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sitting in Rajiv’s sunlit living room, just a stone’s throw from Solana Beach, when my father asked me how my research was going. When was I going to start collecting data? I told him that I didn’t know.
    â€œBut you’ve been setting up your experiment for over a year,” my father said, leaning forward on the black leather couch, the breast pockets of his short-sleeved cotton shirt thick with pens. Even though he had never really supported my decision to go to graduate school, now that I was there he wanted to see me finish up and get on with my life. “You have to learn to focus. I have done a Ph.D. so I know—”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œYou can’t stay in graduate school forever. You have to look for a job, start a family—”
    â€œOkay!” I shouted. I got up and went to the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face and coughed into a towel. Then I went back to the living room, where my parents were sitting quietly. My father was leafing through papers in his ever-present briefcase, which was resting on his lap. I sat down on the love seat. “I’m thinking about applying to medical school,” I announced.
    My mother, dressed in a conventional flower-patterned sari, looked at me quizzically. She turned to my father, who was expressionless. “You can’t go to medical school now,” she declared.
    â€œWhy not?” I replied. I had it all figured out. Over the next two years I could finish up my thesis and take the prerequisites. By the time I matriculated, I would be only twenty-six.
    â€œAnd then four years of medical school, then three years of residency, maybe even a fellowship. Look at your brother. Do you think you can work like him?” Judging from her tone, she did not.
    â€œIt’s only a few years,” I snapped. Unlike in India, life in America wasn’t set in stone once you turned twenty-one.
    â€œI always wanted you to be a doctor,” my mother said. “Remember? It was always my dream that both my sons become doctors. But that time has passed.”
    Her last remark was particularly cutting. It saddened me to think about how many years and how many opportunities had slipped away. My father appeared deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” I demanded.
    After a long pause, he said: “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream. Who knows if you will even like medicine?”
    That night, we went to the Old Town district to have dinner with my brother and some of his colleagues from the hospital. We sat outside on a cobblestone square illuminated by gaslights, drinking margaritas out of salt-crusted martini glasses while a mariachi band serenaded my father with “Happy Birthday.” At one point Rajiv’s beeper went off. He stood up and went off to answer the page. My father and mother beamed proudly.
    They had always favored my brother, their firstborn, and Rajiv demanded it, too. He knew the privileges of being the eldest son in a traditional Indian family and guarded them closely, like a trust fund. Watching him that night, I thought of all those times I had pitied him studying organic chemistry or preparing for the MCAT while I read novels or blasted Rush records on our turntable.
Why do you begrudge him his happiness?
I asked myself.
He earned it.
I remembered the summer I visited him in Chicago. He was a third-year medical student and would usually leave the apartment for the hospital before six in the morning. I’d sleep till noon, get up, eat lunch, read the newspaper, do some sightseeing if it wasn’t too hot, and usually end up roaming through bookstores in Hyde Park. Rajiv would trudge in at 6:00 or 6:30 p.m., always looking a mess but claiming he felt great. Now where was he, and where was I?
    His colleagues asked me about my research, but I couldn’t bring myself to say much about it. Now that I had lost my enthusiasm, I couldn’t imagine