds. Nonetheless every now and then –- I admit, it is rare these days -- but they almost seek tips from people like us who have life-journeyed further. On many complexities, they are better informed that Rick and I are, but they also seem to almost want something pithy to ponder. Perspective. We do not want to put you on the spot for a long Perspective, a short one to chew on is fine. Our daughter-in-law likes “Food is Love.” Our son Michael likes 'The mark of truly smart persons is to know where they're stupid.'"

Perween Warsi, who evidently has been mulling, says, “Poor Lord Chesterfield. You know, his son didn’t follow through on his father’s many suggestions.”

That I did not know. "There is another thing you should know," I come clean. People our age like to sum-up, pontificate, pass on wisdom to the young. It is not too early for even you to come aboard the advice train."

It is a wistful grimace Perween wears, saying "Life isn't easy, so why should advice be easy?"

Agreement of sorts comes from Jackie: "Advice doesn't always help. Some element makes it pertinent for some and not for others."

“As I learned from my Mother,” Muhammad Yunus shifts in his chair, “with stories, you enter artificial worlds. Those worlds include accurate slices of reality.”

He has not given up on his theme. I thought we had shelved the story-telling notion. It is late in the evening, but Muhammad is glooming onto whole stories. Rick and I were looking for distilled wisdom, just that. Sound-bites, not paragraphs.

Why at this moment does it suddenly occur to Rick that he/we totally forgot to serve his potato/salmon soup? He was riffing about Sardar when the time was apt. Seeing the empty bowls still stacked on our buffet table, Rick offers to fetch the soup from the stovetop...

“OK, OK, all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” Jackie Robinson there.

Before it fully dawns on me that the recalcitrant Jackie is offering a credo of his, I blurt out, “Respect, that’s why we ask you guys for recommendations. It is too late to help Rick and me, but our offspring are still finding their ways.”

“Respect [for others] costs nothing, but gains a lot.” I suspect that’s Perween Warsi’s own epigram, not Lord C’s. “It's common sense,” our business-lady elaborates. "Before setting a direction, I treat everybody’s idea as if it might be a good one... Barb, tell me this. Is there some special idea you've shared with those offspring?"

"Well, when they were trying to find themselves, I'd say 'You have to persevere -- and what keeps you going in a job is the joy you find in it.' Trite, I know."

So, brief dicta are being unleashed, along with caveats about their conventionality.

Muhammad Yunus, however, hankers for stories that are longer, more complex, more contextual than the one-liners we have been getting. “Behind every bad story," he quotes or misquotes somebody for his own one-liner now, "is a good one hankering to get out."

I guess that pitch of his must be a winner, for Jackie starts reminiscing. Story-telling is not exactly what Rick and I had anticipated. It is better.

“Like you, Barb, Rachel and I have a second son, David. It had to make a great impression that we were for civil rights in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He took on our issues, so he protested racism and Vietnam too. Now David’s got a thick beard and wears a dashiki. I suppose you could say he’s developing his land’s potentials. Only thing, that land is 10,000 miles away in rural Tanzania, a place he visited as a teen-ager. When the time was right, members of one tribe there scouted-out prospects for his marriage. David and his wife have given me seven grandchildren.”

Rick and I envy those with seven grandchildren, always.

“He runs a coffee business there,” Jackie goes on. “It sells to the US. David says he’s building synergies and melding black aspirations from both sides of the Atlantic. He has a direct relationship with American roasters and importers, and doesn’t have to go through middle men who grab most of the profits…Odd, David’s in the coffee trade. You know, after I retired from the Dodgers, I was too. Coffee grows under the shade of a tree, and David’s growth was helped by the protection that Rachel and I provided.”

Foodie exec to foodie exec, Perween cottons to Jackie having been a vice-president for community relations with Chock Full of Nuts. He’s a bit like her husband Talib who quit the medical profession to administer her company’s marketing.

Perween gets into it: “My two son are finding their way. As it is for those who have become accustomed to wealth, the road ahead for them may be difficult. Frugality can be evasive. Parents have to work hard to instill a sense of reality. But let me flip your question to inspiration, if not advice, from my parents. Father had an eye for high quality standards -- he was a civil engineer -- and quality is all-important to me. My Mother & Grandmother taught me Indian cooking, and that’s where I started.”

Everyone sits forward as Muhammad Yunus posits, “I would recommend that your kids distance themselves from what they learned in formal education.”

At the risk of sounding rude, I react, “You cannot possibly believe that.”

But he does. “This grows out of my experience shortly after I returned home to the famine of 1974. We tried to ignore it. But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the capital, Dhaka. Soon the trickle became a flood. Hungry people everywhere. Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead…Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make-believe stories in the name of Economics? I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person’s experience.”

Our Laureate couples his story with a piece of hard-earned advice. His warning: "It’s very difficult when you have learned something a certain way. Not only your mind absorbs it; your eyes also are trained to see in a certain way because eyes are only as good as you’ve been trained to see…”

More wine, more reflection from Perween Warsi: “Our experiences differ, Muhammad. From my family’s kitchen in Bihar, I already had a vision of what South Asian food should be like.”

“I had no vision,” Muhammad reveals. “All I felt, if you would like to call it a kind of drive, was can I make myself useful to another person, a person who was in terrible difficulty…I didn’t have a plan…I had only immediate things today, only today, not tomorrow…Wherever I went to school, [academics] taught me [macro considerations] about…billions of dollars in national plans and [over-arching and long-range] investment plans and so on…That is what I [had] learned in school…trying to acquire a kind of a bird’s eye view. You drive hard and see everything…

“Then I realized in my work…that when you fly high, you really don’t see things very clearly. You make it up because it’s such a blurred reality. You make up stories and piece them together and then you lose touch of the reality because you fly too high…You tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worm’s eye view, you don’t have that advantage of looking at everything. You just see whatever is close to you. Then I began to see that the worm’s eye view was logical, it was reasonable, and it was important -- that small problems must be solved because people’s lives depended on all these tiny things. I was not trying to solve everything.”

Jackie Robinson, now sipping coffee (not Chock Full): “Sounds like you were ashamed of sticking so long with your bird’s eye view.”

Muhammad puts a napkin down and looks around the room.
“Very much true. I was very frustrated that my background didn’t help me. All those days that I spent very hard to learn things. Some things could be useful, but if it was not useful it became a handicap. I couldn't see clearly because my mind was leading me toward a different kind of vision of what reality is...”

What Muhammad Yunus says about ignoring micro realities rings true for Folklore and me.

The perspective in my academic discipline gradually shifted across the last 40 years, towards understanding individual identity via close ethnographic data. I failed to ride the expanding concepts of ‘tradition’ and ‘folk.’ I stuck to texts and archives. I clung to macro generalizations as well as comparisons about groups. I should have attempted some reconciliation between my bird’s eye and others’ worm’s eye. What I did probably wasn’t useless, but it wasn’t pioneering either.

I excuse myself and head for the toilet. Not to cry or slash wrists, but to answer a call of nature.

As I shut the door and before I proactively turn on the fan, Jackie Robinson is talking about Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?, a song once high on Billboard R & B chart. After singing only a phrase of it, Jackie stops and says "I don't have much musicianship to begin with." Perween Warsi shouts, “Stay with it, Jackie, stay with it.”

When I come out of the toilet, folk have moved to the living room. As far as I can figure, they are discussing the apt disposal of excreta. Proper disposal, it appears, can reduce diarrhea by 40 percent. Hand-washing helps further.

Frankly, I’m surprised the conversation has taken this turn. Not that the sanitizing of excrement is unmentionable in polite circles, it’s just that the subject is unexpected.

A little sheepish, I sit down beside Jackie Robinson. “Hey guys, look, I washed my hands.” I’m not sure Perween Warsi is responding to me when she says, “You need to be positive, especially when things go wrong.” I haven’t the foggiest how or if that maxim ties into what they’ve been saying.

Muhammad Yunus continues holding forth: “A latrine is a kind of rare commodity in the villages. It’s not available, so people go out in the open. Right from the beginning, we introduced one practice... If you are becoming a Grameen Bank member, one of the first things you do as a show of your good faith in Grameen Bank, is to dig a hole. And from now on, you’ll use the hole as your latrine.

“In the beginning, there was a lot of opposition to it. People would complain, ‘It smells. Why should we do it in one place when we can do it everywhere?’ We explained the risk of doing it everywhere, how that spreads diseases, and so on…But we promoted that this was the way you joined Grameen Bank…

“A few years later, I was visiting a village…a woman rushed at me and hugged me, and saying something…I couldn’t understand… In Bangladesh, a woman hugging a man in front of everybody is quite a scene. So I was feeling embarrassed… but she wouldn’t let me go. She’s still saying something in the local dialect that I can’t understand. [Then a local colleague interpreted the woman’s words:] ‘You are a great savior. You saved women from the punishment of Hell.’

“I said, ‘What does it mean? How did I save women from the punishment of Hell?’ [The interpreter] explained, ‘Because of those latrines that we built, because you insisted on it…Look, men can do it anytime they want, day and night, but women had to wait until the darkness of night. No mater what problem she has, she couldn’t do it anywhere because women are not allowed to do it. Now she can do it anytime she wants.’”

“I looked at her, and it really gave me something to think about. I said, ‘We argued about the latrines and so on the health grounds. We never even realized what a difference it makes, what kind of impact it makes on women in a society that restricts them from coming out of the house, and what a punishment it is for that person.”

My wife looks like she too wants to hug Muhammad. In front of everybody.

A ladybug crawls across the floor. Barb scoops it up and takes it outside.

I feel back into the conversation, and digress aloud with a years-ago tale our kids tell about how, once when driving them to a game somewhere, Barb saw an old turtle starting to cross a certain road at Okeson's Place. Barb got out of our car, blocking traffic both ways, and carried this member of a turtle family to the other side. When she rejoined the kids in the car, she had scratches on one hand. Barb never mentioned that to me, I never noticed any scratches or heard about any infections, and the story may only be apocryphal.

Lately, at Okeson's Place, I have noticed a new sign installed by the Highway Department: an icon of a turtle followed by 'Xing.'

Prior to Muhammad Yunus wheeling into our yard, Rick and I blogged only some of the interaction between Perween Warsi and Jackie Robinson. Friendly as age peers, our early arrivals had spent time bs'ing about this and that. On the basis of their rapport, you might guess they would be the dominant dyad within our guest triad.

Not so. All night, latecomer Muhammad has been right in there in, chattery with both. Dinner parties can include those whom nobody want to speak with, but not here, not tonight. No imbalance mars our guests’ speaking order or talking time. No peer conflicts arise over preceding moves of the others. No guest spends time looking at titles on our bookshelf to mask feelings of being left-out of the flow.

Then later, at one point, there's Jackie Robinson saying to Muhammad Yunus, "How many Nobels do you Third World economists have?”

“Some.”

“I thought so. The reformer of property rights?”

“Yeah. Hernado de Soto. I don’t think he’s been to Oslo, but he’s earned plenty of other Prizes.”

“Made a difference in Peru?”

“Oh yes. Cut governmental red tape and gave titles to something like 1.2 million families. He operates out of an Institute there.”

“From my son the coffee grower, I know de Soto designed a similar program. For poverty-reduction in Tanzania.”

“Yes. Elsewhere too.”

“Surely the protection of assets is an obvious need for the dynamic of capitalism,” interjects Perween Warsi.

“Righto. For trust, what’s needed is a formal property system.”

“Such as?” Again from Jackie. These exchanges are starting to resemble a ping-pong match.

“Where individual ownership and transactions are recorded clearly. Deeds can be used for collateral. More loans [can be] made available for new developments.”

“Frankly, I'm not sure that de Soto does it for me.”

Property rights as a wedge issue tonight? Surely not.

“Yes, he's had a hard sell, Jackie. Leftists claim his approach benefits well-to-do squatters at the expense of poorer ones. Conservatives claim some individuals don’t want to change their tradition of communal ownership. Critics fume that he claims a firming-up of property rights will eradicate poverty. That’s throwing too sharp an elbow at him. Hernando argues that other reforms are essential too.”

“Maybe he over-sells his idea?” Perween asks. Is she also suggesting Muhammad is overselling his major idea?

Muhammad’s face contorts to override her reservation. “Over-sell? Not at all. His idea certainly is not a brand. Oh, Hernando may have an occasionally jaunty self-regard, I don’t know. But my view is that he demonstrates the confidence to share his innovative ideas as actionable…” Now, Muhammad conciliates, “Rather like you did, Perween, with your company.”

Jackie attacks us with statistics -- like there are 1.2 billion people now in abject poverty. Like 50,000 people die everyday from poverty-related causes. I have difficulty wrapping my mind around those numbers. With her eyes, Barb communicates to me her equal inability to make sense of those stats too.

Preoccupied as we already are, Jackie wants us to get cracking to reduce those numbers soon. “If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.”

We five do not want to wimp out. After a while, we even agree -- and this is astounding -- to meet again for actionable ideas, next week, here. Far out!

Yet like Muhammad says, as anti-poverty guys, “Each of us is improveable.”

__________

Muhammad + Jackie + Perween. That's a combination that looked good ‘on paper.’ True, I had doubts this past week whether they would translate into an ensemble. Now, as they get ready to leave -- they are thanking us and we are thanking them -- the optimist in me believes that, more often than not, they coalesced.

If the world has under-achieved in reducing global poverty, advocacies of folk like Hernando and Muhammad point to plausible ways. Perween and Jackie are idealists for humanity too, but they also strike me as pragmatic folk. The type who could help people help themselves.

We are about to drive Muhammad Yunus back to his home away from home. Rick is fitting the hotel’s bike into our trunk.

Climbing into the front seat, Perween Warsi is purring thanks for the forthcoming ride back to town. She is reminded of rides home she used to give her female workers after night shifts.

Rick's hand is on Jackie Robinson's shoulder, “So when’s the last time you posthumously had a role in somebody’s short story?” Jackie is chuckling.

Then he is gone. Once again, Jackie has stolen home.


_______________

Because next month's First Friday falls on the US Independence Day, we defer our next party to Friday, August 1.

In the meantime, accounts of past parties can be found at our Archives.

November, 2007 with basketball's Michael Jordan, history's Margaret MacMillan, and idlers' Tom Hodgkinson;

December with www's Tim Berners-Lee, transistors' Jack Kilby, and TV's Lisa Kudrow;

January, 2008 with China's President Hu Jintao, painting's Lucian Freud, and biology's Elizabeth Lloyd;

February with Joan of Arc, Rev. Billy Graham, and Live Aid & Live 8's Bob Geldof;

March with Hollywood's James Dean, racing's Danica Patrick, and bowling & Microsoft's Chris Peters.

Other greats, our grandkids, were visiting us on April's First Friday, so no celebrity came knocking.

May with three music-makers: country singer Kenny Chesney, composer Anna Amalia, and classic baritone Dieter Fischer-Diskau.