The Big Trip-part 1v

In Bangalore we met Bill Rutter again. That man really travels. Bangalore looks like a highway town in Mid-west U.S.

And we tempted fate the next day - Friday, the 13th - and took a Deccan Airways plane (they are notorious for their accidents) and flew to Hyderabad. We had to go back through Hyderabad to ge where we were going, which was Aurangabad.

These were some of the people at the airport to watch the plane take off. And these are more Hyderabad pictures. We were just there for the afternoon, but we had to go to the fort again so that Alan could see it, since he wasn’t with us for the first time.

This is me (with borrowed sunglasses)

and my two travelling companions, Mannie and Alan, with straw hats purchased in Ceylon.

And here is your truly and Alan Campbell, cameras in hand - still at Golconda Fort;

and another view of the main hill.

Dan Bailey was in Bombay when we arrived in Hyderabad the second time, but we called USIS Library there and commandeered a car. We could find no place to eat lunch except the railway restaurant which wasn’t doing much business. They had nothing edible so we bought canned soup, pork and beans, salmon and fruit and had them open the cans and serve it to us. It was almost our best meal on the trip.

We went down in the shopping district near the railway station to look for pillows, as we were going to take an overnight train ride again to Aurangabad and didn’t relish another night with only a sheet for comfort. While we were at it I bought a colorful cotton padded “mattress” for a few ruppees and we climbed aboard the train with a bundle of pillows, etc.

I had a little experience that night on the train that cured me in advance of any inclination I might ever have to travel alone on Indian trains. The sleeping cars will bed four, usually. Alan, Mannie and I had to share ours with another person, and this time he was an Indian Army fellow with a rifle in hand. Alan had a little tiff with him when we first got on the car. Other passengers rode in our car until bed-time at 10:00. When we got on the Army fellow had his bed roll all spread out on one lower bunk and the two boys sat down on his bedroll and rifle.

“Why don’t you put your rifle up on the top bunk?” asked Alan. “Oh, it’s all right here,” he replies casually. Alan croaked, “Well I don’t want to sit on a rifle! and the guy put it under the bunk.

All went well, and we finally were able to go to bed. There is a little three square feet bathroom where one can dress. I decided to sleep in the bunk above the Sgt. (We called him Sgt. York.) so that I could see the two boys across from me and he couldn’t see me from below. The top bunks are bolted to the walls with about a two inch space between them and the walls.

About 4:00 in the morning something woke me up. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see a thing. Just being awake in the dark of a speeding train was a little frightening, and I felt very much alone, knowing the two boys were sound asleep. Then I thought I felt something prodding the bottom of my bunk. “It’s just my imagination, “ I thought and lay there waiting to see if I was right. Again I felt it, but still waited. Then my head on the pillow lifted right off the bunk and I surreptitiously moved down so that my friend, Sgt. York, below me could not reach the pillow through the crack at the top of the bunk. And then he reached through the crack at the side and very stealthily began pulling my sheet down. I don’t know whether he knew I was awake. I somehow didn’t want him to know he had me frightened. I pulled the sheet in around me and went through minutes more of the insistent prodding. And then he got the edge of the sheet again and I let him pull until it was taut over my body and when he gave a last tug, I suppose to free the other side I had pinned under me, I could stand it no longer and I sat up and yelled for Alan. He woke immediately and said, “What’s the matter? Are we there,” “No. But I want you to turn on the light.” So he struggled out of his top bunk and couldn’t find the light. So he opened the bathroom door where the light was on. He thought I had a bug in my bed and I quietly told him in a slightly shaking voice that Sgt. York had been bothering me. The Sgt. was lying there stiff and straight with a towel covering his head and with the light on and Alan back up in his bunk where he could keep an eye on him - nothing happened. We arrived in Hyderabad about 5:00 and detrained. The boys still thought it must have been my imagination until I told them the whole story.

I’ll always wonder just what the point of such carrying on was. I suppose he figured that this American woman who was travelling around with two guys on Indian second class cars could be nothing but a loose woman. Could be it was his way of saying, “Come on down.” I kept thinking of his rifle…and you hear lots of wild gory tales about things that happen on trains, etc., and Indian people say women should never, never travel alone.

A car was there to meet us from the Hotel where we had made reservations. We thought that was really wonderful, especially since we hadn’t told them how we were arriving, or hadn’t asked them to meet us. It is so nice to be taken care of and not have to worry over luggage and fight with coolies and taxi drivers.

The hotel there is one of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s projects and it is a lovely building. The grass and trees and everything that once was green is now all dried up. The woman who runs the place said that this is the first time that has happened in the 12 years she has been there. The whole area is parched.

We were about the only guests. Aurangabad is way out in the middle of nowhere. The only things of interest are the caves nearby; they are world famous and many people from around the world fly over from Bombay to see them. We hired a taxi for Rs. 22/- to see the Ellora Caves that day. It was very hot and our driver smelled heavily of musty rose hair oil. The landscape was parched and barren. We passed one hill with a fort built on top - Duladabad.

The caves are fabulous. You aren’t supposed to take pictures, but Mannie sneaked in a few. They are carved out of solid rock - 30 or 40 different caves, some Buddhist, others Brahminical or Jain. The most spectacular work is the Kailasa temple, which is carved inside a huge cave, open to the sky. I can just imagine the ancients sitting down on their haunches up there on solid ground with a hammer and chisel, starting to chip away at the rock. Most of the caves are dug in from the wall face of the hill, but this one was dug down from the top. You can see from these two pictures that even the façade of the caves is highly ornate. The immensity and splendor of the Kailasa temple cave is out of the reaches of my powers of description. Around the bottom of the temple, itself, is a whole panorama of huge animals.

A lot of work had been broken away over the centuries and some carvings are rather obscure from erosion. At one time water must have gotten into the cave and you can see where the water line has eaten away almost whole pillars. The carving work was done about the time of Christ.

Nehru once said that if he came to India just once and was allowed to see two things, he would choose the Taj Mahal and the Ellora caves.

Mannie Silberstein

Alan Campbell

On the way back from the caves we stopped to see Aurangzeb’s tomb, patterned after the Taj Mahal. Although it looks somewhat like the Taj Mahal at Agra, when you have seen the real McCoy, this one looks shoddy. It is much smaller and altogether inferior. We called it “the poor man’s Taj Mahal.”

And then we stopped at a “water mill” -a big tank full of water with some interesting gardens and buildings around it. This is a picture of Alan sitting on the edge of the tank reading “Murray’s Guide Book to India, Pakistan and Ceylon.” We took the book with us on the whole trip and every time we would come to a new area we would read all about it in the guide book.

The always present vendors and beggars were at the gate. And there are always people loafing around, sitting in the shade. It seems that all over India most of the people seem to be sitting around on their haunches talking or staring into space. Nobody looks as though they are in a hurry or seems to be engaged in making a living, except for the merchants.

Here are the vendors ….

and the loafer.

Here is an incident we have dubbed “the pice incident”. These little kids were gathered around us and, as we were leaving they all stuck out their grubby little hands for Baksheesh. the little boy third from the right was so cute - he reminded me of Billie. So I decided to clean out the small coins in my purse and give them to the kids. I gave them each a few annas and gave some pice (three to an anna) to the littler ones. They looked abashed and held out their hands as much as if to say, “We don’t want these. We want annas.” So I took them back and left them nothing. Aesop would make a fable with a moral out of this, I’m sure.

We got back to the hotel for lunch and slept all afternoon. The next day was Sunday and we had to face a much longer trip to see the Ajanta Caves. I refused to go with the same smelly driver, so we hired a newer looking car with a driver who smelled only slightly better. This one cost Rs. 75/-.

After a long tortuous ride, we arrived at the caves, which looked from a distance much like the others. There are not so many carvings in the Ajunta Caves, but the walls are covered with ancient painted frescoes. They are disappointing, after having seen Ellora. The frescoes were so peeling and in such bad condition, and the caves were so poorly lit that you really couldn’t see much. We mostly went into dark, cool caves that were half finished and took naps; and then moved on out into the scorching heat and into another cave for a cool nap.

It turned out that our newer car was in bad condition and it stopped several times on the trip back to the Hotel, overheated. We stopped at a guest house for lunch in the town of Ajanta. The colorful Banjari women were in town for their weekly bargaining wearing their crude jewelry on arms, ears, nose and forehead.

At one place where the car stalled, I decided to walk up the road until they got it fixed and caught up with me. I walked and walked and walked until I almost got sun-stroke, and then over in a field I saw a couple of little kids watching some water buffalos. They were passing out water to the people who trudged by om their way back to their villages from the city of Ajunta, where they had gone for marketing. The little girl was about eight - an animated, winsome little thing who hopped to and fro shooing the goat away from their little pile of belongings and dipping water from the earthen jug for the weary travelers, who gave her a few pice in return for the water.

The little boy was a few years older. He mostly sat with a tick in his hand, alternately watching me and the buffalos. The girl jibbered and jabbered at me in an unknown language. I only understood the word ‘pani’ (water). She didn’t understand my not wanting water. I just sat at the foot of a tree in the shade and talked to her in English and she talked back at me in her language and we smiled at each other. I hadn’t taken anything with me except my camera, so I couldn’t give her any money…..and I didn’t even think to take a picture!

After a while a woman came walking over the field from the rise of a hill with a giant oil can full of water on her head. She was the mother of the children. I guess she carried the water from a river down below the hill. She asked about me, and the little girl looked like she was telling her, “I don’t know who she is. She just came walking down the road from that direction and came and sat down and she doesn’t want any water.”

The woman motioned to me, asking if I wanted to lie down. I said, “No thanks, I’m quite happy here.” She understood, I guess, and they went on about their business - opening a little can full of milky looking glop, like curds, and untying a rag full of chappatis (round flat bread cakes). They sat down there on the furrows of the field to eat.

These are some of the Bangari women we saw along the road and in the colorful little town of Ajunta. Most of them have long sticks going up from the backs of their heads. They are well bedecked with silver jewelry.

We frightened them whenever we stopped the car to take their pictures and they hesitated and talked excitedly amongst themselves, and then took courage and came running by the car, giggling and jangling. Very colorful people, and how I wish I had had colored film at the time.

When we got to the town of Ajunta the driver stopped again to fix the car, and immediately we had the usual crowds of children around us. Here are some of them staring into the car windows.

So we decided to get out and roam about the streets taking pictures of people. In the first picture the man in the middle with the white beard and funny turban stopped and spoke to us in English. He wondered if we would like some water or soda. We said, “No thanks,” took his picture and went on. We had to keep moving because whenever we would stop crowds would gather in front of the camera hoping to get their picture taken, and then we couldn’t get them in their natural poses. Mannie managed to get several pictures, though.

Later on we came across the old man with the white beard sitting in a little wooden card with a jar full of hard candies between his legs. Almost every child in the village was gathered around him. I took a picture of that scene, I’m sure but I must have had colored slide film in my camera at the time.

These are fragments of pictures that were badly damaged in the “drain”. One is a picture of Mannie hot on the heels of a herd of donkeys for a picture. I got a shot as he approached, and he just couldn’t seem to get past them to get the picture he wanted, so he finally took them from the rear. He thought it would look like an old bible scene. The town did look very ancient and primitive in this particular section.

Our driver finally got the car going, but not before he had sprung the trunk door and the children had messed up the sides with their dirty hands. We spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping and sunbathing at the hotel, and the next day flew to Bombay on the bumpiest airplane ride I’ve ever had the misfortune to take. Mannie and I were both very sick all the way and Alan was dangerously close. We were the only passengers, and the crew kept coming back to see how we were getting along and apologizing for the rough ride, which was due to the heat.

Back in Bombay we reveled in all the modern conveniences. We went to plush theaters, ate sundaes, rode in elevators. Alan and I took a walk that evening and ran into two people we knew from Delhi. We stayed at the Airlines Hotel. American Express arranged for a motor launch ride to an island to see the Elephanta Caves. A Dutch girl on vacation from Saudi Arabia where she worked in the oil fields went with us to share expenses. They also supplied us with a guide who assumed that we were all total idiots and told us everything we already knew in an officious tone of voice, and he was generally a nuisance. He knew all the latest American slang expressions and used them until we were so sick of him that it became very funny. He seemed to be one of those Indians who try to pretend that they are above it all - referring to “those Indians” and acting as “western” as he could.

The outstanding feature of the caves was the image of a three-faced Shiva, which is the manifestations of the powers of Shiva, the Creator, the Preserver, the Destroyer. It was about 15 ft. high and an extremely fine piece of work.

This hard working young girl posed for us on the island. She was bringing this huge basket of stuff, which looked like kindling, down the hill on her head.

Back in Bombay we taxied around the city, first to the hanging gardens of Malabar Hill. This is a view from the park to the harbor, or bay. Across the bay is a circle of big apartment houses on the shore drive.

Below are two views of the “Gateway of India”, first from the boat as we came back to Bombay from our trip to the Island of Elephanta, and then from the other side. It is right across the street from the Taj Mahal Hotel.

On our drive through the city we passed the notorious “Towers of Silence” where the Parsee population (originally from Persia) bring their dead. It actually consists of three tall towers, one for men, one for women, and one for little children. The bodies are laid on racks at the top of the towers and the vultures come and eat them. The bones bleach in the sun and eventually fall down through the racks to the pit inside the towers. Nobody is allowed to see them now, and only special attendants ever get near the towers. See Mannie’s account.

We spent the afternoon swimming at a sea water swimming pool which is for Europeans only - called Breach Kandy, having tea on the grassy terraces.

In the evening we went to another show in an open victoria, horse-drawn. It was March 18, Alan’s birthday. We had Chinese food for dinner & walked slowly to the Taj Mahal Hotel. We were all leery of air planes by then and had Alka-Seltzer before our dinner.

We had a two hour wait at the airport before Alan’s plane to Calcutta took off. A group of Parsees came in and Alan remarked about one haggard looking girl, “She’s for the birds,” which set us off laughing again. As soon as Mannie and I were settled on our plane to Delhi, Mannie stretched out and his trouser leg ripped from above the pocket to past the knee. It seemed a fitting and funny end to our trip. The flight was smooth and we slept all the way, from 1:00 to 6:00 a.m.

We were back in New Delhi, ready to go back to the diplomatic windmill, very much in need of a restful vacation.

I hope whomever might read this account will have enjoyed it. I loved the whole trip and this record helps keep it fresh in my mind.

Dorothy Pettijohn

The Big Trip-part 111

At the cape we swam in the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean all at once. Alan and I swam out to an outlying rock through some choppy dangerous looking water and posed for the shot which is enlarged. In these pictures you see some pillars of the 16 pillar pavilion there. Quite a crowd of people soon gathered to watch us.

Note in No. 3 the woman without a blouse. One breast bare is the style in south India. Some of them do wear blouses, and usually the young gals the guys would rather see without them.

We stayed there until after dark so we could see the famous sunset, then drove home through a pouring rain.

At 6:00 the next morning, still the five of us, caught a bus by the hotel which took us to Quilon. But first we had another international incident when a young chap who was standing around when the bus pulled up for us took it upon himself to hoist our luggage to the top of the bus and then demand three ruppees, which is outrageous. We had already paid our coolies to carry our bags out from the hotel and across the street. This kid wasn’t even a licensed coolie and we hadn’t asked him to do it. We were all on the bus ready to go and Alan offered him 8 annas, which he refused in a loud voice. A quarrel ensued and the kid grabbed Alan’s bag back off the bus; Alan became enraged and stumbled off the bus and grabbed his bag back and gave the kid a shove, and the kid put up his dukes and received another shove from Alan and then he picked up a big rock and leveled it at Alan’s head, Alan ducked, everyone on the bus started yelling and Alan got back on the bus, but the driver still didn’t start the bus. We tried to tell people that he wasn’t our coolie and finally the guy decided he would take the 8 annas and then Alan, mad as two hops, said he could fly a kite because he wouldn’t give him anything and finally I said, “Let’s give him the darned 8 annas and go,” then Alan gave in and we went.

We arrived at the jetty at Quilon at 9:00 and left soon thereafter for a ten hour ride up the Malabar backwaters on a - quote - motor launch - unquote. Fare - 14 annas.

Here are some of the scenes along the trip. In No. 4 are some of the kids that crowded on the jetties at each stopping place. The five of us and our luggage were crammed into a partitioned off place in the front of the boat and at every stop the door and all the windows were filled with faces - staring, giggling faces. Not a word of English was spoken to us on the whole trip. We had sandwiches in Alan’s lunch kit, but a thermos bottle had leaked and soaked them beyond salvage, so we ate oranges and bananas only the whole day. The cockroaches smelled the sandwiches and we had a war with them. We lost count after we had killed the 24th two inch monster. The other people who got on and off the boat along the way had a real treat watching us carry on war of heels. And all the bed bugs on the boat found Alan, of course. We DDT’d the seats and millions of them crawled out of the cracks to die.

We passed lots of tall white catholic churches - quite out of place among the little thatched huts. Every once in a while we would see a pair of legs rising up from the water, and later a head bob up where the legs had been. Little kids diving for something on the bottom of the shallow channel. When it became monotonous we read, or played chess or went up on the roof to sunbathe. It was long and tiring, but ever interesting and one of the high spots of our whole trip.

See the country boats, some of them with big burlap tattered sails, being paddled or poled along. This reminded me of John Masefield’s “Cargo” about …..dipping through the tropics by the palm green shores.

About 7:30 that evening we arrived at Alleppi to find that no bus went through that night to Cochin; we were secretly glad because we had an excuse to hire a car for Rs. 36-. We crossed one ferry on the way. A two car platform lashed to a motor boat. In the middle of the channel the boat unlashed and putted around to the other side of the car raft and lashed again, so that we could drive off the ferry frontwards. We arrived at the Malabar Hotel on Cochin about 10:00, tired and very very hungry, only to find the dining room closed. But they rounded us up some food which they served in our rooms. Bill Rutter was there too. The next day he went with us to explore the old Dutch town across the bay.

These Chinese type fishing nets were the only things of interest that Mannie saw fit to snap. Being Sunday everything was closed. We talked to a rickshaw man who could speak very good English. He was quite intelligent - told us why he wanted to join the communist sponsored rickshaw union and about how he pays 1/8 per day for his rickshaw (that’s about 30 cents) and makes an average of 3/0 clear. He had had one of his own but got T.B. and had to sell it when he couldn’t work and is better now but the running all the time hurts his lungs.

They had a salt water swimming pool at the hotel. We swam. One of the guests was a huge man with a bald pate and a dark black fringe of hair going across the back of his head and over his ears, and a short, thick black beard, and about three chins. He walked with a waddle and a cane. Betty Winn expressed it with her cry of “Pieces of Eight!” We sure had him pegged as an old Dutch Sea Captain.

Alan, Mannie and I left the others there and carried on with our trip. A plane flight to Coimabatore. And who was on the plane with us but Mr. Pieces of Eight. At the airport in Coimbatore there were huge crowds of people to meet the plane. “So nice of you to come and meet us. You needn’t have, really,” we told them quietly. And then saw they were staring past us at Mr. P. of 8. “And who might that imposter be,” we inquired of a gazer. “Why that’s Hong Kong. Oh, I mean King Kong,” gazed he. “And who might Hong King Kong be,” insisted we. “The wrestler!” said he, still gazing, and sheepishly, “And it’s just King Kong. Not Hong.”

And we were fouled by the fickle finger of fate again when the guy at the airport gleefully told us there was no bus service to Ootycamund until morning. Ooty is a hill station to which we were headed, enroute to Mysore. So we were forced to stay over night in Coimabatore’s Majestic hotel, all three in one room.

Another guest in the hotel was Baron Von Heczic - another wrestler. There was a wrestler’s convention in town, I guess.

Coimbatore is a milling town. There had been a couple of very dry seasons and the area was short of water. We saw blocks and blocks of women lined up with their water pots on their heads waiting their turn for water at the wells. There was also an electricity shortage and we heard that the mills hadn’t been working for two months. We didn’t go to the wrestling matches but to a show “Jungle Jim,” which was lousy, and home from which we rode in a little covered wagon type tonga peculiar to the area which smelled and jogged and jounced and finally got us lost. Our room was hot and had overhead fans.

Next morning the bus arrived an hour late and took us on a long tortuous hot ride up to Ooty, stopping all along the way for the bus driver to visit with friends and take people to their very doors no matter how out of the way they lived. There were no windows and the hot blasts beat us in the face. At every stop as usual we were surrounded by beggars. Mannie finally took some pictures of them.

This No.2 picture was taken from the window of the bus at one place where we stopped. We thought this was good because it shows the typical shops. Note the names.

We rolled off the bus, which took us right to the hotel, in fits of laughter. I’m afraid these things don’t sound at all funny on paper, and you need the back-ground for them. The background for this one was just that I had been such a scatterbrain during the whole trip, always losing things and leaving things behind, etc., and the others had mother henned me all the way. I had bought a big straw hat in Ceylon and lugged it all over south India and was always in danger of leaving it somewhere. We were all loaded down with luggage and misc. and books.

As we drove into the hotel yard, and it was so peaceful, and pretty and green and quiet, we felt like we were really going to get a good rest. We were surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees and the lawns were very green and fresh looking and the bushes were so neatly clipped and the geraniums in full bloom.

As we were gathering together our things off the bus I happened to say, “Have we got my hat and my story books?” just as Mannie said, “It’s like we were taking you to a sanitorium.” The accident of words and whole atmosphere of the place struck us all funny and I’m sure the hotel manager thought we were all crazy as we sat there and laughed until we almost cried.

Ooty is one of the better known hill stations of India. There is a little lake up there and the mountains are very green and it’s cool and clean feeling. We even had to have fireplace fires at night. We had strawberries and cream for tea. We walked down to the lake in the gloaming. Everything seemed still and friendly and we could hear voices calling from way off across the hills and hear drums beating somewhere and temple bells ringing. It felt like the spirit of the mountain would at any minute come and carry us off on a hedge-hopping cloud to brush through the eucalyptus leaves and tip toe over temple tops. Just to be alive in that place was like poetry.

We had to leave next morning to keep on schedule and we had another windy bus ride, down through the rolling hills and tea plantations that reminded Lady Mountbatten of the hills of Sussex. And quite suddenly we were out of the green and into the parched dry forests of Mysore state where the water shortage has taken a terrible toll. Even the hardy bamboo is yellow and dead. For miles and miles, nothing but dry wood and leaves.

At one place the bus broke down and we got out and took this picture of one of the huge ant hills.

We had seen them all over Ceylon and south India and always wanted pictures, but never quite had the opportunity to stop and take them. Some of them are ten feet tall. Mannie and I examined this one. They are built of red clay and are very hard packed. It is said that cobras move into them when the ants abandon them. The Indians worship the cobra and you see the ant hills often draped with marigolds.

And we arrived in Mysore. From here on Mannie really began to snap pictures in earnest. We were practically the only guests in the Metropole Hotel and were snapped up immediately by a young student guide with a funny shaped head and small round rimless glasses who made every statement in the past tense by saying “used to” do this and that, even when they still do it.

First we went to the Maharaja’s guest house, now empty. They use it mostly at Dusshera time when Mysore goes all out with big parades and celebrations and people come from all over India and the world to see it.

Next we went up to Chamundi Hill over looking the city where the big Nandi (Bull*) statue is.*The sacred bull of the God Shiva sculptured 1659 A.D. = height of head 16 ft. one pure solid rock.

See Alan and I sitting in the lower left of this one.

Here I am going to walk under his left front leg, like Lady Mt. Batten is said to have done, for luck.

From there we went to see the Maharaja of Mysore’s summer palace on the hill. We had to park our car and walk up and I was too tired and the boys went on, then the gateman felt sorry for me and said I could take the car up so I picked up two old British ladies who came along and we rode up.

Here Alan and I are just going into the front. There’s not much there. Mostly a bunch of junky looking English furniture and lots of elephant trunk vases and elephant’s foot footstools.

That night we took a long walk over to visit some Americans who are there in Mysore. He teaches at the college. They were glad to see us and we learned some things about the temples we would see the next day.

The next day we hired a Morris Minor car and went out to see some silk mills and a sandal wood oil factory. Sandal wood oil is Rs, 1000 per 1 gallon. We watched them taking the silk from the cocoons and making it into silk thread. It is very delicate work done mostly by young boys and girls.

Next stop - the Maharaja’s elephant stables. The big tusker here is the Maharaja’s special elephant and is used only in parades and ceremonies to carry the Maharaja. He is very, very old. You can tell their age by the white on their faces. The two together is an old mother elephant they have had for many years and with her is a young guy they recently captured. The old one is helping train and tame the wild young one. One of the boys there had on a pair of Levis and we asked him where he got them. He told us that he just came back recently from the states where he had spent four years with Ringling Bros. He had gone over with a load of 40 elephants from Mysore state as their trainer, and he stayed on with Ringling until they could handle the elephants without him.

We also went to see the state coaches and the horse stables. The present Maharaja is a monstrous fat fellow who likes new cars better than horses and only rides when he has to. All the people talk about the former Maharaja and don’t seem to think his son is quite up to him. The coach stable has about fifty or sixty coaches of different types and sizes and shapes. You see some of them driving around the city, but most of them are used only in ceremonies or when important visitors come to Mysore. We also went to see the Palace Garage where he keeps his cars. He has 21 new cars, besides all the Palace tricks and miscellaneous vehicles. They are all Rolls-Royces, Bentlys, Daimlers (Mercedes-Benz) and he has one French Delahaye. Says our log book: Purple Rolls-Royce; fire engine red RR convertible; 1910 green RR and 1913 black used for distinguished visitors like Lady Mt. Batten and Nehru; purdah cars; the Rani’s pale green Bentley; split bamboo curtains, tea table, writing desk, toilet sets, tables in all cars; all well used.

This is looking out another gate - bullock cart going by.

This is a picture of the P.G. with Mannie, our guide and Alan going in.

No.1 is the entrance gate to the palace, No.2 the guard, No. 3 is looking back from the palace

After we had seen the inside and were leaving, Mannie wanted to go over and take a picture of the little temple on the grounds and get another view of the palace (see No. 4 and 5) and our guide said it wasn’t allowed, but Mannie insisted and the guide went along. Well the guards came rushing out, after Mannie had already taken these two, and they marched our guide back to the palace for a going over. We (see 6) didn’t have picture taking permits. Our guide finally emerged, not hurt but a little shaken.

This picture is of a statue outside the palace grounds of the late Maharaja.

Inside the palace is fabulous and way beyond description. The log says: Durbar Hall with blue and gold metal pillars, stained glass ceiling, tile floors; room with mural of Dusshera procession covering whole wall, each face an actual portrait, thousands of them; gift room with caskets, scrolls, trowels from cornerstone layings, scissors from ribbon cuttings, signed photos; trophy room stuffed with tigers, elephants wild boar, bison etc., game room with swords, knives, shields, weapons tacked on walls in designs; statue of brass knuckle fighters; marriage room.

We didn’t see the living quarters of the palace, of course. Just the show rooms. I can’t begin to describe the color and decoration of the different rooms. I guess a Maharaja’s palace is something one has to see for ones self to appreciate.

Mysore is one of the most colorful cites of India. It was very dry when we were there because of the water shortage and therefore we didn’t see some of the tourist spots out of the city. We walked in the evening down to the railway station and found thousands of people sleeping on the station floors. They were going home from a yearly pilgrimage to the big Jain statue near Mysore.

We left Mysore the next morning by car, on our way to Bangalore. On the way we drove off the highway for 22 miles to Serangapatan Fort.

Here is the temple in the Fort

and a temple cart near by. The donkey isn’t attached. He just wandered by.

This was Tippu Sultan’s stronghold. At this temple we tried a new approach. We pretended that we couldn’t speak or understand English. We used a mixture of French and Spanish words and English so corrupted that they couldn’t understand it. It worked. Little boys wandered around with us explaining everything and we pretended we couldn’t even understand their beg for “baksheesh.” The third picture is of Tippu Sultan’s different battles. One of them shows Colonel Bailey and his troops faced by Tippu Sutan and his troops - the Britishers with one finger in their mouths, looking puzzled and powerless.

And we stopped again at one of the best examples of temple carving in India — the Somnapur temple. The carvings and the style of this temple are terrific. Both Mannie and I went wild with our cameras. Although they are repetitious, I am attaching them all.

Me

Alan

The Big Trip-part 11

The next day was Saturday, our one week anniversary. We visited some old ruins which they say date back to 600 b.c. - old temples and pillars and Buddha statues.

Next stop - Sigeria for lunch. The size of Sigeria rock you can see here by comparison to the car on the road.

Hundreds of years ago someone built a temple on the top and they climbed it by making a little niches in the sheer sides of the huge rock. Now they have built stairs and railings most of the way up. Alan, Barb and I set out to climb it. Halfway up is a grassy resting place where they have put up a wire cage for the safety of tourists who are attacked by rock bees. At one spot along the way you can see the remains of ancient frescoes. After the grassy place you are on your own, and you use the old niches for stairs with only an iron rod railing to hold on to. I went all the way up and at the top there were workmen repairing part of the temple, It was lunch time and at a signal they all lit down the side of the rock, practically at a run, and yelling at the top of their lungs. I was afraid they’d wake up the rock bees. They hardly touched the hand rail; I went inching and crawling down after them, hanging on for dear life and wondering how the ancients ever did it with nothing out there between them and disaster.

The guest house there was another Princess Elizabeth remodeling job. They served us delicious banana fritters for lunch.

Mannie took a picture of this tree growing over a rock.

Then we drove through the thickest plantation area: Rubber, coconut, pineapple, cocoa, pepper vines growing on cottonwood trees, rice patties; at one stop we took these snaps of the people coming down the road with buckets of rubber milk on their heads. And the first picture is a rubber tree area- It certainly doesn’t do it justice.

We kept stopping, just because it was so beautiful and we didn’t want to let it pass so quickly. At one spot this man and child came by. We were looking at the disappearing plants in the roadside and he stopped to watch us touching the leaves to see them fold up. His gaily colored lungee is also folded up for walking.

We call this one, “indiginee and child”. We thought it smarter to use the word, indigenous, rather than native and we kept shopping for indigenous fabrics.

We kept passing Buddhist monks in their bright yellow-orange robes and shaved heads, and the funny looking covered wagon Ceylonese carts with their gaily painted wheels and colored fringes, and we would say, “We must get pictures of them,” and someone else would say, “We’ll see some more later on.” So none of us ever got those pictures.

As we drove into Kandy we saw our first tea plantations. Kandy is the most famous hill station of Ceylon. An American film company had just been there for several weeks making a picture called “Elephant Walk” and I think the local merchants and the hotel though we were remains of the troupe. Barb and I, for instance, had a luxurious big room, but it was Rs. 60/-per day for room and board (that’s $6.00 each) - and we had paid an average of Rs. 10/- in the guest houses.

It was raining a little, but we walked through the town shopping, along the lake edge, and up to the Temple of the Tooth, the biggest Buddhist temple in the Near East. It is called the Temple of the Tooth because they have encased in a shrine inside what is supposed to be one of Buddha’s teeth. It is said that it resembles more an alligator’s tooth than a man’s. They also have some of Buddha’s bones. We went inside and they were just starting services. Two men stand on each side of the door as you enter the main part of the temple, beating gongs and shrilling flutes. In the middle of the big hall is a small shrine which we could not enter, but we could stand at the door and watch the people going in with their flowers and offerings to kneel before the seated figure of Buddha and go through their rituals of touching their foreheads to the ground. There is no light in the room except from the doorway where we stood watching, and since the shrine itself is in the big main hall which is also dimly lighted, it gave the occasion a very eerie, mysterious East flavor, especially when the monks would wander around with their waving pots of burning, smoking incense and the wavering yellow lights of the flames would wash over the silent Buddha, the prostrate devotees and the shaved heads of the bearer.

A guide took us into the office rooms of the temple where they keep the sacred books, some of them dating back before Christ, written on aged yellow parchment scrolls. We signed the guest book and saw the signatures of G. B. Shaw, President Wilson, King George V. and many other famous names. Then we went upstairs where the crowd was waiting to go into another shrine of some sort. They all had flowers and fruit and things for offerings. It seemed that only a few people could go in at a time and we got tired of waiting, so we never found out what goes on up there.

This is a picture Mannie took of Kandy from the hill across the lake. In the lake is a little square pavilion which is covered with colored lights at night and a fountain plays in color.

On Sunday we went out to see the botanical gardens. To quote the log: orchids - spices - palm avenues - bamboo clumps - snake vines - fly catcher plant - hedge houses - propeller pods. Here are Mannie’s pictures.

This was a particularly pretty bamboo clump near a little lake.

A native boy was raking leaves.

Tallest straightest palms I have ever seen. See Barbara and Alan standing there.

Another type of palm avenue. Notice the fan looking thing on the grass. That is a sample of different types of grass. The gardens are beautifully kept. Have every plant and tree imaginable.

and this is looking up.

We left the hotel after lunch and on our way out of Kandy we stopped at the top of the hill to look back at the town (from which vantage point Mannie took the earlier picture) and along came this line of children on their way to school. They were the children of the Kandian chiefs, said our driver. A bull-drawn cart just about got in one picture.

And we stopped once more to watch the elephants bathing.

We left Kandy and went back down to Colombo, where we stayed at the Galle Face Hotel. We didn’t like the hotel. No landscaping; and though it was on the ocean, no beach. Too expensive - the boy’s room had no bathroom. Yet it is “the” hotel of Colombo. At dinner that night we decided we’d go back out to Mt. Lavinia to spend our last day and night. A U.S. ship was in port and a group of sailors came into the dining room. It is a very ritzy looking place, actually, and as they passed our table we heard one boy drawl in an argumentative tone, “I just don’t b’long hyear.” Our sentiments exactly; not because it was ritzy, but because we wanted to spend our vacation in the beauty spots.

So the next morning we finished our Ceylon shopping, arranged to have all the stuff we had bought shipped to Delhi through the Embassy and then took the local train to Mt. Lavinia in time for a rainy tea on the verandah with some other Delhi folks who were there. And the next morning after that we had another early swim and stayed out too long in the sun. We had to separate from Barbara there because she had no more leave time accumulated, and Mannie, Alan and I took the train out that night. We traveled all night and we only had cheap sheets which we had picked up in Colombo, so we were all pretty uncomfortable. The compartments are only double ones so Alan and I took one and Mannie was next door with Mr. Rao. We arrived at the port Tolaimanar at 5:00 in the morning, went through customs without a hinge and boarded a ferry boat called “Gochen”. The journey across the channel between Ceylon and India takes several hours, and we were all so tired still that we flaked out on the benches and slept the whole way with our heads resting on life jackets. At the other side we immediately knew we were in India.

Ceylon had been an entirely different experience from India. The people are much more prosperous, they grow coconuts and tea and bananas, and their whole standard of living is better. The little villages we went through were cleaner, they all had big health enters and hospitals and dispensaries. The roads were well kept and free from the horrible bullock-cart traffic you get in India. The servants and waiters were more human, not so obsequious, they had more self pride. There were no beggars, and we didn’t see any “road-side worshippers” as we call the men you see constantly squatting along the roads any where you might go in India. It’s a garden paradise.

But the minute we set foot off the boat in India we were besieged by beggars. We had to go through customs again and we had to laugh when policeman inside the door directed me toward the “ladies search room.” I went inside and there stood a timid little Indian woman who came about to my waist and she looked up at me with her limpid big eyes and said in a small voice, “Have you anything to declare.” I said “no” and she looked relieved and waved me out.

The dock there is way out on a sand bar and the village seemed to be just full of beggars and children. Not a tree or shrub or bit of green anywhere except for the green slime on the shallow backwashes on the sand. We had to sit there in the blazing sun for hours so we went down to the dining car of the train which was out over the water a ways and ordered breakfast. Little boys came along side the train window and begged to dive for coins, so I threw them a few. We finally established ourselves in a crowded first class coach with about six Indians in a car which should have sat six all together. Beggars swarmed around our windows and we tried to ignore them. One Indian man across from us kept taking small coins out of his dhoti and giving them away, but we refused to be moved. We could not help but watch the little boys who sang a sort of chant as they beat on their little bare chest to a rhythm caused by swinging their bodies in a twist from side to side and letting their arms swing loose and their doubled fists flop up and hit their chests as they swing.

We had a long, hot, dirty ride and arrived at Madurai in the late afternoon. We stayed at the Railroad Hotel in rooms above the station. We were too tired to do anything but take a short walk and go to bed, dog tired.

The next day we went to the big temple there, one of the most magnificent in all India. These are Mannie’s pictures.

The first one is a beggar, taken from our train window.

We spent a good two hours wandering though this temple. It is all built around the big tank, where you see the steps.

The black blob in the lower right is me standing by a pillar.

He has a good shot of one of the statues. Most of the stone carving work is inside the different halls where there is no light or where cameras aren’t allowed. We even had to wait until a certain time to take pictures here. There is one huge hall somewhere in the maze of the temple that has 100 big stone pillars, highly carved - nothing else except a very small shrine of Shia, and a colony of bats hanging overhead. It is dark and musty and we had to walk through the whole temple barefooted.

This old fellow was covered with ashes. He looked very ghostly and he followed us all over the court before we entered the temple buildings. He is a saint of some sort. He wanted us to give him some money. Mannie told him, “We never give money to saints.”

At one place in the temple I watched a man for about five minutes. He was sitting in a trance with his legs folded in his lap, Yogi style. He didn’t once move a muscle. He could just as well have been one of the stone statues around him. Groups of people would pass us ringing gongs, swinging incense and chanting. They were doing their pujas on a trip through all the temple. Some of the halls are all decorated with paintings on the walls and ceilings; others were very severe and sombre and practically empty, others are filled with carved pillars and big stone images and wall carvings of the various Hindu gods. After awhile it begins to be too much to bear, your imagination overflows, you think you’ve seen everything in temple adornment and still it goes on, room after room. At one place in the temple where there is no roof, shopkeepers have set up their stalls between the carved pillars, and there is row after row of tailors, fruit vendors, shoe makers, cloth merchants, et al. One small boy followed us into the temple and never left us through the whole trip, about three hours.

We left Madurai that afternoon about 4:00 via plane to Trivandrum, over on the west coast and were happy to see the green tropical verdure of the coast again. At the airport I recognized our USIS Librarian, Joe Sakey and when I spoke to him he offered to take us to our hotel. He and our Bangalore librarian who was in town on vacation, Betty Winn, had come to meet Mary Langford, a WHO (World Health Organization) worker, who was just joining Betty for a few days vacation. So we all joined forces and Joe took us that afternoon out to a lovely beach for a swim. It did India proud. It was as nice as any beach we had found in Ceylon. We met the Maharaja of Travancore and his family there and they let us use their bathing house to change clothes. One of the natives took us on his log boat for a paddle on the swells out past the point of the cove into the wide open sea and while we were out it began to rain hard cold drops on our backs and we splashed ocean water on each other to keep warm. When we got back to the beach another native was waiting with coconuts and a hatchet. Flick, flick, flick, and he had made a neat little hole in the end of a coconut and we drank nature’s nectar from nature’s cup.

Back at the hotel we met Dr. Manshardt who was on tour from Delhi USIS and Bill Rutter, our ex-Publications Officer who quit the State Department to work in India for New American Library. So we had a big banquet table full of people for dinner.

The next day the two librarians and we three hired a taxi to take us down to Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India. On the way we stopped to see an old wooden palace of the Hysala dynasty - red tile roofs -clean and well kept - swinging beds - women’s purdah room in gables - man’s torture cage - acres of rooms, says our log. It can’t mean much to you, but to me it brings up a whole reel of images. Mannie took these pictures. They are all taken from various windows in the palace. The silhouettes in No. 1 are Me, Alan and Mary.

We stopped again at a little rest house to eat the lunch we had packed, and Alan had no more than sat down than his arms were covered with white welts from bug bites. If a bug that bites gets within a mile of Alan it will find him.

The Big Trip-part 1

February 21, 1953

The following is an account of a trip that I took to South India and Ceylon during the second half of my two year tour of duty in the U.S. Information Services in New Delhi, India.

I traveled with three of my best friends in India. Barbara Moore is another USIS secretary, Mannie Silberstein works in the Embassy, and Alan Campbell, and ex-Delhian, who is now stationed in Calcutta.

Barbara, Mannie and I left Delhi via Deccan Airlines very early Saturday morning. I set my behavior pattern for the whole trip right away, by forgetting my tickets. This required a frantic trip back to the Taj (where they lived, not the famous landmark) from the airport, a wild pounding on my neighbor’s door as I had locked myself out and left the key with her, and a hurried search through a stack of letters and purse cleanings, then another dash back to the airport (in an Embassy car) with a too-placid Indian driver and a sinking feeling that I would have missed the flight. We did make it.

Our first landing was Hyderabad and I tidied up a bit, applied some lipstick and my sunglasses and prepared to disembark. Barbara and Mannie began to roar with laughter as they looked at me. I felt to see what was wrong and poked a finger in my eye. One lens was missing and I hadn’t noticed. So we all staggered off the plane in fits of laughter. That set the tone for our trip.

We were met by a USIS car and taken to the library where Dan Bailey, who we knew from Delhi and who now runs the Hyderabad USIS operation, briefed us on our schedule. He had planned a program - first to his ex-officer’s clubhouse for lunch where we met Bill Knorr, a bitter, lonely young man who works for Standard Oil. We’ve got mangoes & bananas you can pick right off the tree… (etc.) but what ain’t we got? We ain’t got dames!

After lunch we went to the Rock Castle Hotel to visit another ex-Delhian, Lee Quarterman, who was sick with jaundice, and to pick up Mildred McAffee Horton, an older lady who used to head the WAVES. Then off to see the famous old fort, Golconda, which was the last stronghold to fall to the British.

The fort overlooks the plains where invading armies came in. This picture with Barbara shows the main hill of the fortress.

Mannie and I are standing in front of an old cannon on top of the wall,

and Millie Horton examining more closely the intricate carving. In the background, the seven domes of the tombs of former rulers of Hyderabad are visible.

We explored the underground passages there with a guide who demonstrated the acoustics by clapping his hands under a dome to let us hear the echoes. All over the place we found big cement cannonballs and remnants of cannons.

Back in town we dropped Millie off and stopped at Bill Knorr’s mansion for tea. Later we had dinner at Bailey’s and the four of us had a night on the town. Dan had shot his foot while hunting and couldn’t go, but he sent us with his regrets to the Lady Hydera club where they were holding a doctors and nurses ball. There were so few foreigners in Hyderabad that we were quite a sensation. We joined Dan’s party and I, being the nice type, accepted dances right and left, and found myself jitterbugging with local yokels and entertaining all kinds of corny British type exchange dances. One of them was a rose dance where the boys buy roses and cut in on the girls and give them a rose each time. The girl with the most roses at the end, and it seemed like a very long dance, gets a prize. The men at our table very gallantly bought roses and rescued me as fast as they could from the more frantic jitterbuggers and at the end I had an arm load of roses which I refused to turn in for the prize. I think I must have danced with half of Nizam’s army as well as all the young Anglo-Indian swains about town. Barbara refused to dance and sat all evening looking bored and whispering “Let’s go!” while Mannie got involved in political discussions with one of our hosts with communistic leanings. When we did leave we almost had an international incident on the way out. A group of young boys coming in rudely bumped into Barbara, and Bill Knorr was ready to jump on them, fists flying, when we more security minded State Dept. employees dragged him away. Hyderabad is noted for it’s majority of communists and riots are common. Parts of the state are under police control.

The next day we toured Hyderabad, which is full of impressive looking massive buildings.

This is the famous gateway to Hyderabad - “

Charminar

” - on the left. They are working on the grounds of the building below…

Women work along with the men, carrying baskets of dirt from place to place on their heads. Here the basket is being transferred from the boy to the girl. Typical scene.

We visited Salarjung Museum, spending a mere half an hour where it would take weeks to really see it. We noted the many balanced rocks in the countryside and the homes with bits of cactus hanging in the windows and doorways - a sure trick to keeping flies out.

About noon we took off for the next stop - Madras. At the Connemara Hotel we found strings of balls hanging in the windows to keep the birds out. Mannie had been in Madras before and thought we could see the one and only temple in Madras that afternoon for only 4 annas by city bus. But he was confused and we rode in the wrong direction for a while, finally arriving at the temple too late to take pictures. He did take this one shot but you can’t see how detailed the carved temple top is, or how gaily it is painted.

Each figure is individually decorated and the whole effect is very garish.

One the way back from the temple we stopped to see a movie, “Our Lady of Fatima” and the fact that we would stop to see a movie while on such a culture trip was amusing to us. Thereafter, as we entered into each new town, someone would always say, “I wonder what’s playing.” We especially thought it was funny in some of the primitive little villages where we stayed. People on vacation are easily amused, I guess. We, at any rate, we always convulsed with laughter at our own “inside” jokes.

The next morning we were pleasantly surprised with Alan’s arrival. We had thought that he would join us in Ceylon, but his plane schedule brought him into Madras early then he was scheduled to Colombo, Ceylon, the next day. So we had lunch together and did some shopping in Madras, and then left him and Barbara, Mannie and I winged our way on to Colombo.

We made our way into Colombo the usual way - laughing our heads off. As we waited in line to be checked through customs, Barbara made the funny statement. We had both pinned all our excess rupees inside our bras so that we wouldn’t have to declare it. You are only allowed to take so many into Ceylon. Barbara was wearing a scoop necked dress and she casually said, “I’d better not lean too far over or they’ll see my contraband.” The local customs workers must have thought we were a crazy lot, as we couldn’t stop laughing.

American Express had sent a car and driver, Mr. Codi, to meet us and he took us to the Mt. Lavinia Hotel on the beach south of the city. The log book I insisted on keeping during our trip says - Beautiful landscaped, sea view, cavernous halls, nice tea porch with ocean view, receptionist with knowing look, night clerk who likes to sell beer at midnight, rocky promontory.

It was a great thrill being in the tropics and on the ocean. At night we looked west into a beautiful sunset. Every evening about 5:00 it began to rain, and the next morning it would be clear and beautiful. On that first evening we started for a walk but were caught in the torrent on the beach house terrace for two hours. After dinner the rain had stopped and Mannie and I took a walk to the highway which runs into Colombo, about ten miles north.

The hotel did have cavernous halls. Mannie and I got lost trying to find our way out of the hotel and after wandering around the halls for half an hour we finally found our room again and asked Barbara for directions.

Next day we went into Colombo and checked in at the Health office - shopped in Pettah Bazar for Madras cloth sarongs like the men and women wear there - exclaimed over the many department stores - bought film, hand lotion, shirts - stopped at the American Embassy and the Galle Face Hotel where we arranged our trip around the island by car with Bobbie Arnolda - and when we arrived back at the hotel Alan was there. We had tea on the verandah and talked about our forthcoming trip - had a lousy dinner and walked to the highway in the rain to catch a double decker bus to the nearest theater to see “Invitation.” Alan and Barbara came out of the show covered in bug bites.

We had an early morning swim next morning. My first ocean swim! (!!!!) And after breakfast we were off in a Bobbie Arnolda car with our driver, Mr. Perrara, along the coast highway south to Galle. We stopped here to watch the hardy fisher folk pulling in their nets.

They go out in the early mornings with about a mile of net and inscribe a huge arc, dropping the net out of the boat as they go. You see here the lines of men pulling them in. I wish you could hear them chant as they tug.

You see how they have their sarongs doubled up so they are above their knees and out of the way. The usual style is ankle length. Some of them are wearing only “G” strings. They had all kinds of fish in the net. Alan grappled with a shark- (about a foot long).

We stopped several times along the way just to walk over to the beach and watch the surf or glory in the palm fringed shoreline. Pictures don’t do it justice. It’s a lovely place.

All along the road are Buddhist stupas - coconut plantations - tiny thatched hut villages - outriggers pulled up on shore.

Galle is a town in an old Dutch fort. We ate in the big old fashioned Dutch type hotel - had wonderful fish for lunch - bought tortoise shell hair clips - and joked about an old British couple who were eating there too. We jokingly called the old gal an “extendee”, meaning she had stayed longer than her two year term.

On the way out of Galle we stopped to explore an old Lighthouse and were again caught in the rain so hurried on to our stop for the night - Hambantota. Hambantota is inland and though we hated to leave the shoreline, we were thrilled anew by the new landscape - paddie fields and lush scrub brush.

Hambantota was our first night in a guest house and we fell in love with the idea. They are infinitely cheaper than hotels. This was a small little cottage sitting high on a cliff overlooking a long curve of beach cross hatched with fishing boats. We went for a swim after dinner and because we were in a cove there were no huge waves and we couldn’t ride the breakers very well. And later we walked in the moonlight out onto a low lying rocky promontory and waited for the tide to come in and separate us from the land. It didn’t.

Next morning we drove on through a wild bird sanctuary and our first rubber plantations. Sunlight shining down through rows and rows of feathery light rubber trees with the dark V-shaped gashed in their trunks; the rich dark green clumps of cocoa bushes which grow beneath the rubber trees. Up a little mountain to Deyalema Falls where we went swimming in the sparkling pool at the foot of the falls; and down again for lunch at the Welawaya guest house.

Here’s an elephant we photographed along the way, eating banana leaves and the falls.

Walawaya guest house looked like an old farm house in a jungle, with chickens and a rooster pecking around in the yard, a long verandah with old wooden arm chairs, and a hobbly little old man who we called Gabby Hayes, to make us cheese and egg sandwiches and soup for lunch.

After lunch we stopped to see a rubber mill. They were making crepe rubber for shoes. Then into the deep woods we went - “elephant infested jungle” our driver said. We stopped here on a bridge to watch the elephants bathing in the river. Mannie and I walked down the opposite bank and took pictures. The boys who were watching the elephants hollered up to our driver, and as one old guy stood up and waved his trunk at us and flapped his ears and trumpeted the boys leaped up and hollered “Hurraya! Hurraya!” and we scampered away in terror. Our driver told us when we got back to the car that one of those elephants had recently killed two men.

We stopped at Pettewara guest house to eat our sandwiches and swim. The breakers were so huge and the bank so steep that it was rather dangerous so we mostly dabbled on the edge and got our suits filled with sand. Then we drove on for half an hour through paddie country with marshes; and had to turn back because I had left my watch at the guest house. We found it out on the sand near the beach.

Our second night out - Kulmanai guest house, with a wide wide beach, and lovely clean rooms complete with artificial flowers, and cheerful attendants who let us sleep late and our breakfast get cold because they “hated to wake us, we were sleeping so soundly.”

We spent all morning swimming and hunting for seas shells and building a sand castle we called “The New Golconda,” and a throne for his majesty, Alan. Here we had good breakers on a shallow bank, and I finally learned to leap at the right moment and be carried onto the shore.

In the village we found the nicest lungees (or sarongs) yet, but we argued over the prices and didn’t buy and wished for ever after that we had.

On to Batticolao, another old Dutch fort on an inland bay, where they fed us huge big prawns the size of milk bottle tops, and sliced pineapple. For the first time we used our DDT bomb for flies and mosquitoes. We’d turn our plates over and cover everything up and spray, then dash through one course and turn them over again and spray for the second.

It was rather late when we started off for our second leg of the day and we had seven ferries to cross. When we arrived at the first ferry and found a line with bullock carts ahead of us so we turned back and took a different route. As we passed through a lime makers village the lime makers motioned that our tire was flat and we stopped, right next to the big piles of coral and sea shells ad the lime vats. We found lots of interestingly shaped shells and pieces of coral, but unfortunately they had all been fired and had lost their lustre. Here are two pictures of the lime makers. Note Barbara and I with cameras in hand in the lineup.

Our new route took us way inland again through even denser “Elephant infested jungle” and half way through the jungle, 30 miles from each town, we had a second blowout. A panel truck came along and stopped and seemed very worried about us being stranded there for the night, so they loaded us four kids into the back of their truck and we started out with Mr. Perrera and our car limping along in front of us on the best of the two flat’s, to get as far as we could. We finally passed him and rushed on to Polanorulia to get help; arrived after dark and found a service station man who immediately rounded us up a car and driver and a new tire, and we sent him off to help poor Mr. Perrera while we went on to the guest house there to try and get a room. We had no reservations there, as we were supposed to be in another place beyond the seven ferries, and the guest house was booked full. “We have no car and no place to go,” said we, and sat down on the porch and held satyagraha, (a Ceylonese sit down strike).

Late that night our luck took a turn for the better. Mr. Perrera turned up with two new tires on the car. It seems he had limped in fairly close to town, found some new boys to watch the car and went and hired a car himself to take him back with a tire. Our car, in the meantime, had gone out after first going and getting a gun to take with them, missed him on the road and finally turned back and found the car sitting without Mr. Perrera. When Perrera showed up they all worked on the car and installed two new tires and came on in. One of the cars had first brought all our luggage to the guest house so it wouldn’t be left with the watching boys and we with our luggage piled high beside us waited to see what they would do with us. First they fed us. The guest house was recently remodeled and fixed up in anticipation of Queen (then Princess) Elizabeth’s visit before her father died. The lounge is built out on long stilts over the lake’s edge. They finally told us that, if, after 10:00, two guests who had not arrived did not come, Barbara and I could have their room and the boys could sleep in the lounge, if they’d get up at the crack of dawn so as not to embarrass the other guests. It ended up with Mannie sharing the room of a young British fellow who befriended us, a tractor salesman, and with Alan sleeping on an extra bed on the verandah in front of their room. So he was the only one who had to get up at the crack of dawn.

THE BIG TRIP- 26 Days into South India & Ceylon - 2/21/53-3/18/53

In explanation of the condition of the following account of the “Big Trip” that I took while I was in India:

I originally typed it on light paper and scotch taped picture throughout so that it would be an interesting travelogue to send to my family. My friend, Mannie Silberstein, also wrote his version of the trip, which he gave me a copy of his work and it is interesting to read the two accounts together. His is much more detailed and has interesting historical sidelights.

At any rate, my travelogue made the rounds of my friends and relatives and eventually came back to me via my mother. I had it stored away in a cardboard box, along with a lot of other family letters and memorabilia that I wanted to keep.

One day when Ty (the eldest child of Dorothy’s) was about twelve, I asked him to clean the storage room. He thought the box was just full of trash and took it out and dumped it in the gulley east of the house. After several days of wind and rain, Kristen (her second in line) found it and came to show me a picture she found down in “the drain”. I ran to see what was there and found my whole past history scattered to the winds. I gathered everything up that I could find, took it all home and dried it out, then smoothed the pages as best I could and stacked them in a box to be sorted and resurrected later.

Now, about fourteen years later, I have been bitten by the genealogy bug and my first interest is in getting my own family history in order and my own journal up to date. It has taken a lot of time to reconstruct all those scattered pages. Some of them were beyond hope and had to be rewritten.

Maybe eventually I will re-do the account, but for now I will just make it as orderly as possible with what I have to work with. It is a real nostalgia trip for me to re-read this account. It was a wonderfully happy and carefree time of my life. I hope that someone else will take the time to read it, too, just so that they will get a glimpse into the background of Dorothy Pettijohn Johnson.

Jan. 1985

“Little Woe”

A stamp Doro put on the top of the letter.

August 14

Al, dear boy,

It’s not because I don’t m.y. any more…and I’m not very busy either. Just don’t have much to say.

You amaze, please and delight me. You wrote such a nice, long, readable letter - one I should have answered toot sweet - and before I got to it you wrote another, mostly about champagne. I see your first is dated July 18. It’s been over a month since I wrote, then. Not a very indication of my undying devotion, is it?

I think the reason at first was because I was trying frantically to think of something exciting to blame that unfortunate sentence about “something exciting …. I’m dying to tell you…” on to. When I looked again on that sentence in my original letter that I printed so laboriously by hand, I remember the feeling of suppressed excitement I had had, I remembered how it felt to want to tell you this thing so badly thinking I’d better not just yet, I remember that I was going to be able to tell you in a couple of weeks, my mind reaches out in the dark and almost finds the light switch… but draws a blank. Sorry, I just can’t remember.

However there is new news, which you may have already heard. The RIF lists are in but not published yet. Through our inner sources we learn, though, that Ann Marie Keenan is on it. And now the big news! Charlie Potts received yesterday a TM-7. That spread like wild-fire. And now today! We hear tell that right out of the two horses mouths - Charlie Potts and Shirley Ruth Duffy are going to get married in the ten days he has left. I can hardly believe it myself but I’ll let this go to you today as official and if things develop to the contrary will let you know. I know you will be interested.

Another bit of news - not so new. Fred Mogy (Mogi?) has asked for permission to marry the little anglo indian girl who works in the health unit. Rumors are flying all over the place. One is that Hi Howard is seeing a lot of Pat Patterson (do you know Pat? She’s the greatest), but I don’t believe there’s any much to it. Also, in case anyone else writes you about the rumors and one happens to be that I’m also going steady, you have it right from this horse’s mouth that it’s pure fiction. It happened like this. Dick Manard (Caterpillar Tractor) comes into town every now and then and comes around to #49 (see next para). I have been going with Bill Dwyer a little lately and when Dick came Saturday last I had a date and he said he was going to be in town for a week and could he see me Monday, Tuesday, blab, blab, …and I don’t like to go with him so in a panic I said, “You see, since you were here last I have been dating one of the boys in the Embassy and we had another wildfire. I am no longer #49. I moved Wednesday down to Pat Whitney’s and the next. Actually my new room looks almost exactly like the other except that there is a certain undescribable element of licentious luxury about it that wasn’t there before. For one thing I have a new rug (like yours was) on top of the reed rug, and there is a beautiful big easy chair that belongs more in the Charge d’ type houses than the Taj rooms. It isn’t covered yet, so it’s white (dirty white right now), and then when you sit down in it it reaches up and grabs you and you can curl up and feel little and lost and protected in it. Also, I got two small trim looking lamps. And a fireplace painted bright red with white lines! Blast it. My room looks all copper and yellow and beige and brown and rust and blond wood and straw colored. I still think it is funny for me to have the kind of room I have. With no outside influences and with right colors available it would have been steel grey and navy blue and pure white and black and icy tones with a peppering of red, maybe. Frankly I think it now has a definite Alan Campbell influence. I like it. It makes me feel real mundane.

I’ll go along with your….” for these last few glorious weeks let us try to answer the questions put in one letter in that letter’s reply.” First, I hope you get your heart’s desire and are actually sailing away toward the sunny shores of the U. S. and A. on the S.S. President Wilson from Yokahoma on November 13 at four in the pm. My plans for homeward travel are nil. I refuse to believe I will ever go home. I just can’t force myself to make plans and reservations until I know when I am going. With this new reorganization of USIA it may possibly mean months delay, and again I may leave on time. But when I get my orders I plan to hop right down and make reservations via plane roughly via Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kobe overland to Tokyo (or wherever) and still flying to Honolulu, and possibly a ship from there…with adequate time in each place to see a little of the country…. and possibly, depending on the time and money I have I may still venture farther down into Indonesia and Borneo and the Philippines. I have a yen to be trite here and say ha ha but won’t.

Mariella just walked in carrying the mail. Seems Tarbutton up and left them. He was being fired anyway and had his reservations on some boat but he asked for some leave to see India before going and they said no so he just left. I’m afraid you missed knowing Tarbutton too. He’s the dumb character that’s been making such a mess of the mail room. I hear they are now going to put Lois Steff on the mail delivery when she comes back from vacation. Mariella also said that Ann Marie, who doesn’t know yet that she’s on the rif list, has said that she wants to resign and wants them to send her home on a medical. She has really gone to the dogs (as well as the wolves) and looks like something death wouldn’t warm over..

Barbara is looking rather peaked lately. She has three kinds of D.B. and has lost more weight and now is yellow from the medicine she is taking. She stayed home from work a whole week. Wish I could do that, but I wax as healthy as ever. Once in a great while I contrive to stay home half a day on some trumped up charge, but as Pogo would say, it is purely a fignewton of my innerlick.

I’m getting homesicker by the letter. Got a four page legal sizer from Martha the other day, full of strange sounding prattle about Hollywood life, and “dig that crazy” jokes which I didn’t get. To quote: “Over here everyone is telling “Dig that Crazy” jokes. I heard a funny one the other day. Two guys were on a ship and were standing by the rail looking out over the water. One of them said to the other. “Dig that crazy water.” The other said, “Yeah, but just think, that’s only the top layer.”

I’m not doing much at work to earn my keep lately. Barb and Karen and I all are going through the miniature library set in our spare time. I just finished a book of Robert Frost’s poems. That man could really write. I was completely absorbed. For a short one I like:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

is also great

And would suffice.

….and as long as there’s space here for a poem - I liked this one too:

THE BIRTHPLACE

Here further up the mountain slope

Than there was ever any hope,

My father built, enclosed a spring,

Strung chains of wall around everything,

Subdued the growth of earth to grass

And brought our various lives to pass.

A dozen girls and boys we were.

The mountain seemed to like the stir,

And made of us a little while —

With always something in her smile.

Today she wouldn’t know our name.

(No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.)

The mountain pushed us off her knees.

And now her lap is full of trees.

Did I tell you about our clay modeling binge. It’s over now, it seems. I couldn’t sleep one night and got up and modeled a figure of a woman kneeling on the ground with her head buried in her arms, which are flung across a rock. I don’t know where she came from. her legs may be a little long, all doubled up under her. She looks almost indecent from the rear (she is nude). She looks real abandoned. I like her. I call her “Little Woe”. Joe said if she meant anything she would be all right. So we talked it over and decided I could print “Vick’s Inhalator” on the so-called rock and tell folks that I did her one night when I couldn’t sleep from a stuffed up nose. Mannie came over and did one and I messed around with another. His is an Indian woman sitting on the ground with her legs propped and her arms hanging loose in front of her with her elbows resting on her knees. Her face hides under her sari. She looks pretty good, and captures the feeling of the gracefully clumsy attitudes the sweeper woman assume. I didn’t like my girl. I guess I forced her to come forth and she rebelled. All the time I was scraping away at her I hated her and now she sits all dry and hard with no face and only half formed arms. I’m probably a truly great artist, temperamental, emotional and bla bla, but it has to come out of me of it’s own accord, like Little Woe. I should just let my fingers wander idly over the clammy clay until something begins to take form. But I’m afraid the great Amen has already sounded on my clay modelling career. Millie is on her seventh shrunken head.

It was awfully nice of you to say my letters amuse you. They are, of course, purposely designed to amuse. That’s also why they are so long. I think if I keep on long enough that I will eventually hit something in the letter that either amuses you or interests you and if I don’t manage to write letters that you don’t mind receiving, then you won’t answer occasionally - which to me is an unexpressed request for more. Wonder how long it will be before you are no longer interested in my bickerin brattle.

But I’m already out of things to say and a whole empty page in front of me. As Barbara’s father said when he went flying and bumping across a field on the wagon end of a pair of reins of a run-away team of horses, “Confound it.”

Did I tell you about the two boys who came in to see me….friends of Crowell Baker’s They are doing a quick Cook’s tour of the world between their junior and senior years of college and Crowell recommended that they look me up. Rather rich society boy types. Mariella and I went out to the Ambassador with them to dinner and dance. Mariella is a great one to have along to entertain impressionable youths from the States. She talks so casually and knowingly about Maharajas and Marharanis and shikars.

Last Sunday Bill Blue and i organized a night picnic. We had chicken tandoori from Yorks and beer. We went to Oklha Weir, found a grassy plot near the roaring Jumna in spate and built a quiet, singing people into a raucous, girls -in-the-ice-tub fiasco reminiscent of the dhobie party. Since I don’t drink beer I planned to be one of the quiet, reserved types, but someone got smart and brought a bottle of Dry Sack and I made a discovery. I didn’t have too much but just enough to fortify me for my task of the evening. I went home all wet to the skin with my hair full of beer and wine, tired and tipsy - and I found it quite easy to make my speech to Bill to which he replied, thanks for letting me know I haven’t a chance before I make a bigger fool of myself, and left. I thought so too, that it was nice of me.

I guess you missed Scottie and George. We now hear that they are the proud parents of a baby girl. Scottie looked very trim and cute in spite of her protrusion. She had acres of stuff for the baby. I will be anxious to see her. You will be sure and stop there at least a day and see them, won’t you? Their address: 74 University Avenue, Rangoon. Phone: North 284

Babies reminds me of what my sister said about my brother Bob’s little girl. They named her Pamela. Martha and Jess took grandma over to see Bob and his little family and she said grandma thought Pamela was such a funny name. She never could pronounce words right. (She’s the one that called her hired man, Riley Bar, Barley Rye.) She calls the baby Panama and Martha says her San Luis Obispo sounds like ‘send us a biscuit.’

My questions for this time. 1st have you heard anything new on your leave? What were your choices for a next post? Aren’t you going to do any stopping before Japan? What is your address in the states? Are you buying a lot of Indian treasures to take home? Did you find out from Ellen how one takes such a round about trip on him leave? Does the Charlie and Ruth Duffy match surprise you? Who do you line with now? Where? What do you wish you had from Delhi that you don’t that I could send you? Still working hard?

Well, I guess I did pretty well. It’s dangerous for me to have an empty page in front of me with nothing to say. I’m apt to say things like…I miss you greatly every now and then and I think about you every time I see Calcutta in print, or a Hillman Minx, or a gin and tonic, or a swimming pool, or the redhead, or a camel, or a termite eaten bamboo pole, or a 190m miles to Tibet sign, or a broken thermos jug, or a pair of sombre socks, or a letter from you, or a Princeton sticker.

BOL you say? Bushels? Baskets? Boxes? Barrels? Boondocks?

From me to you, it’s now referred to as “The pillow Case” by Barb, Joe and Mannie. OOL-DP

Filling Alan in on Delhi

July 9, 1953

Dear One,

If this were strictly a world of “an eye for an eye…” instead of “do unto others as…” I wouldn’t write you now, you know. If we made a strict accounting, I think you’d owe me a letter….however, I never can resist very long.

I waxed ambitious the other night and put all my slides in apple pie order, with little dividers and all bottom side up and shiny side out, etc. and in the process mounted the Jaipur roll that Bombay had returned in strip. My mounting job isn’t expert but it gets them off the roll. They are a little finger printed and scratched from so long handling in the roll. I gave a few of them to your friend Eddington, and thought you might like these. I know you’d like the street scenes too, but I had a hard enough time parting with the elephant.

I have been thinking about you of late .. first because I made another trip to Simla and I naturally remembered the first time. Mariella and I rode up with Charlie and Ruth Duffy (Charlie is a very capable and speedy driver, much to my surprise and delight). Except for the fact that I pulled my old “stop the car” act every few miles / the trip was pretty good, considering we made it in 7 hours. Helen, Mary London, Gloria Morasco (probably one of those you claim I mention and you don’t know - but she’s not worth explaining), Mary Tinley (another one?) and Millie Krause had gone up the day before. Then Maud and Al Awagain and an Indian friend of theirs came up. Tikki was there. It rained part of the time but was nice enough in between for us to take a few pictures. Saturday night they had a big night with Leho and Mane, the french dance team from Delhi, as the cabaret, and fireworks up on the street after dinner. Sunday we went out for a picnic, stopping to take pictures at the famous 190 miles to Tibet sign. We went way on past where we were before to Kufri and when we got there we were surrounded by clouds and mist, so we ate on the porch. Then Mariella and I came back to Delhi that afternoon with Leho and Mane in the Imperial Hotel car. I took a couple of pills Shirley Duffy had got down in the bazaar, and was o.k. It’s too much of a trip for two days. Never again. But it’s lovely up there. I’d forgotten how nice. And I remembered poor little puny Alan in Simla. My legs were tied up in knots for a couple of days after. I’m getting soft.

And second…because it was the 4th of July. Hard to believe it has been a year since last 4th of July. Glad it’s this year and not last year, though. I’d hate to go through last Aug, Sept and Oct again, even though the 4th of July was nicer. I guess they had a party with fireworks at the Taj and then went over to Jaipur house to swim, but Hi said it wasn’t the same fun and he missed the old crowd.

Only two months to go and I’m really sweating them out. The closer it gets the worse I want to get going and I’ll hate the St. Dept. if they keep me here very long.

Mannie and Helen are still on the outs, and it seems so strange. With John Geltz and Ellen Watlington both leaving, Mannie is back again into a gay social whirl of parties and is booked solid for a week. He takes great pleasure in bragging about his engagements. You’d think that after two years of his nonsense I’d eventually get bored, but he knows darn well he can make me laugh, and constantly does. Like the other night.. we stopped in to see Pat Basnett and the baby and we got to talking about weird tales and we each told a few. He told about a guy going through the jungle with his friend and falling into a well and the spiders coming back to their home…etc (I’m sure you’ve heard it.) and as we started to leave said, “I enjoyed all the stories, especially the one about the spiders.” then, “Oh good heavens, I told that one.” A typical Mannie bit of humor and just corny enough to send me into gales.

I refuse to think about leaving him. It makes me sorta sick at the stomach. The FS is no place for one who gets so attached to people. I hate to think of being at some other strange ugly post and not having Helen and Barbara for friends there. And speaking of Barb, she and Joe are as thick as thieves lately, since he got back from his Germany trip.

They are moving people into two rooms at the Taj. Helen and I were going to be on the list and Baxter called me and said that I could move into 10 and 11 or 30 and 31 and to look them over and decide which / which I did, and decided neither. I said that if Helen wanted two rooms I’d move into Ellen Watlington’s rather than either of those, or take Pat Whitney’s which is still empty and the one next to that which is occupied by Frances Lapedis of TCA who’s leaving soon too. Helen told him she didn’t especially care about moving, so we are staying as we are until Frances leaves and then I guess I’ll go into there. I have BBB type couch and chest of drawers and end table and buffet thing and I’ve built shelves in the half of the kitchen which doesn’t open and I have a coffee table and lovely house plants (including a terrific baby jackaranda), and my Ceylon mask all freshly painted and hanging on the chimney, I can see me moving now and spending the rest of my time in India in upset.

I see Jack is back in town (again!). Must have it bad. She’s a cute looking girl.

How are general services treating you? I hope they aren’t doing to you what they’ve done to Bill Dwyer lately. He’s lost about 20 lbs, but on him it looks good. I just saw him when I went to get my third diphtheria shot this morning. He was telling me about his piano lessons. I think he’s stuck on a Pan Am hostess and he’s nervous and losing weight over her, and he keeps himself busy plunking the piano. What a card.

I feel lousy today. I had dinner last night at Jay Walker’s replacement’s. The Von der Leith are very nice. She’s Swedish. Bill Blue and I and William L.S. Williams (from the department) and Mrs. Loftus (he’s home on consultation again) were there. We had before dinner drinks and table wines and dessert wines and liquors, etc., etc. and everybody skolling everybody else. I’m not used to this gracious living.

So o.k. Allin, dear ‘lil w.t. so long for now.

(Signed in red pencil—) Petunia

Life here is full and fun, still.

Today’s the 24th and it’s monsooning! Lovely, lovely rain. My air conditioner was off all night and I was still comfortable. Everything looks richer and greener already. The rains bring out everything - flowers, angle worms and bugs of all sizes and descriptions. Last night I was over at Bill Blue’s with Mannie and Barbara to look at my south Indian pictures on his projector, and we were sitting out on his back verandah. I went out to wander in the dripping back yard to find where the gurgling water noise came from, and located in the shrubs of the back fence a lawn watering tap running, although it had been raining all day. It ran through a short length of tin pipe and at the end of the pipe was a huge pile of dead silver fish, brought all the way from the holy Jumna river over in Old Delhi.

I’m not very busy today and could write a big letter, but I can’t think of much to say. I keep wanting to talk about going home, and that’s all. I wonder where you will be by then. Is it for sure you are going to Provo?

Today I am wearing: a skirt made from some material Alan brought me from Jaipur, red, white and black hand printed, sort of striped; a pair of black open sandals that the Chinese shoemakers made; a silver bracelet with six stones, all different, of jade, lapislazila, agate, and amber; a big tiger’s eye ring; a non-descript white pique blouse with eyelet insets, my watch; and no slip (but a couple of other unmentionables). I’ve let my hair grow long and most of the time I wear it high in a ponytail, which I’ve grown to like very much. Usually it’s too warm down on my neck but today is cool. My hair has gotten blonder and I’m fairly brown skinned. I also have fingernail polish nicely on all three fingers, which I scrapped off during our picture showing last night. Oh yes, silver dangling earrings, too.

As you will see, Martha, from copy of my letter to Irene, Life here is full and fun, still. I know I’m going to hate leaving when the time comes. Right now I’m a bit interested in one of our eligible bachelors here. Much to my surprise he keeps dating me.

I have a red sore patch on my left arm from a diphtheria test. Little ‘old me who never done no one no harm, I mean who never has had a disease and who has been immune to almost every kind of shot, showed up positive on these tests and now I have to take a series of shots. Shots are the one thing you can’t escape in the F.S. Every month or so the health unit sends you a little note saying it’s time to report for a booster of something or other. Anyway they’ve kept me healthy. Almost everyone gets sick here at one time or another. They all at least get dysentery and it’s very bad on some. My friend Barbara has turned anemic and low blood pressure and everything else, and here I am blooming big and healthy with nothing worse than a few bad colds on my New Delhi health record. Mannie has had amoebic and Helen jaundice. I feel left out.

Our beloved Chuck Mullin is going home on leave this Friday…and he’s landing in California. I’ll try to get all the straight dope on him and see if he will have a chance to look you up. At least I may send you a little memento via him if he has room. Chuck’s the one who started my name of “Pet,” here. He’s a USISer.

I sit here and listen to the little native children playing naked in the rain outside on the roof below my office, singing their funny little chants. And here I am at the end of the page. Much, much love.

Popular Dorothy

June 19, 1953

Dear Irene,

I have had the great good fortune to receive from Martha a letter from you at home. You did a beautiful job of making me homesick.

I wonder if your last paragraph means that you are going back to Provo. Blast it! I jut can’t keep track of anybody. Can you imagine how helpless and remote one feels after two years of complete severances. I sometimes feel almost angry that people at home get married, and change jobs, and graduate, and take trips, and grow up without my being there to share their experiences with them.

Nobody ever mentions any of the old class of ‘45, though. Do you ever see Barbara or Virginia? What’s Lois doing? What became of Bob Edde? And last I heard Kenny was engaged (months ago). Is he married yet? Tell me about Vance and his family.

There’s nothing to tell you, unless it is what I do with myself. So in case you’re interested in that, this is my weekend, as an example of how life goes on in Delhi.

Friday night was an open house party out in Nizamuddin district, an apartment of two of the Embassy girls. Big affair. I taxied out with my good friends, Mannie, Barbara and Mariella and we stood around on the flat roof of their apartment and tried to catch any stray breezes that may have slightly stirred the air and made polite conversation with all the same old cocktail party Embassy gang as we always see. It gets to be funny because we dress all up and go out to these cocktail parties and then mostly stand and talk to each other and go home. I usually try to force myself to circulate a little and speak to as many different people as possible. They are such a foolish waste of time, actually.

Anyway we went home about 9:00 and Mike Merle-Smith came over to Mannie’s and we all ate a little and talked and retired early. Mike is a young lad of 27 who is travelling around the world with his mother on a 18 month tour. They are in their sixth month. Must be filthy rich. I met him because he is from Princeton and knew Alan and was in Calcutta before here. Alan told him to look me up. Also he happened to meet Crowell Baker, another Princeton-ite who was through here the first of the year and who was a very good friend of mine. I think I told you about him. Mike met Crowell somewhere in Indo-China.

Mannie had a dinner party about a month ago and invited Mike and his mother, and then soon after they went to Kashmere for a couple of weeks and he wrote me from Kashmere and asked me to save Saturday night for him.

So Saturday night we went to the Imperial for dinner and dancing. But a little side issue, here.

I have been going out a few times with a guy named Bill Blue who is a pretty high officer in the Political Section of the Embassy. He’s a really eligible bachelor in the late thirties. I like him very much. His best friend is Bill Dwyer, who I have also dated a few times. Bill Dwyer called me on Wednesday and asked me out for Saturday night and I accepted - mostly out of surprise that he had called me because I haven’t accepted a date with him for a long, long time. Then after I hung up I remembered Mike’s letter so I called him back and rescinded the acceptance. Then I was out at Bill Blue’s last Thursday to see some pictures (color slides) and he asked me out for Saturday night, and I naturally had to say no again.

So Saturday night at the Imperial they both came in, together in a party of eight, with other girlfriends. I was glad to be there with Mike, though. He’s a really nice looking guy and I think Bill Blue knows who he is because when Secretary Dulles was here Mike and his mother were invited to his reception because his mother is a personal friend of Dulles’ and Bill Blue handles all the big-wigs and was the one who Mike happened to talk to when he was in the Embassy checking on visas and stuff. I’m going out with Mike again tonight. He’s leaving again Thursday. Oh, to be able to travel around the world in grand style like he is. Most of the kids who come through are doing it on shoe strings, hitch-hiking where they can and going by the cheapest routes. There is another cute little guy here named Bill Howard (just now also in Kashmere). All these guys seem to hear about either Helen or me by other’s that have been here. Bill Howard had a letter of introduction to Helen from a guy named Dave Hall who he met somewhere in Africa. They are all such cute, enthusiastic college joe types and we get a big kick out of them.

Yesterday I worked some more on my clay head and then smashed it up. It was getting pretty good and I have become famous on the strength of it….but it wasn’t started right to be of any use so I decided to break it up and start over before it would be too hard to destroy it because I’d worked at it so much. You really should have a chicken wire frame inside them so they will dry from the inside too. This one was some 20 lbs of solid clay.

Last night I went out to Bill Blue’s for dinner to see some more colored slides…these from Ceylon taken by Mr. and Mrs. Sannebeck who were there about the same time as we were. I must say they weren’t half as good as mine. Bill had two married couples and me. We had tamales and chili for dinner.

I’m definitely encouraged with Bill. Still like him. He’s older, mature, a lot of fun, loaded with prestige, and I’m the envy of many New Delhi women. I don’t really know why he picked me. I remember the first time I ever saw him at a dinner party at Sannebeck’s and I wasn’t even introduced to him by some fluke, so I didn’t even talk to him. Then I saw him at a couple of parties and merely spoke -but I somehow had a feeling there was a man I would be dating. Then one day when I was at the Embassy to listen to Adlai Stevenson and I was standing around with all the other Embassy people I could feel his presence near me and I felt, rather than saw, that he was looking at me….so that afternoon I wasn’t too surprised when I got a call from him and he asked me to a dinner party of Bill Dwyer’s at the Gymkhana Club. I really felt smart at that party. There were some six high-bracket married couples, Bill Dwyer and his girl, and Bill Blue and me. Especially pleased was I when I saw my boss, Mr. Grondahl and his wife there in another party. Naturally Grondahl had some kidding comments to make next workday about how I’d better watch out for the Political Section guys.

Then, lo and behold, he asked me out for the next Saturday night, then to the premier showing of the Coronation, then out to his place to see some slides, etc. etc. and each time I’m surprised and pleased.

Golly, Irene, I’m popular lately. There is a guy in Standard Vacuum Oil named Hi Howard who I have also been dating. He’s been crazy about me ever since he came last year but I haven’t gone with him much until lately, mostly because he was either too scared to ask me or because I was too busy or something. He’s awfully sweet and cute sometimes. Other times, I don’t stand him. Usually he used to get loopy on beer and then he’d have the courage to come over or call me up and then I couldn’t stand him and would be mean to him. I told him I couldn’t stand him around when he’s been drinking so he’s changed his methods. He is a lot of fun and real, real sweet when he’s sober. I can’t help but be a little mean to him, though, because I have to keep him convinced that he doesn’t love me because i know I never really love him. He’s 27, six foot about five, prematurely grey, looks very much like Stewart Granger.

Also there is a guy I met at our Dhobie party who is travelling around India and the near far East for Caterpillar Tractor Co. and who is in Delhi quite a bit. I had heard about him a long time before I met him. he was going with one of our enchanting red-headed Embassy girls. We invited him for her. Then he started asking me out. Another one that I’ll never love, but quite like well, and could have in a minute.

Now a whole year, almost, from Alan’s departure from New Delhi and really completely and wholly cured of him with these other men asking me out and falling at my feet I can understand a lot of things about Alan.

Sounds like my life is a must men, men, men. Come to think of it, besides the routine of work life in Delhi is revolved around and involved in a “where is my next date coming from” context. We really are rather limited in what we can do. Everything that goes on involved - who you are going with, who invited you to what party, what are you going to wear. Pretty dull at times. I need to take another trip. I think I’ll go again to Agra when it gets cooler. It still hasn’t started monsooning yet. Today’s another sticky hot day.

And here I am supposedly only three months away from going home time and with two whole years of gallivanting around India with this man and that and probably having had more dates in these two years than all the rest of my life put together, and what do I have to show for it? One broken and very well mended heart, two diaries full of date notifications, about six well-worn formals, and a photograph album full of party pictures, most of which would be better off burned.

I know a little man both ept and ert. An into? extro? No, He’s just a vert. Sheveled and couth and kempt, precuneus, ane: His image trudes upon the captive brain. When life turns sipid and my friend is traught, the spirit soars as I would sist it ought. Chalantly then, like any gainly goof, My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

Life in Delhi continues……

June 11, 1953

Dear Martha,

I hope you weren’t really serious when you said that you hadn’t heard from me since before your wedding. I promise you I have written - at least twice. I did get the wedding pictures and was so happy to see them.

About my coming home…..I’m beginning to wonder when I will ever make it. There are rumors going around now that people can’t expect to go home when their two year terms are up because of the economy drive and the mixup with the new administration, and they are thinking of making each post a three year term, and all those who are overdue now will get first chance at the travel money available, etc., etc. One never knows until the department gets good and ready to send you orders. It makes it pretty hard to plan just what you are going to do on the way home. I do have a rather nebulous journey planned which takes me through the East…..Calcutta; Rangoon, Burma; Bankok, Siam; Penang and Singapore, Malay; Jakarta and Bali in Indonesia; Manila, in the Phillippines; Hong Kong, China; Formosa; and overland through Japan from Kobe to Tokyo; Hawaii; and the good old U. S. and A. from Los Angeles to Melba, Idaho. Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it. In actuality, though, I will no doubt fly to Calcutta, Rangoon, Bankok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hawaii and home.

I sure am anxious to get home and see you again and meet Jess. Home seems like such a wonderful, modern, extravagant place. I can hardly believe it when I look at the magazines and see modern homes and huge supermarket stores. I’ll probably go mad in a Department store. The other day I was over at Pat and Adrian Bassnett’s and two guys in the airforce here came in with a big package for them that came in on the MATS plane from the States, via Tokyo. And they had a tray full of half-pint cartons of milk, all the way from Tokyo on the plane. We were all so excited to see milk again we nearly choked. I actually felt almost like crying. It’s the first milk I’ve had in almost two years. I was too excited to drink it then, and besides I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, so I saved it and had it for lunch the next day, in the meantime going around bragging to everyone that I had a carton of milk and they would come in and look at it and turn it around and exclaim over it.

I am afraid I have lost contact with Tom. Do you still write him at Anapolis? Last I heard from him - months ago- he said he was engaged. I did enjoy hearing from him, and I hate myself for neglecting my letters. Also you said you were enclosing a letter from Roddie, but didn’t. Imagine him graduating.

Wouldn’t it be fun if I could get home for the church dedication, too. Impossible, I’m afraid.

This is the classic sentence in your letter. “I hardly know what to tell you about everybody because I don’t know who you have heard from.” Everybody thinks I hear from everybody else, and the truth is that I don’t hear from anybody, except Ann once in a blue moon and she tells me mostly about her high school friends. I got more information out of the letters that she had written to Mother when she was in Calif. than anything for years. Also Irene’s letter, which you enclosed, was most informative.

I should qualify the statement about Ann and the blue moon. Actually she is a wonderful little letter writer. I look forward to her next letter every time and she writes fairly often. My last three were: April 7, May 1, May 27. I’ll expect another in a couple of weeks. Bless her heart.

Life in Delhi continues…… the latest diversion is clay modeling. I went out to Gwalior Potteries with Millie Krause last Saturday and picked up ten pounds of clay, just for fun. We were talking about what to do with it a few nights later (Millie makes small three inch high heads) and Mannie convinced me I should try making a clay model of myself, so we went and got clay out and started in. I found I have great talent, or maybe a feeling of clay, because it has shaped up wonderfully. I’m practically famous around these parts. People keep dropping by and saying, ‘I heard about your head.’ It really looks like me. For a long time I looked more like you than me and even some of my friends who had seen pictures of you thought so. I don’t know just what I‘ll do with it when it’s finished.

Now everyone is interested in clay modelling. Barb took some of my clay and made an ash tray last night. Joe Krene said, “Why don’t we start a ceramics class” and Mannie thought that was a wonderful idea so we are going to get one of the vacant rooms of the Taj and set up a ceramics shop and let the kids all come and work there. Jack Masey, our exhibits officer, has brought me a pair of calipers. Everyone is all excited about it and can hardly wait to get their hands on some clay. We are even going to get some glaze and possibly have our own kiln made to fire them - but if not we can always take them to Gwalior and have them fire them.

The weather here is most disagreeable this period. We hover between 98 degrees and 116 degrees and it’s very dusty and dry. We are on the verge of the monsoons and waiting anxiously for them to break. I love the monsoons. Today looks like the day. The air is overcast and heavy and the city sits in dull silence waiting. Even the crows have ceased their winging and crying and are all perched on the flat roofs staring at the skies expectantly, almost angrily, as though in mute protest that the sky has no right to withhold longer it’s cooling, cleansing rains.

And That’s the Truth!

June 9 1953

Allen Dear,

All kinds of nice things - and a nasty - happened to me today.

1. Four rolls of colored - oh, so beautifully colored - slides came to me today from the old U.S. and A. I get all excited and just want to hug myself for being such a terrific photog when I think about them. I got an average of 21 pics to a roll (tho I must admit a few of them have been pared down). You grappling with a shark…..You’ll have to see them. …but first I have to look at them some more. Bill Blue has a real good projector and some pics he wants to see too so we’re going to get together on them some day——me with Joe’s screen and my South India and Ceylon shots.

2. Terrific letter from Martha and one from Irene.

3. And yours. Good I didn’t see the punkka incident. I actually roared at the reading. Sorry you had to lose your Fretty’s. Get’s sadder and sadder! I just realized today that I’m almost the oldest one in USIS…only Joe Krene Dan Bailey and Chuck Mullin are older.

4. Joe is back from Germany. He brought me a bottle of Jean Pereau’s “Moment Supreme” (perfume) and a purse flask in gold. Bless his heart.

5. Bill Blue called this am. for a date to the premier charity showing of the Coronation. Wow! And don’t tell me you don’t know Bill Blue.

   But No. 6 is the nasty.

   6. This afternoon Ben Fleck called and asked me did I want to go to Calcutta with the Ambassador this Friday….and I’d loved to have gone cause I may not get another plane trip chance and Cal’s the place I still have to see and you’re there and I need a weekend diversion about now, but I wouldn’t break a date with Bill for Calcutta, or even you…..so I’m not going. Margaret Cotter is going instead.

   Guess what I had last night…All the way from Tokyo. I was over at Pat and Adrian’s and Ginny and Tommy were there and two of the guys on the plane crew came in with a tray full of real genuine state-side type cartons of homogenized, pasteurized honest to goodness milk. We were all so excited and pleased. I for one felt almost like crying. Imagine a glass of milk!

   Mannie is back from a terrific weekend up in the Nainital area with Harrison Parker and he met all kinds of interesting people, including Gertrude Emerson Sen. For four days I didn’t see him and I sure missed him. Had a pretty dull weekend.

   I wrote the enclosed yesterday in a few moments of leisure, and when I was feeling devilish, in advance of the time I received your letter with the return of the Dhobie pics. Can you read it?

   And the salutation comes from attached.

   What, pray, if anything, do you mean by “See you there?”

   Which reminds me that there are heavy rumors around here that we shouldn’t plan on home leave at the end of two year terms.

   Re your question about Mary lon - I couldn’t quite decide if you meant Mary London or your red headed one. If Mary London….. She has a few very good girlfriends, doesn’t bother much with the others, as far as I can see, and spends a good deal of time amusing herself and going out with her Ragu.

If you mean the Redheaded One…..she has Paulie Ruffing and what more could one ask? Besides she is close second to me in popularity with the boys (boys? boys?). Actually she was far from glum at the Dhobie party. The camera may have caught her on a few occasions just after she had been badly beated by some zealous admirer or dunked in the ice tubs (think she made about seven trips). She was very gay and having lots of fun, and she went home and changed into new crisp lovely eye smashing ensembles at least three times, only to be poured upon immediately for a new dunking. Actually I very seldom see her… have always wished I could be a better friend to her, but can’t, so don’t try. Quite candidly I think she’s a real doll, blast her, but I’m not sure warm live blood runs in her veins.

And Ellen Booth wasn’t glum either. She nearly went mad running back and forth with water to dump on people. She’s going up to Kathmandu to help out in place of their American Secretary, Carla Schn_____? who has yellow jaundice. A few weeks.

So o.k. ‘til I send the Mannie manuscript (now nearly completed) and my beautiful, wonderful, full color, sharp focus, fine composition, well-chosen subject pictures, (Or would you rather not bother with being entrusted with 80 some odd invaluable slides?) for perusal and immediate return.

Let me know should I bother…..

Oh, yes, about the news. I’m sorry I said anything…because now I can’t recall what it was. Did I give you any hints?

I’ll have you know it’s six o’clock! It’s damn seldom…..

and that’s the truth!

Pet

Images

These are some of the treasures Dorothy collected during her time in India.

She wrote on each of the backs of these “I bought this card, which is painted on silk, in India in 1952. -Grandma Doro”

Dorothy’s hand drawn Maps of India and places she traveled to.

She Sounds Like Tallulah Bankhead

May 14, 1953

Dear Mother,

So as not to waste a perfectly good air letter which was typed and then not used because something had to be enclosed, I’ll use it to rush off a little note to you and tell you that yesterday I received the pair of stockings from you for my birthday, and to thank you most immensely.

We’re having hot, hot weather. All water taps marked COLD are hotter than the HOT ones, and instead of trying to take a cold shower you turn on the hot because it’s cooler than the cold. But with air conditioners - not bad! We’re also having dust storms and my throat trouble is worse than ever. I sound more like Tallulah Bankhead than DP. By throat trouble I mean that I always sound like I have a frog in my throat. Several people have the same trouble and we think it’s the dust. I hope it clears up when I leave India. I’ve been croaking for a year, now.

My boss (see above) just got orders to transfer to the Dept. Three other USIS people got orders, but for termination of service. Quire a blow to one of them.

Is there anything special anyone would like me to bring them from India? I’d like to bring home some little mementos for everyone, but I don’t know just what. Time’s getting short.

I’m going to be very busy in the next couple of weeks helping TCG clean up all his work before he leaves, so don’t worry if you don’t near from me for a few weeks. But write me.

Much love and thanks for the stockings. I don’t wear stockings now but I’ll surely need them come travelling time in October.

Dorothy

Letter to Alan from Mannie

This is written by Manny Silverstein to Alan Campbell. I thought it would be good to put in because it adds another view to Doro’s good times.

May 20, 1953

Alan,

Last Saturday night, May 16, 1953, the residents of the Taj and select outsiders witnessed the most spectacular baccanalia in their history…………Barbara, Dorothy, Bill Devlin, Mo London, Shirley Oaalan Baumgartner, Millie KrauseMouth and I combined our talents to put on what we called “Hoosier Dhobie Night.” Only clothes that have been on the rocks were worn. We served beer and hamburgers (with all the trimmings) to about eighty people. We had our corridor decorated with old clothes, balloons, and signs that read MY DHOBIE DOES EVERYTHING; KWITCHERDAMBELIAKIN; SHUT UP AND HAVE A GOOD TIME DAMMIT; TO MAKE WHITE CLOTHES WHITER USE LAVA ROCK; TRY gra-VEL; MAKE A FRIEND OF SOAP AND WATER; etc. We had lines of clothes strung up from the front of the Taj pointing the way to the scene of the crime. It went off with a bang right in the beginning when water-filled balloon bombs were tossed into the thick of the congregation. Everyone went wild. Ellen charged around pouring pitchers of ice water on fellow guests. Meralyn Hartmann was forcibly dipped into the beer icing tub five or six times during the course of the evening. So was Pat Patterson, Lillian Byers, Miss Moore, and Shirley Duffy (with the able assistance of Big Dave). No one missed a water drenching and a few escaped without a beer shampoo. We had mock bull fights and performed daring feats of acrobatics. Ann Marie Keenan was in her glory. Clothing was ripped to ribbons. The few that arrived dressed were pressurized into on the spot revisions. Miss Moore announced dinner perched high on the shoulders of Big Dave (who was clipping around at a fast trot). Ruth Twohy did back flips and one-armed cartwheels. Lillian Godek did head stand-split combos. Louise Weiss cavorted in a shredded red dress, drenched to the skin, with her short white hair flopping in the breeze, looking like a paragraph from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ann Tamalages hair was wet plastered against her head and had hysterics while beer was being poured down her peasant blouse bodice. I could go on and on….the party went full force from the very beginning and dispersed abruptly at 1:30 AM.

This is being written under the shadow cast by John Foster Dulles. He and his entourage has taken over the upstairs offices of the Political Section you have never seen so much commotion! No local employees, including bearers, are allowed in the central wing. Sam Richardson is posted strategically to enforce this edict not unlike a Nubian slave. Ben Fleck is ensconced at the top of the stairs. They’ve got a special contingent of Delhi police leaning on their lathis all around the Embassy wall. The cloak and dagger boys leave no one unscathed by their furtive glances. Johnny is slated to say a few words to the Embassy staff tomorrow morning.

Did you know that Ann McWethy is leaving for Paris on Thursday to wed Dr. Heiman of Industrial Hygiene fame? George Hodge got his RIF. Cheryl Kirby too. Betty Winn too. Joe Sakey too. Couldn’t that colour print be made in Bombay? What can be more lethal than water-filled balloon bombs ready to go off?

As Ever,

Mannie

Dorothy in shredded attire. (On the far left.)

The kids are all right. At the going away party they threw.

Ice Tube Dunkings!

Hoosier Dhobie Night

May 7, 1953

Dear Folks

The mail man was good to me today. I received the beautiful stockings from Ann and will save them carefully for a very special occasion. Also I enjoyed so much pictures of you and the Ross Jr’s.

I had forgotten even sending the name plate to daddy. It sure took a long time getting there. The Indian writing is the same name in Hindi. I enjoyed so much the newsy letter that arrived today, with Ann’s letter to mother while she was on the trip, and with Ruth’s letter to me. Although they are all dated in January and February, it was so much fun reading them.

I also got a nice newsy letter from Mrs. Hatfield today. They have the idea that when I come home, that’s the end of that, and she was wondering where I will live.

I feel like I should apologize and make excuses for the sloppy way in which I wrote up the trip. I did it off and on at work whenever I had a spare minute, and thus it doesn’t always hang together. Also I had no way of affixing the pictures except by scotch tape and it looks pretty messy. But then, that’s typical of me.

Mannie Silverstein is plugging away on his account of the trip, and I think it is going to be a “gone with the wind” sized novel, if he keeps it up. Just for fun I will send you a copy of his account also, so that you can see it from two eyes. He’s going into much greater detail than I did and some of his descriptions are pretty good. He has a dozen people who he promised to write to, so I’m going to mimeograph it for him and snatch some copies for myself and send them to some of my friends saying “Here’s the account of my recent trip as seen through the eyes of my companion. He composed it, I only typed it.” How un-Emily Post-ish can you get. Or how lazy. It’s a pretty big project, though.

I have thought that some folks, not knowing, may wonder just what goes on here. Young girls travelling all over the country with young boys! How shocking. But actually it is all too, too innocent. The boys are all more like brothers to us than boyfriends, except in a special few cases. None of us were special cases.

I may have sent you the enclosed pictures before, I ran across them in a box of junk the other day and they seem to be extras. The sad looking picnic job was way last summer when a bunch of us decided we wanted to get out in the sun and off on a picnic. We couldn’t find a good picnic spot and finally, in desperation, spread our lunch out on the rocks in the middle of the dry hills of the ridge above New Delhi. We look like a bunch of sad refugees caught in a flood.

The other picture, I think, was taken on our first trip to the Taj Mahal a year and a half ago. (No, it was Jaipur!)

My boss is back today. He called a meeting of all Americans and about ten of the top local employees this morning. We all expected to hear some startling news, but he didn’t really have much to say except that we shouldn’t expect any violent eruptions in the program or personnel. The talk is pretty strong in favor of making a separate agency of the Information Branch, but it won’t make much difference in the field, actually.

Our weather is running in the 110 degrees bracket and when you climb into a car that’s been sitting in the sun you are very quickly par-baked, but with everything air conditioned, including the Taj, life is still very livable. Our social life has quieted down considerably in the last several months, because of the fact that there are just too many people here now. They are going to start going home - the ones who came about the same time as I did - and we will be having another round of farewell parties again. Barbara and I and Mannie and four others are getting together on a big picnic in honor of USISer name of Jim Grigsby. We are sending out the enclosed invitations and our guest list, pared to the very dry bone, comes to some 78 people. That is cut back from an original list of about 110. We are going to simply have hamburgers (with trimmings), potato salad and beer and cokes. We have thought up a bag of tricks to pull on the gay crowd and some cute decorations for the lawn……like a bunch of ragged clothes draped over the bushes, as the washermen do it. Dhobie means washerman. We are all going to come in tattered, dhobie worn clothes. It will be a warm night and we are going to have tugs of wars through a water hose, etc. There hasn’t been a big hilarious brawl around here for months. This will be one, I’m sure.

I just sent our USIS carpenter, Ram Singh, to make me a book shelf for my room. When they built cabinets in the kitchen it closed up half of the double doors into my room, so I had him put shelves in there. My room looks pretty nice now. I have a tall wicker screen in three sections in one corner and on it I have hung two Tibetan plaques and a little painting Alan sent me from Puri, near Calcutta, and another painting I bought a long time ago from a struggling young artist who came around to my door.

My drapes are yellow and brown, reversible. My rug is a reed fiber type. I have a couple of large copper trays and a few bowls and plates and pitchers sitting around, and my Dancing Shiva bronze piece.

I have collected a few books. The Embassy recently released some nice new furniture to the Taj people and I managed to get a good looking chest of three drawers and a thing that is supposed to be a buffet cabinet, both in light blonde wood. I also got a blond webbed chair with bright orange webbing. My walls are cream colored and the whole room is a cream and yellow and brown and orange and rust, with copper and brass. Not at all in high style or taste, but after a year and a half, quite livable. I also have a brass tub which I bought over in Old Delhi last week, which just fits in my fireplace and in which I have planted a big monstera delicioso (?) or what I’d call a split leaf philadendrum - and I have two other small planters of philadendrum. Makes me sound so homey. Actually I spend less time in my room than almost anyone…….and I find it impossible to keep my poor little bearer busy. I’m sure he is puzzled by me after working for Pat Whitney. She had him on hand all the time, talking to him a mile a minute, showing him how to make things, sending him on errands, taking care of her two Siamese cats, etc. He makes my breakfast of two eggs, scrambled; one slice of toast; and a glass of juice, and possible some fruit, mango or banana or something. Then there’s nothing to do, as far as I can see, but for him to do the dishes, dust the room, give my dirty clothes to the dhobie and go home. For lunch I eat only cold salads. I just can’t down the huge meals that Pat used to eat, so I told him, “No hot, heavy meals at lunch time.” And at night I often go out for dinner and when I stay home, I usually am not very hungry because I have cookies and crackers and cheese and stuff like that at tea time. (5:30).

I showed Narayan the pictures you sent with the stockings and he grinned all over and asked me how many brothers and sisters I have and said I looked like my mother and commented on the pretty yard. He’s a real cheerful, willing, likable and nice looking boy. I haven’t had to jump on him yet for being dirty - which is the biggest headache you have with bearers.

Alan writes quite often from Calcutta. Perhaps you heard about the air crash recently. A comet with 43 people aboard crashed outside of Calcutta. I see by the papers that Alan, being the American Consular Office there, had to go to the scene and be present at the funeral. I haven’t heard from him since it happened.

About the two women who were murdered here, Mrs. Hatfield mentioned that they heard the news in Chicago and were so worried about me, too. It actually happened up in Dehra Dun, about 60 miles from here. There is no danger of anything happening to me here. That was a rare case. Worse things than that happen in the States occasionally, too.

I’ve stretched this into write a long letter. You are lucky that I’ve not been busier lately, or you’d never have gotten the trip letter or several others, since I do all my writing at work. Mr. Grondahl hasn’t settled down enough to give me anything to do yet.

I’m going swimming after work tonight. I haven’t gone much this year because the Cecil Hotel where we swim decided we make too much noise and won’t let us come unless we are guests. Rico Sutre, a boy from the Swiss Embassy who goes with Barbara and who lives there is picking us up. I’ve no doubt lost all my diving skills I was so proud of last year.

Love you so much.

Petunia

(My new nickname)

Invitation to the party Dorothy helps throw.

Plans for Coming Home

May 5, 1953

Dear Folks,

I’m just going to rush off a short little note to tell you that I love you still, that I’m feeling fine, that Delhi is hotter’n hadees but not unbearable because we have air conditioning now in the Taj and at work, and that in a few days you will be receiving my 35 page, complete with pictures, letter about the trip - which, if it holds together that long, should go in the next Round Robin cause I’ll never get it all written again.

I shall be expecting to get some well filled 10 cent airmail form letters addressed to D. Pettijohn., United States Information Service, 54 Queensway, New Delhi, India, soon.

Personnel office called me the other day and asked what I wanted to do at the end of my term. My boss was called back to Washington for consultation and before he left he asked Ralston to talk to me and tell me that he would very much like me to stay on for awhile, if I would like to……but I told him I’d rather go home when my term is up. I don’t know exactly what the personnel cut and travel freeze, etc., will do to me. I hope it won’t mean that I’ll be one of those who are let out of the service. I hope I can get home in October, late. Since I will have only approx. two months at home I would like to make it November and December so I can be home for Christmas and not have to spend Christmas and New Years in some dreary air terminal or at a new post where I don’t know anyone.

The enclosed picture is to show you how fat and brown and healthy I am, and what my friends look like. Mannie took this picture at the Taj. Four of the boys were in the band at the Imperial Hotel and good friends of ours. They were leaving for Calcutta soon and Mannie had them over for tea. From left to right in the back; Helen Merena, my bathroom mate; three band boys; Frank Schmeltzer (Schmoo) who lives on the end of my corridor, works in the communication center at the embassy; Sitting: (left to right) Barbara Moore, another USIS secretary and my very best friend and constant companion, an ex American Airways hostess from California; Fred, another band boy; Julie Reese, a new girl I don’t know too well from way down south somewhere; Mary Tinley, another new girl; and me. See a leaf of Mannie’s banana tree near Barb. He has a lot of foliage around there.

Must run now…..look for the manuscript.

Lots of love,

Troubles with Film Photography

April 29th, 1953

Dear Alan.

You’re definitely crazy, but I love you in spite of your lunacy….and I’ll get your pictures made a.s.a.p.

You never answer any questions I might casually ask so I’m drawing your special attention to this one and I’d like to know the answer.

In the bunch of pictures I sent you, were these three included? The one of me in an aesthetic half-nude pose in front of the poor man’s Taj Mahal, of the one of the poor man’s Taj Mahal from under the front gate, or the one of you and I in Shiva poses on the outlying rock at Comorin. We have lost track of all three negatives. I thought we may have accidentally sent them with the pictures. Mannie’s looking for them…I can’t find them. Just checking this possibility. Although it’s against my policies to ever say “please write,” please do.

I’ll have a set made up for the band boys and you can give them to them with our love.

Re the chickens…don’t let anyone kid you….They are a bunch of old hens.

Re the Rs, 20/-thanks and I’m sorry. Now that I have started lining mine up to send home in a long (I’m on page 21 now) letter about the trip in which I am enclosing the pictures as I come to them (via Scotch tape right on the page) I can see how a good lot of them are our duplication or just not interesting.

Re your green color pictures, which I haven’t seen yet, you should see what happened to Barbara’s. Out of about five rolls she didn’t get more than ten or fifteen. She discovered that her shutter was dirty and wouldn’t click shut as it should and they are mostly all way over exposed and unrecognizable. It was sickening to look through them. In the last batch there were eight out of 40. Those eight were very very good, though. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for mine.

I gave your best to BM but HM is now on a glacier somewhere between here and Kashmir with Mary Tollison and three girls from Ceylon.

Re your missing me, me you too.

I have lots of gossip but no time right now. Will write more when the pics are ready.

One bit is that Ken Parrish and Alice Donaldson, who you may not know, are engaged and the date is set for June 5th, I think.

Much love,

DPet

“Ghoul Cloths”

April 18, 1953

Dear Folks,

I hope by now you have received an interim letter and have quit worrying. Actually there is nothing at all to worry about. I’m as safe here as if I were in my mother’s arms.

Today is Saturday and I have come down to work…this is a lull just before knocking off for lunch. My boss has been requested to report immediately to the Department for consultation on the information programs. Perhaps you have been reading about the investigations, etc. So Grondahl is taking the plane out tonight ad we are lining up some material for him and tying up loose ends. Maybe I’ll be out of a job before long.

I still have the big project of writing up my trip. Maybe I will get at it tomorrow. Since the trip I have been rather unsettled and am just now getting down to the business of leading a normal life. I think I told Ann in my last letter about coming home to a torn up room when they were fixing my kitchen. I finally got moved back into my room and it looks quite nice now. I went on a three day hunting trip, which I also told Ann about, over the weekend that was my birthday, then stayed for a week in the apartment of a girl out in Old Delhi while she was away, then went on another three day trip, this time fishing up on the Ganges river with Joe Krene and Mannie Silverstein.

We found a perfect place to camp on the mountainside close to the river. Below the campgrounds, and availability by a good footpath, is a wide sandy beach of the finest grey river sand. You can run down to the river’s edge and dive right into the Ganges. It’s clean and deep and calm off the beach. Down the shore a little is a place where a small stream comes into the river over a rocky canyon bed and there on the rocks the village people bring their dead for cremation. One night when we were there we saw the funeral fire and watched the proceedings from our beach upstream. The next day we explored the rocks and found no evidence of the cremation except a newly charred rock right on the edge of the river where they had built the fire, and the cloth which had covered the body. They take brand new muslin or fine cotton cloth, cover the body and carry it to the burning spot, discard the cloth and the clothes the victim wore when he died, leaving them there on the rocky shore.

Mannie and I explored the whole rocky area while Joe fished, and we found three silver bracelets. I also gathered up about five of the cloths, which we dubbed “ghoul cloths” and beat them on the rocks in the river as the natives do, and carried them back to camp. Horrible as it may seem, they are making me about eight lovely tea towels. Honestly they are brand new, and the dhobie washed them and bleached them for me. Joe and Mannie said they would tell everybody not to come to my place for tea because I have ghoul cloth tea towels.

This is one of the bracelets Dorothy found. I have been wearing it for a decade and a half and she is always impressed on how much it has ‘shined up.’ There is a butterfly typed into it in the middle.

Well - Today is Tuesday and I didn’t get my trip letter started or this one finished worked until 7:30 Saturday night then went to a party for a departing girl and afterwards with Mannie and Joe and Barabara to the Imperial to see the show and dance. It’s the first time I’ve gone to one of the hotels dancing for months. Remember how I used to go almost every night when I first came?

Sunday was my day of rest and I loafed around in the Sun and then went to an Indian dance show with the kids. They called it a puppet show. The story of Ramayana (the Hindu bible) was acted out by the troupe as though they were puppets on strings…very clever.

Last night Barb, Mannie and I went to the nursery after my tea. (I had six kids for tea so a Fulbright student friend of mine who is in town could meet Mannie and Helen who have both been to Japan. He is leaving India soon and will go through Japan and wanted to know something about the country. Helen and Mannie both gave him several addresses.) We had Joe’s car. He went to Germany for six weeks with the Navy plane and left the car with Barbara. So we dragged home another banana tree and some more plants. I got four new ones. We all buy these rich tropical plants and make regular jungles out of our verandas and yards. Mannie has three banana trees and two huge palms and various other trees as well as dozens of potted plants. His has the densest jungle. We got the new banana tree for Helen, my next door neighbor.

Tonite I’m going dancing at the new night spot “The Jewel Box” in Delhi’s third major hotel, just opened, with my Fulbright friend.

Narayan has started working for me and it’s nice to be waited on again. I’d almost forgotten what a luxury it is to sleep late and have your breakfast brought to you and not make your bed, or do your dishes. It’s cheaper to do your own work but guess the luxury is worth the $15 a month for bearer’s wages.

There was a wedding over in the servants quarters and they have been beating drums and wailing and carrying on over there for three nights now.

Did the Round Robin die? Ann, is there sheet music to the song about “Don’t let the stars get in their eyes.” Did daddy pay those two bills for me? Ann, was Ray still in Spokane? What doing?

Don’t look for me home before October or November, and keep writing.

Love,

Dorothy

To Dad, I Shook the Ambassador of Russia’s Hand

February 10, 1953

Dear Dad,

I presume Mother is still in California and you and Ann are holding the fort in Melba. The wedding preparations are keeping them very busy no doubt. I haven’t heard from Martha in quite a while. Nor from Ann, I might add.

It’s not a very good sign of my love and devotion to my dear old dad that I only write personally to him when I need his help. However, it at least gives me an excuse. Mother mentioned my insurance premium in one of her letters. Did you take care of that? I don’t know what condition my savings account is in by now, but I wonder if you could deplete it a bit more for me. I have a couple of stateside bills which have been hanging fire for some time. I can usually handle everything from here. I don’t have a checking account anywhere so I merely ask the fiscal unit to write me a dollars check with my pay to cover anything that may come up. However, I can only get one check every two weeks.

Our Embassy had a big Lincoln day reception in the Chancery gardens last Saturday. Thousands of invitees. I was quite surprised to learn that several of the Russian Embassy people came. In fact I happened to be chatting with some people when a friend of theirs brought the Ambassador up to be introduced to one young woman who knew Russian. So I shook hands with the Russian Ambassador. Usually Russians never venture outside their Embassy walls and this new friendliness and sociability is something very new. We learn that this seems to be a world-wide trend and we wonder why. This, actually, is security information.

We are still in a post election stalemate here. Ambassador Bowles is winding up his operations and we have watched with anxiety the rumors about our next Ambassador. For a couple of days it looked like Clare Booth Luce was the candidate, and we held our breaths. She may be quite a remarkable woman, but I think she will do better in Rome than here. The Indian scene really needs a man heading up the operations. A couple of cartoons came out in the local papers with the “They must be trying to pay us back for Madam Pandit” idea.

So now we have a man by the name of George Allen, who is a career diplomat. He appears to be a good solution to the problem, of filling Chester’s shoes. Chester is extremely popular here. My boss, Mr. Grondahl, worked under Allen before and regards him highly. It will be interesting to see the difference a career man makes in the running of the Embassy. Mr. Bowles had been a whirlwind and a demon for work, with probably as much a different approach than a career man will have.

I only have seven more months here. After two years of lovely tropical weather I dread rather than rather look forward to coming home in the bitter winter. But I don’t think I’ll have the heart to extend, even a few months.

It’s time for our staff meeting, so this is all for now,

Love,

(hand written) Dorothy

More Catching Up with Alan

February 4, 1953

Dear Alan

For a number of reasons, two of them being an extra payday and you, we have decided to delay out trip departure date until the 20th.

Mannie came waltzing in to my room the other night with a funny look on his face and said, guess what. “Your engaged!” guessed I. “No.” “Married?” “No.” “Having a baby?” “Nope. I’m going away….to Madras.” and for one horrible minute I thought because he was wanting a new job and because Tarbutton was on duty that they were transferring him to Madras Con Gen — and in a panic I grabbed a pillow and beat him screaming “You’re not! You’re not!”

So he’s now in Madras with the Navy plane for a week…but he said it wouldn’t make any difference about the trip.

Are you moved? what happened to Mukerjee? I liked your “quickie” of four pages. and if they don’t care when you come back, what about taking three weeks and doing part of it by train? Mannie and I are slightly worried about expenses.

I’m sorry about the kid’s mail. I hope by now it has come back to you and has been forwarded. I’m a complete failure.

Helen is feeling fairly fit, and whenever we refer to her as the sick girl she always says, “I’m not sick, I’m Christian,” in a mock Lillian Godeck voice. She has gone to three shows since Valma said it was o.k. for her to get up if she didn’t exert herself. We saw “Clash By Night” last night and it was pretty good.

We are supposed to go to “Rani ki Jhansi” (as you called it) tonight with Barry Chakravarti as interpreter.

Somebody is really on the ball. I applied for a driver’s licence in August, 1952. Our Admin. boys swore I never gave them my licence. Today it comes through. Now I’ve got no Hillman Minx to drive.

Still no definite travel plans -except we are going on the 20th. As usual, we will keep you posted. And now that you aren’t so busy with Heyneker back on the job, we’ll look for some ideas for you.

This is looking a long way ahead, but Helen and I are going to do Darjeeling and thereabouts in June. Calcutta in June should be a real treat.

Isn’t this nice, I’m back to

SYS

Love,

(hand signed) Pettijohn

Pettijohn-awesome signature!!