My friends told me I ought to write my autobiography, orat the least my memoirs. My autobiography! The idea mademe smile. Who would read it even if I made the blunder ofwriting it? No one would learn from it; I have no profoundinsights into truth to narrate. I haven’t embraced violence ofany kind. Forget the nation at large—I haven’t done anythingworthwhile for my neighborhood.I troubled my teachers, getting into fisticuffs with my palsand exchanging a note or two—but so what? I stumbledupon writing poetry and stayed loyal to it all my life. Doesthat account for anything meaningful? Is there any point inmy recalling it, sitting in Shantiniketan, my home in Florida?I wrote the first chapter in the same manner that I writemy poems, and then it went on; so on and so forth. Eventua-lly, this book took shape. There are no sermons, false bravadoor pretense here. I wrote events as they occurred to me. Mylife and poems have walked hand-in-hand, and it has beenbumpy, hence the title, “The Camel Ride.”