I am beginning, with this article a series of articles about my years in India, in the early 1970’s. It’s being written by popular demand of my daughter Lori, who unfortunately was not there with me at the time. I don’t know how many articles will be required to cover India, nor do I have any idea how long it will take me to get through it all to my satisfaction. I regret that digital photographic technology had not yet then become available. Alas, I was not sufficiently organized to preserve the photos I took with a film camera. So a very important dimension of the story is missing. I shall try as best I can to create with words, the sights, sounds and yes, the smells of my Indian experience.

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Prologue

At the time we moved to New Delhi, we had been living in SE Asia for 10 years. Someday, I may try to cover that period in separate writings. Initially I was in Vietnam in 1962 as a 30 year-old Army officer volunteer assigned to the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Saigon. In 1964 I resigned my regular Army commission and transferred to the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. I had married a Vietnamese woman in Saigon, and we had a boy in 1965. I was in the Mekong delta of south Vietnam during the war and we were living in Bac Lieu at the time of his birth. The road to Saigon was very rough, and also very dangerous from snipers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) And there were VC road blocks and kidnappings. So I chartered a light aircraft to take her safely to Saigon to have the baby.

After more than 5 years in Vietnam, I was assigned to Thailand where I built low volume roads in NE and North Thailand. The Royal Thai Government was experiencing an insurgency problem there. So when I got sniped at a couple of times in Srisaket province, it made me feel at home.

I was comfortably living in Bangkok when I received orders to New Delhi, India. I had mixed feelings about leaving SE Asia, where I had lived for the past ten years. I knew something was up when I was invited to New Delhi for a short visit to be interviewed for the job – it was a brief introduction to the Indian subcontinent. I had always told my wife that “I would never want to work in India.” So it was ironic that my career led me there, almost as if to prove to me how wrong I was about India. Still, the culture shock was significant for us. We were SE Asians, and had been uprooted.

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Assignment to India

After a 2-hour flight from Bangkok, we worked our way up the aisle of the aircraft to deplane at Palam airport in New Delhi. It was mid afternoon in June. The rainy monsoon had not yet begun, though I was not conscious of that. I was leading Mike Jr. by the hand, and as we stepped out of the aircraft onto the platform on the top of the stairs, we were blasted by a wave of very hot air. For an instant I thought that it was the heat was from the engines – but I quickly realized that it was just the hot dry monsoon of northern India. We wasted no time in getting into the bus for the ride to the terminal.

I won’t try to describe the period of our adjustment to north India. In our ignorance, we chose to make the move at the absolute worst time of the year. I have memories of the dust storms and blasting heat. Of deserted streets in the city, with the inhabitants seeking any kind of shady spot. The unremitting, scorching heat of the sun. The throbbing labor of the air conditioners, in their futile effort to cool us. The fish market, which I shall not even try to describe. The swarm of flies over everything in the food markets, where there was very little to buy beyond egg plants, okra, tomatoes, it being too hot to grow anything else. Being submerged in India is the best way to describe what had happened to us. And it was hot..hot..hot!

There was nothing familiar for us to eat, even in restaurants. Chinese food? Vietnamese or Thai food? Forget it. You couldn’t even buy a cold beer – or a warm one. If you knew the system, you could order ‘special tea’ which was warm beer served in a tea pot, served with tea cups. It was illegal to kill beef, so if you wanted red meat, you had to settle for goat, or young water buffalo. Fortunately I love spicy hot food, and quickly took to the local cuisine, but it was a struggle to get the Indian cooks to leave the chili in the curry. They stubbornly assumed that we, as foreigners, could not eat chilies.

Goat meat is excellent prepared by the Punjabis, who marinate it in spicy yogurt, and broil it over a fire, or roast it in a tandoor oven. Water buffalo tenderloin is virtually indistinguishable from the equivalent cut of beef; as long as you don’t tell your American guests what it is, they will never guess it is not beef.

Little by little, we adjusted. All of us. But it was not easy, and we often wished that we were somewhere else. What helped immensely was the presence of families assigned to the Vietnamese and Cambodian legations in New Delhi. They were small embassies, but the people there were very friendly to us. My wife quickly made friends with them, and things began to get better. The ladies of those embassies showed her where to buy things important to us, and helped my wife learn to cook the dishes that we all loved, but could not get in New Delhi restaurants. What a relief it was to get some familiar food on the table!

Looking back, after living abroad in 7 countries of the developing world over a period of 25 years, India was the only place where I experienced culture shock. It was also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Had I not been taken away to serve in the Middle East, I probably would have remained in India.

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