When I was a boy of 11 I watched two snakes making love. I didn't know what it was at the time. In Bangladesh, people's first response is to find the snake and kill it. But here were two snakes becoming one. They made an eerie sound, almost beyond the limit of human hearing. A circle of people formed around, bewitched and intoxicated. There was no noise, just a solemn serenity. I carry the memory. I still have not written about it but knowing it is in me is part of my joy. It remains in my psyche, waiting. It's an image with the caption "to be written".

I am sure every human being is capable of achieving a happy life, so long as we change ourselves inside and so long as we make a point not to take anything for granted. A person is not a business, a company, a brick. We have 11 physiological systems inside us. We take it all for granted. In theory my heart could stop. I might not be able to breathe. But this doesn't happen. The systems work.

I find joy in my children. My own father died when I was 15. I was shattered, blown away. I became a stone. One should cry to resolve a death, but I couldn't cry for 25 years. I didn't write a word about my father. There are so many different ways to deal with pain, and after 25 years I wrote about the way we buried my father. When I wrote that poem I cried as if I was standing at his grave, watching the coffin go in. His death was resolved. It was quite a long poem.