Each group travelled to different parts of India but invariably went to Delhi. They met Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru at Teen Murti Bhawan and it was touching for me to see that the photographs with Nehru are carried with pride and nostalgic emotion to this day. They were awed and charmed by Nehru's graciousness and were awed though not charmed by [India's defence minister during the Chinese aggression in 1962] Krishna Menon!
They were inspired by their encounter with [former Indian President] S Radhakrishnan and then went on see the realities of India in Calcutta or Patna or Madras.
The recollections about this brief encounter with India in their youth which they shared at Carmel with each other and with me were touching. For many of them, it was a 'life changing experience' in the words of a Senior Congressman from California. He says that he had gone to India with Democratic leanings but his experience of the shackles that India had put on entrepreneurship turned him into a Republican!
A common recollection was of the fortitude of simple people; despite the lack of 'goodies, the constant smile', as someone put it. Their own irritations and troubles
ranging from the trivial like coping with mosquito nets and primitive toilets in villages to the more serious like catching malaria were remembered with equanimity and humour with the advantage of this distance in time.
Image: Jawaharlal Nehru and Harry Truman in Washington DC, October 1949.
Photograph: STAFF/AFP/Getty Images
Also see: America, India and their role in global security
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