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The Flight From Rome to New Delhi—In the fall of 1957, my aunt came to visit for a few days on her way to India. I had just turned 5, and was too young to understand that she was leaving on a two-year work contract. She had traveled extensively in the United States, but I think it was probably her first opportunity to see Europe. She gave herself enough time to visit a couple of cities—Paris, Geneva, Rome. She left us with a wonderful written account of her flight from Rome to Delhi.
Touring Poonamalee and a Wedding—My Aunt Dorothy arrived in Delhi just after Thanksgiving in 1957. By Christmas she had made her way to Madras, where she initially was housed in the Oceanic Hotel, just a few blocks from the beach. The details of her work assignment remained to be identified, but she wasted no time in orienting herself to the community, and meeting with various doctors and health officials charged with improving health care, both in the city of Madras, as well as in many rural villages nearby. Dorothy was fascinated by the Indian culture, and took a natural interest in the people living all around her. She readily made friends with her neighbors, and wrote extensively about differences and similarities she found between Indian customs and life as she knew it in the United States.
Markets and Manservants—For almost a year after I graduated high school, I had the pleasure of living with my Aunt Dorothy. One of the most enriching aspects of sharing her home was the opportunity this provided me for observing her at work in the kitchen. My aunt knew how to shop for quality foods in any market, and she really knew her way around the kitchen. She saw good cooking as a way of bringing friends into her home, and she made the task of staging a dinner party look easy. When I first read her India Journal, I began to see that her “culinary chops” were already firmly in place at least a decade before I lived with her. In 1958, not long after arriving in Madras, she described her marketing routine in a letter to her friend Jeanette.
First Train Trip in India—My Aunt Dorothy probably booked more air travel miles than anyone else in my family, but her stay in India included several train excursions. Even when she arrived there in 1957, train travel in India—particularly for women—was already getting bad press, and many people considered it rather dangerous. My aunt was determined that during her sojourn there, she wanted to eat, and live, and travel as those around her did, and she consistently rejected offers to make her experience more comfortable—more Western. But having read about others who ran into trouble on the Indian Railways system, even she had some apprehensions about her first train trip.
A Guru Before She Leaves India—My Aunt Dorothy embraced the Indian culture, and after a few months, she had grown accustomed to the fact that Indians do not have our sense of time, and almost never rush. In a letter home she wrote, “In this society there is no such thing as responsibility for work and production if it is time to say a prayer or make a sacrifice for some dear long departed.” In October of 1958, Dorothy traveled by train to Mysore for the 10-day celebration of the Hindu festival of Dasara. During her stay there, she attended a durbar to honor the Maharaja of Mysore—a ceremony she described as something out of a fairy tale. Her train trip back to Madras provided her the opportunity to demonstrate patience in dealing with hotel staff and railway clerks who, according to one of her traveling companions, “couldn’t care less.”