Even this short trip to the hospital teems, as India does, with infinite beauty, poverty, and sheer multiplicity. Heavily bearded Muslim men snap pictures of Clinton on their cell phones, as does a lavishly made-up boy wearing a sari. In an alley of furniture stores, the showpiece on offer is an upholstered love seat suspended from golden chains, a kitsch version of the swing in Mogul paintings. At the hospital, bright banners welcome Clinton and Sonia Gandhi, chair of the Congress Party, though not herself in office; the French foreign minister, Douste-Blazy; and the Indian health minister, Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss. At the entrance, rice and dried roses are scattered in auspicious pyramidal patterns. Inside the auditorium, I talk to some of the young doctors—a German and two Indian-Americans—working in India on a six-month fellowship program sponsored by the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS division. It occurs to me that these bright, empathetic young people with their glowing skin, sparkling eyes, and disciplined knowledge are one model of the world as Clinton would have it. Their health and training are the privilege of prosperity; Clinton, through them and their counterparts, is succeeding in turning the prosperous to the service of the poor.

Onstage, Dr. Ramadoss presents Gandhi, then teases a blushing Clinton, so known for his love of Indian food that one famous New Delhi restaurant offers a "Bill Clinton kebab." When the president rises to speak, he jokes that he and Gandhi, an autumnal beauty wearing a green silk sari and a formal blue business-suit jacket, know what it is to be both in and out of office. "We like in better," Clinton says, with a nostalgia that can't be concealed. During the speechmaking, his manner is impeccable: He simultaneously pays attention and deftly keeps his face camera ready, disguising his exaggerated Dick Tracy sweep of jaw. He has mastered his face as if it were a craft. Later, during a group photo, he will pose for individual pictures with a chain of people; each gets a perfect expression, as if he is minting coins with his face. Gandhi, whose manner is elegant but shy, greets the group with a namaste and attempts to slip away. "Sonia," Clinton calls out to the most powerful politician in India, "please come over here and be a part of this." She joins him a little sheepishly, like a child who was hoping to be excused from the dinner table.

Anticlimactically, I spend the bulk of the evening in a parking lot, although I had expected to be in South India already, our departure point for the next day's trip to the southeastern Coromandel Coast, where the tsunami struck hard. Clinton has decided to make an impromptu visit to King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan, who are on a state visit to India, so word comes that we won't fly as scheduled. Lights go on inside the waiting vans as card games are struck up. But when we learn that the president is ready, the pavement fills with running men and the fleet scrambles at crisis speed, in patterns known only to the security detail. It is a ghostly sensation, when we leave, to race through the night on an open road to Indira Gandhi International Airport—past hundreds of people in the dark, their own lives temporarily suspended, cars and pedestrians cordoned off by police vehicles, lights flashing, as the motorcade passes. A drive that took me an hour or so in a taxi when I arrived is accomplished with surreal speed through the emptied streets in twenty minutes or so.