From July 1970 to October 1972 I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in India. It was the best adventure of my lifetime (so far).

How good was it?

When I got back to the U.S., people would say to me, "It was great of you to make that sacrifice."

"I didn't make a sacrifice," I'd say bluntly. "You made the sacrifice because you didn't go."

I loved almost every second of my two-plus years in India. As it happens, however, my primary memory of the word jasoose comes from a few seconds when I wasn't having all that much fun. I was in Bhatinda, a big railroad city near where I lived.

This was in Punjab, which is a state in the northern part of India. It's basically a large desert made fruitful with irrigation waters from underground and from the Himalayas, which are to the east. Next door to the west is Pakistan.

Bhatinda was dominated by a large fort. On my first trips to the city the fort was abandoned. You could go inside, climb the walls, look out over the city, and take pictures to your heart's content. The fort was older than anything in my own country, yet seemed to be nothing special to anyone but me in my new one.

In 1971 India and Pakistan were at each other's throats over East Pakistan, which, with a little help from India, became the independent country of Bangladesh that year. War eventually broke out.

One day before the war, I was in Bhatinda with my camera, but the fort had been taken over by the Indian Army and was no longer abandoned or open. Tensions were high - the U.S. was rumored to be "tilting" toward Pakistan.

A pack of children started following me, chanting, "Jasoose! Jasoose!" over and over. I don't remember how I finally escaped them, but I suspect it had something to do with a favorite haunt called the Rosella Bar.

In the sense the kids were using, jasoose means spy. I don't remember much of the Punjabi I learned anymore, but I vividly remember jasoose.