RUSSIAN ROULETTE IN SAIGON
I have a memory of ambience. And while this memory is officially called Ho Chi Min City, most Vietnamese still call it Saigon.

At night Saigon is the kind of city that makes you think too much because it is so quiet. Being there gives you that inexplicable feeling one gets from meeting a young widow wearing black. The same kind of feeling I got that night.

The lights were gone and we were united in somberness and sweat when he came to pick us up. His name was Ha and the most striking feature his face lay claim to were his teeth, which were as utterly brown as an Indian's in Bradford. Ha played a mean Dan Tranh, a zither with sixteen strings that, depending on his mood, could sound as Indian as it sounded Chinese. But today Ha was just our guide and taking us to witness the most illegal of sports - russian roulette.

We were rushed out in trishaws, three-wheeled hand driven rickshaws that populate the city streets. My trishaw took more twists and turns then an extramarital affair until I simply gave up trying to remember the way. We got off in an alley and Ha knocked rapidly on a door that opened an inch. He spoke a few words in French and we were inside. I stopped, stunned. It was a large hall with wooden bleachers on the sides so that it seemed like a mini stadium. In the center was a table with three chairs; one for the bookie and two for the contestants. The contestants could agree to play for one two or three turns. The higher the turns the more the odds. Should they both not make it, the bookie kept the proceeds. I had serious reservations before coming here, but the rest of the audience was almost drowning in the atmosphere. Around me were at least a hundred screaming men all standing and yelling out their bets as the bookie's assistant went around with a hat shouting the odds and collecting the betting chits. The light came from four huge lamps hung low from the ceiling that peeked at me through tobacco smoke. I can still remember the taste of that room. There has never been anything like it since.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE IN KARACHI VIA LAHORE
It's not so easy being young and male anymore. It must have been simpler before. You never know when it will hit you but when it hits you, you know. In a crowded get-together with friends. Typing at the keyboard one afternoon. Driving back from your first job. At her place. It can be as mesmerising and as unnoticeable as the incoming tide or it can hit you quickly, efficiently, coldly, right in the chest and leave you gasping. We have no name for it - us guys. It's just there. And it takes its worst form early morning at three or four. When you wake up just barely, and the darkness wormholes into itself and all the minor terrors that you have swept under the carpets are magnified a million fold. And your numb mind can only register panic at the thought of losing everything you hold dear. Some of us deny we go through it. Some of us live with it like an unpleasant roommate we got stuck with in college. Some of us marry. And some just give in. It's the biggest untold male secret because the rest of humanity - the sleeveless sex - just wouldn't understand. Every generation has a passport to its own loneliness. This no name feeling is ours.

It's not all bad of course. The highs are alone worth the trip. The arrogance of intelligence. The invulnerability of youth. The ability to be reckless with another's heart. The age old cliched yet widely applicable kick of defying seemingly abject authority. I can still remember the strike I led in College. I was high for days. And when you're young, there are long warm May afternoons when the fan turns lazily and you're drowsy and just lie in bed for hours and the little sounds are amplified as they ring and echo in your ears and time stands still as Lahore glows golden through the windows.

I can still remember how professionally and quickly the table was wiped as I saw two people die that humid night in Saigon. Youth will go like that. Quickly, violently, feeding the lust and frenzy of the envious to be always replaced by more willing youth pouring hopefully through the cracks only to be cut down again and again. I don't know what is sadder. The fact that all we hold so important now won't matter a damn. Or that there will be no more long warm May afternoons…