Not long after Ann and Maya left. Obama heard from Alexandra McNear the former Oxy classmate who had enchanted him when she was editing the literary magazine Feast. Alex had always fond of Barry. As she called him and thought he was interesting in a very particular way. He really worked hi way through an idea or question turned it over looked at it from all sides and then he came to a precise and elegant conclusion she was also physically attracted  to him  and thought he had a good sense of humor Alex was an New York that summer after her junior year. Taking a course at New York university and working at a book packaging company in lower Manhattan all she had to do was call obama was interested. Her mother’s apartment at 21 East 90^th street and Madison Avenue was an easy walk from the walk up he shared with Siddiqi. They met at an Italian restaurant on Lexington Avenue as she recalled the night, we sat and talked and ate and drank wine. Or at least think drank wine I think he drank something stronger it was one of those dark old Italian restaurant that do not exit in New York any more. It was the kind of place where they leave you alone. I remember thinking how happy I felt just talking to him, that I could talk to him for hours. We walked slowly to back to my apartment on 90^th and said goodbye. After that we started pending much more time together often spending the night first it was at it apartment when her mother left for Nantucket for the summer they were more often at her place. For near two months until it was time to her return to Occidental they were lovers in Manhattan Alex remembered that as a summer of walking through the city visiting art museums and talking about life she recalled intense one conversation in particular as they stood outside the metropolitan museum of art he was the concept choice she said did he have real choice in his life did he have free will how much were his choice circumscribed by his background his childhood his socioeconomic situation the color of his skin the expectations that other had of him how did choice influence his present and future. Later referring back to that discussion he told Alex that he used the word choice as a convenient shorthand for the way my past but the past of my ancestors the planet the universe he felt pressure to go with the flow the said later was I going to give in to what I felt was the gravitational pull of graduate school getting a degree in international relations and working in the state department in the foreign service or working for an international foundation that me given my background then there were the expectations of his mother and grandmother the two most influential people in his life he thought they would love for him to follow up Columbia with law school and a law practice and culminate his career with a seat on the bench is that what at wanted did he have other choice he said was a deliberate efforts on my part to press the pause button and try to orient myself and sky okay which way where am I going. The Pakistani friends: during his Columbia day he discussed his struggle for identity not only with Alex but with a few friend from the Pakistan crowed one of the acquaintances in that group was Mir Mahboob Mahmmood known to his friend to nickname mahmmod had attended Karachi grammar school with siddiqi and hamid studies political theory at princeton under Sheldon and was now new york law firm and attending Columbia law school an intellectual with a black belt in karate he enjoyed political theory and literature with obama in a way that siddiqi could not among this set of Pakistanis he had the closet tie to his country ruling class what one friend call a privy council feel that would have impressed obama they were never the closet of friends not like obama and Chandoo yet their conversations seemed to bring out obama’s innermost though and hopes. Thinking about their new york day together mahmood remembered how for a period of two or three months when obama was living at 94^th and first with siddiqi obama carried and at every opportunity read and a fraying copy of Ralph Ellison invisible man it was a period during which barrack was struggling deeply within himself to attain his own racial identity and invisible man became prism for his self reflection there was a riff in that book that mahmood thought struck close to the bone with obama the narrator an intelligent black man whose skills were invisible to white society wrote America is woven of many strands I would recognize tem and let it so remain. Its winner take nothing that it is the great truth of our country or of any country life is to be lived not controlled and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defect. His friend barrack mahmood thought took very very seriously the lifelong challenge of continuing to play in face certain defeat. According to mahmood young barrack also took seriously the channeling of grand ambitions he mostly kept this sid of himself hidden but revealed it occasionally to the Pakistan wahid hamid saw it at occidental and mahmood saw it in new york by his account they had known each other only a few months when obama posed this question to him do you think I will be president of the united states.What did this mean I think it was a very serious question and clearly at least in my mind this was where he was headed mahmood recalled his answer then if America is ready for a black president you can make it. His perfect ideal woman: obama was six months out of Columbia when Genevieve cook came along engaged him in the deepest romantic relationship of hid young life there had been other girlfriend before her but none quite like Genevieve she called him BAH-rruck with a trill of the r’s. at least talking to her he was living on the upper side west than and working in Midtown in a job that paid the rent bud did not inspire him. He was still in a cocoon phase preparing for his large cause wondering about his place keeping mostly to himself but were warm and generous and buoyant intellectual company always willing to debate philosophy and the political issue of the day she was three year older than he born in 1958 she kept a journal as he did thought of herself as an observer he did had an energetic independent and at times exasperating mother and burned with an ideal to right the wrongs of the world as he did. She was studying for her master degree at bank street with the frame of mind that she would save every black and Hispanic child in new york city a few weeks in to journey 1984 they were selling each other regularly on Thursday nights ans weekends. They did talk about race quite often as part of this inner need to find a sense of belonging if she felt like an outsider she was a double outsider racial and cross cultural he looked black but was he at times he confessed to her that he felt like an imposter because he was so white there was hardly a black bone in his body at some point that summer she realized that in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white it became very very be clear to me that he needed to go black I told him that I think he felt very encouraged by my absolute conviction that his future lay down the road with the black woman he doubted there were any back woman he would feel truly comfortable with I would tell him no she is out there. Early in barrack relationship with Genevieve he had told her about his adolescent images of the perfect ideal women and how he had searched for her at the expense of hooking up with available girls who was this ideal woman in her journals and it was someone other than herself.First I can not help thinking that what he would really want be powerfully drawn to was a woman very strong very upright a fighter a laugher well experienced a black woman I keep seeing her as. Then thing is I can imagine the kind of woman barrack could really get involved fall in love she looks like that woman I saw running the park light skinned black woman close cut hair strong small body very pretty and would be challenging and vivacious in company possibly artistic not quite the future would reveal but close. In early December after one year at exactly as he had planned he walked into lou crli’s office again this time for an exit interview the boss and wondered about mostly because they were opposite types according to some of the employees and he preferred people as energized as he was to him. Obama seemed to be laid back not engaged he liked extroverts that were go getters that were hustles that got really excited about their jobs. That obama was difficult to the contrary hr struck Celi as remarkably even keeled with an inner peace and confidence very at ease in his own kin some employees would get upright  some would cry some would angry some would nerves but obama was always cool and that is how he appeared now in celi office for the last time explaining why had decide to leave. Celi found their conversation confusing at first. He expected that obama would tell him that he was leaving for another job. And there would be offer an and a counter but instead obama told him calmly that he other no job lined up he just said he wanted to do something else he just seemed not exactly clear of what he wanted to do. I told him he might be making a mistake leaving a job when he did not have any plans except a vague notion that he maybe would do some public sector work in my view that was typical barrack he was like a rolling stone… he had a lot of conditions to just think he could move on and thing would work out he always lokked sure of himself and he always had the same look there was not great emotion I could see in his expression it was kind of matter of fact. A product of randomness: when obama returned to Chicago from his African he brought for gifts Loretta Margaret Deacon Dan and Johnnie and also for Adam , Jerry’s son and henry , Mike’s son the woman of developing communities organized a party for him at Chuck Cavallini in suburan he seemed to relax a life leaving and being left had come full circle in Chicago he had found the place to which he could always return. The old blue Honda Civic was gone he had sold it before departing for Europe and Africa now he had another car he used yellow Datsun that cost five hundred dollars a hole would grow in the floorboard but the engine was good enough to get him where he had to go. No life could have been more the products of randomness than his. From the heritage of Hussein and Ruth Armour the young suicide victim from a chance meeting for a student in Russian class in Honolulu from a childhood in distant Indonesia from the rootless feelings of a double outsider as biracial and cross cultural kid, and after nine years starting for the moment for the reached occidental and the mainland of intense introspection trying to figure out things to make sense of the life from all that he found not only a home but a path and was driving hard now toward Harvard law a stop on the way to his family’s unimaginable destination his own doradoBarack Obama : the making of the man’s published by Atlantic and exclusively represented in India by Penguin books India Rs 899. Available in Bookstore from 1 June.