Between 1945 and 1947, there was an interim government in Delhi to work out the details of how Great Britain could withdraw from India and leave it to its fate. This government consisted of not only British members and high ranking Indian officers of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), but also the important leaders of the Indian National Movement for independence.

One good thing that this interim government did was to plan how to build up the scientific and industrial strength of the country , so that the country could compete with the western countries including the U.S.A., and in the process raise the economic level of the country and its people. Several committees were set up, which included some of the best scientists and technologists like Drs. Meghnad Saha, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, Jnana Chandra Ghosh, K. S. Krishnan, Homi Jamshed Bhaba, and so on. These very experienced scientists and technologists of India acted very fast and induced the interim government to announce the award of scholarships to students, both women and men, who had good basic degrees in science and engi neering, and to get better qualified in the famous universities of Great Britain, U.S.A., and Canada, or to gain experience in industries in these countries.

I was one of these young people who applied for a scholarship from the government of India, and I was selected in 1946 to get myself qualified in the special field of electronics and its applications. That was the time, when good universities in the United Kingdom, U.S.A., and Canada admitted their veterans to get better qualified and serve their countries in a responsible manner. So admission to a good university was slow in coming for the Indian students. However, I was lucky to obtain admission to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the beginning of 1947, for graduate studies in the department of Electrical Engineering, where very good training and research was being carried out in the upcoming field of electronics.

It took several more months for the Indian government to make travel arrangements and so on. Finally, I left Bombay at the end of June 1947, in a converted American troopship called "S.S Marine Adder." The other passengers included about one hundred and fifty Indian students, including Indian government scholarship holders like me, and several other Indian and American passengers and some others.

The long voyage by sea took thirty days. The sea was very rough between Bombay and Colombo (in Sri Lanka), and most of the passengers were terribly sea sick. I did not get seasick at all and was one of the few passengers who walked along the decks up and down and enjoyed looking at the rough sea waves dashing against the ship on all sides. They served typical American food of that time in the dining room, and I had no difficulty eating it, though I had never eaten that type of food before. The boat halted for a few hours in Colombo to pick up a few passengers, and we were not allowed to disembark there.

Once the ship left Colombo, the sea became calm, and the rest of the passengers got over their seasickness, and got up from their bunks, and the ship became a jolly place. We made friends with each other, and also with the friendly American crew.

The next stop was Singapore, where the ship halted for a full day, and we were allowed to get down and see the city. Being Indian subjects of the British empire, we Indians did not need visas to visit Singapore, because Singapore was part of British Malaya. We spent a whole day roaming around the city streets and found everything new and interesting. The city was intact, because before the Japanese entered the city in the war, the British government and army had fled from the city. The Japanese had occupied the whole country of Malaya without bombing any part of it. Singapore looked almost like an abandoned city. After the war was over, people who had left the city were slowly coming back and trying to resettle, trying to pick up their means of living slowly. As everyone knows, Singapore was at that time at the crossroads of the great sea routes linking the Indian Ocean with the Pacific and was a very important port. Its population was multinational: with native Malays, Immigrant Chinese and Indians from India (mostly Tamil speaking South Indians), British, and other Europeans and maybe a few Americans.

One of the Indian girls travelling with us in the ship was returning to her parents in Singapore, after studying in Delhi University. She had become very friendly with two or three of us Indian girls and invited us to her parents' home in Singapore. It was a big house, the father being a businessman, and she gave us a very good lunch including exotic fruits like the mangosteen, which we had never seen or eaten before. She showed us the whole house, including the kitchen, where food was being prepared in huge pots. She told us that after the war, food was very scarce, and her father was giving free meals to his employees, so that they might work better for him.

The next halt was at Hongkong, which was a Chinese city, though it belonged to the British. We did not require visas here, and we roamed around Hongkong city, built on a hilly island, and full of Chinese people whom we Indians had not seen before, with the exception of a few Chinese peddlers who used to visit the big Indian cities to sell Chinese silk. We really enjoyed Hongkong, and found time to cross over to the mainland Kowloon using the ferry. All of us bought some Chinese trinkets. I bought a small piece of intricate embroidery, which is still with me, and some Chinese dolls. Lots of Chinese passengers got into the boat in Hongkong, including many students who were going to the U.S.A. for their studies.

Then the boat travelled along the Chinese coast, and finally entered the Yangtse River, and traveled probably about a hundred miles, and finally docked in the river at the biggest city of China, that is, Shanghai. Many  of us Indians did not possess Chinese visas, and so had to stay the whole day on the boat. A few of the more enterprising Indian students had managed to go to the Chinese consulate or embassy in Hongkong and had managed to get a one day visa. These students disembarked to roam around the famous city of Shanghai. We who stayed in the boat stood on the deck and watched the life of the Chinese on the small boats surrounding us. Whole families were living on these boatscooking, eating and sleeping, and carrying on with their business. Either a man or a woman, holding a long bamboo pole, would attach a small wicker basket to its end and put in a curio or some eatables, and hold it up, so that the passengers on the deck should see and examine its contents. If they wished to buy the contents of the basket, the boatwoman or boatman would shout its cost in American dollars. If the passenger on the ship's deck put the money in the basket, he or she would lower the pole and take the money and finally send the goods to the passenger, via the pole. I had not seen this type of business transaction in India, and all of us were amused, and each one of us bought something or other. I bought a small carved redwood box, which is still with me.

Finally, we left Shanghai and came down the river and entered the great Pacific Ocean to cross over to San Francisco. Though we had already travelled about two weeks, we young students were not tired or bored, and were enjoying ourselves very well. Three or four of us, two or three young women and two or three young men, got together and planned a day of entertainment, in one of the big rooms, with the permission of the captain and his staff. The leaders were my old friends Mr. Ramakrishna Vepa, Miss Leela Dey, and some others. They not only got ready an entertainment, consisting of a drama in English, songs in a few Indian languages, and a tableau of Bharat Mata (Mother India), and I had the part of Bharat Mata. In addition to this, they prepared an Indian feast consisting of puries (fried Indian flat wheat bread), vegetables, rice and Indian pudding., in one of the ship's kitchens. They took the help of some other Indian women passengers, who were wives of Indian businessmen living in the U.S.A. or Canada. This function was a grand success, and everybody enjoyed it.

Finally, after thirty days, the ship docked at San Francisco after midnight on 30th July 1947, and all of us rushed to the decks to see the brightly lit Golden Gate bridge, and the brightly lit streets of the city with a procession of new cars going on them. None of us Indians had seen such a grand sight. We vere all very excited, and were looking forward to seeing and experiencing the wonders of the new world of the United States of America.

An Indian embassy had been opened in Washington D.C., with a skeleton staff, to get things ready for the first ambassador Mr. Asaf Ali from India to take charge soon after the country was going to become independent on August 15th ,1947. Mr. Sundaram, who was the educational liaison officer at the embassy, had come down to San Francisco a few days earlier, to meet us Indian students, and to give us help and advise. He and a few junior staff of the embassy met us at the docks, after the boat landed. He had also recruited a few Indian students, who were already studying in the University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Stanford University, and so on, to join him in helping the newcomers. One of them was Mr. C. V. Joga Rao, whom I knew earlier in Bangalore, and who was a graduate student at Caltech.

It took us a whole day to go through the disembarkation and customs formalities. The customs officials made us open all our luggage, to make sure that we were not carrying contraband goods. Finally, when all of us had got trough the formalities of being admitted into the U.S.A. on our student visas, Mr. Sundaram and his assistants put us in two or three buses , and took us to a hotel called "Casa de Vallejo" in Vallejo town, which was very near San Francisco. After a good night's rest, Mr. Sundaram addressed us at a meeting held in one of the big halls of the hotel, and gave us instructions of how we should conduct ourselves in the American universities, our railway tickets to our destinations, the first instalment of our scholarships to the scholarship holders, and so on. The second day, he had arranged a bus tour for us , to see San Francisco city the redwoods, Berkeley , and so on. The third day we travelled by bus to Los Angeles, where we were again put up in a hotel, and we were taken on a tour of Hollywood, Caltech. and some other places. of importance in and around the city.

The fourth day, we boarded our trains to our destinations. Some of us were on the Sante Fe train to Chicago and beyond. On the way, we stopped at Flagstaff in New Mexico, to see the Grand Canyon, which impressed us in such a way ,that we thought God had created these temples, and that it is not necessary for human beings to build temples, churches or mosques to please God.

Finally after two and a half days travelling across the country from west to east, crossing magnificent mountains including the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies, the wide arid deserts of the west, the rich agricultural land of the vast prairies of the Midwest, I finally arrived at the small town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, having changed trains at the famous city of Chicago, which we had heard in India was a city of gangsters. I had written to my old friend Parvati, who was also from Bangalore, and who was a student in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to meet me at the railway station next morning, assuming that it was unsafe for her to come in a taxi to the railway station at midnight. But she had telephoned to the station master earlier to find out the time of arrival of the train from Chicago, and within half an hour arrived by taxi, to take me home. I was very surprised to find out that Ann Arbor was a very safe little town, where a young girl could go in a taxi at midnight.

My friend Parvati had contacted the university authorities earlier, and had found out that I could stay temporarily as a boarder in a rooming house for girls on Cambridge Road, where the house mother was Mrs. Carol Woods. She settled me in that house, and I was very happy to be there with a sweet tempered nice young woman, whose husband Lauren was a graduate student working for his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry, and who had a little baby boy about ten months old, and named Donald. The summer semester had almost ended, and there was nothing much to do.

The next day, I found my way to the Department of Electrical Engineering, and met Professor Lowell, who was the chairman, and showed him my letter of admission from the University. He welcomed me and talked to me nicely, and told me that I can register for the fall semester in September 1947. I thanked him when I left the room, and he said, "You are welcome". That was an expression which I had not heard in India, where they usually say," No mention", or something like that.

There was a Japanese American girl named May, whose parents were interned in World War II in Idaho,, who was the only other boarder in Mrs. Woods' house during the summer vacation. She was very friendly, and sometimes we used to go to a nearby tennis court to play tennis. She cooked a Japanese dinner (I think it was beef teriyaki with pineapple slices) , and shared it with me. Mrs. Woods gave us only breakfast. So I had to go out for my lunch and dinner. During the summer vacation, the campus was almost empty, and the University cafeterias were all closed. So I usually ate my lunch and dinner at a drug store, where I was quite happy to have a grilled cheese sandwich and a milkshake.

The weather was beautiful summer weather, and I roamed around the campus and the streets of Ann Arbor, exploring places. Everything was new for me , and I enjoyed every bit of it. People were very friendly, and people walking on the streets would stop and talk to you in a friendly manner. Some of them, especially children, used to ask me, "Where do you come from?". When I replied , "I am an Indian from India," they would ask, "Does your father have feathers on his head?", meaning that I am an native American Indian. All this was a very enjoyable experience for me.

In the third week of September, the Fall Semester started, and I had to register, after consulting Prof.. L .N. Holland of the department of Electrical Engineering, who was my advisor. Because I did not have an undergraduate degree in Engineering, he advised me to take three undergraduate level courses in Electrical Engineering and one graduate level course., to make up for my lack of engineering background. It was good that I took them, so that by the next semester, I felt that I had no difficulty in managing more difficult graduate courses. I obtained good grades, mostly A's and a few B's. After three semesters, I obtained the Master of Science in Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering in February 1949.

I had to move from Mrs. Woods' house to another house on East Huron Street, which was situated just behind the Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies. The land lady was Mrs. Arshalous Kasabach, who had immigrated to the U.S.A. after World War I, from Armeniac which was at that time a part of the great Turkish empire. She and her two little sons , who could escape the atrocities of the Turkish troops, were finally able to travel to the U.S.A. as refugees. She was a Christian, and her father and her husband were ministers. Both of them and the rest of the family were butchered by the Turkish troops, right in front of her eyes. She used to tell us that she cried so much at that time, that she cannot cry any more. She was brave enough to find a new life in the U.S.A. for herself and her two sons. She had worked at first n Boston as an occupational therapist in a hospital, where she could teach embroidery work to convalescent patients. Later on, she moved to Ann Arbor,, where she took up a similar job in the University hospital. Both her sons went to the Medical School in Ann Arbor, and after graduating, were practising in Detroit., and were doing very well. They helped her to buy a three storied big house in Ann Arbor, which she converted into a rooming house for women students and young unmarried women

I got a single room at 1001 East Huron Street, and I stayed there till I left Ann Arbor in February 1953, after I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, specializing in the subject of Electronics , which was an upcoming subject at that time,

Housing was very difficult in Ann Arbor those days, and there were very few small apartments that graduate students could rent out. Mrs. Kasabach (Mrs. Kay, for short), allowed us to use her basement kitchen, where some of us used to cook our meals. The house was like an international house, with girls from the U.S.A., India, China, Korea, Pakistan, Cuba, Japan and the Philippines. In the basement kitchen, we used to cook dishes from our own countries, and we used to share them with each other. It was a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed eating different dishes from different countries, and also we learnt a lot about life in different parts of the earth including the U.S.A.

We were all very busy with our studies, and so this cooking in this communal basement was mostly confined to the weekends. Most of us ate in the University cafeterias on weekdays.

I can write a whole book of the stories about our life in this house, maybe, some other time.

So, time passed away without any of us getting too homesick. The only sad news I had from home, was soon after I moved into Mrs. Kasabach's house. I got a letter from my father, that my dear aunt Putti ( my mother's older sister and Vijaya's mother) passed away after a short illness, which the doctors recognized as a serious type of aenemia followed by nervous breakdown. This letter broke my heart, and I cried aloud all night. The American girl in the next room, named Leah Chastaine, came into my room, and consoled me , and sat with me for a few hours before I stopped sobbing. Leah became my very good friend, and took me to her home in Lake Orion in Michigan State many times, to meet her mother. I could meet her and her mother in the same house for the last time in 1969, when she was working as a school teacher. I have lost touch with her. Where is Leah Chastaine now?

I made other good friends like Edith Carillo , who was from the Philippines ,and who was working for her Ph.D. degree in Educational Psychology. She settled down in the U.S.A., after marrying an American, and raised a son and a daughter. She has retired as a professor from Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio. She had written to me an year ago, and is now concentrating on classical music (the piano).

After I obtained my Master's degree in 1949, The government of India who was giving me the scholarship, instructed me to obtain eight months' practical training in the Division of Radio Frequency Measurements in the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Washington D.C. So , I spent eight months in that city from February 1949 to August 1949. I found the NBS a very friendly place, and the people with whom I worked were very helpful. I stayed in a room in a home on Harvard Street (between fourteenth and fifteenth streets N. W.), which belonged to a Jewish couple named Mr. And Mrs. Sachs. Mrs. Sachs was very different from Mrs. Kasabach (Mrs. .Kay) of Ann Arbor. She and her husband had come as immigrants from Germany, after the first World War. She was very strict about Kosher food, and kept the house spic and span., while Mrs. Kay's house in Ann Arbor was a little shabby and untidy. At first, she suspected me of using her toothbrush, because I used to keep my toothbrush in my room closet, and not leave it in the common bathroom, which I shared with her , her husband and her nephew. I got strict instructions not to sit on my bed, but only on the chair. I was so busy with my work and was hardly home, and so I did not mind it at all. After she was satisfied with my clean habits including Kosher rules, she allowed me to cook sometimes in her basement kitchen. Later on, , she was nice to me, and used to give me a nice piece of cake or pie, which she had baked. She did not know many things, unlike Mrs. Kasabach, who knew a lot of things, and could discuss with us politics, social affairs, etc. Towards the end of my stay in Washington D.C., Mr. Sachs was admitted into the hospital where he passed away. When I left Washington D.C. in September 1949 she was mostly with her daughter in another part of the city.

I came back to Ann Arbor in September 1949 to continue my graduate studies leading to a Ph.D. degree. I had to obtain special permission from the Indian Government to do this, and I had to manage my finances with a Barbour Scholarship from the University of Michigan, which was of smaller value than the scholarship from the government. My advisor for my Ph.D. program was Professor William Gould Dow, an authority on Electronics those days, and I submitted my Ph.D. thesis in January 1953. Professor Dow passed away last year (1999) , at the age of one hundred and three years.

According to the contract signed by me with the government of India, I had to return to India and serve the Indian government of India for a minimum three years. So I returned to India in April 1953, travelling on the S.S. Queen Mary from New York to Southampton in England, and on the Polish ship S.S.Batory from Southampton to Bombay via the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez canal. I spent three weeks, seeing England and the famous sights of London. St. Paul's Cathedral in London was in intact, but there was a big bomb crater in front of it.. Sugar was taken off the ration on the day I arrived in England, and the confectionery shops in London were well stocked , and the English people were crowding the shops to buy sweets which they had not eaten for many years.

I found London very familiar and unlike the American cities, and London city looked a little like Bombay, because of the similarity of the buildings built by the British in Bombay. Also, there were a large number of Indians on London streets, unlike the U.S.A. The English people were very courteous and friendly, and would go out of their way to help you, if necessary. I found the London underground trains very convenient. I flew from London to Paris and back , to see all the famous sights of Paris. There were no damaged buildings in Paris, unlike London, because the French people had surrendered to the German troops, within a very short time.

On the way through the Mediterranean Sea, we stopped at the beautiful island of Malta, surrounded by the blue ocean, and with its very old ruins. The next stop was Port Suez, where we saw the Arabs, and we saw the dingy port, and that reminded us Indians of our Indian cities.

Finally , landing in Bombay in the first week of April, I was back in India after five and a half years in the U.S.A.. I had left India before its independence with a British Indian passport, and was returning to independent India with an Indian passport, which was issued by the Embassy of India in Washington D.C.

After a few days, I took the train to Poona, where I changed to another train to Bangalore. I was impressed by the fact that India was looking a little better than it was when I left it before independence in 1947. The railway trains were running fairly regularly, and the railway stations were looking a little cleaner. So I thought that independence had done a little good to India! I have earlier described the times of the World War II, the national struggle for independence, and the partition of the subcontinent with all its horrors and atrocities.

India certainly looked a little better now, only a little better. When I reached Bangalore after one and a half days, in the early morning, I took a horse drawn jutka to go to my grandmother's house, "Casetta," on Shankarmutt Road. My grandmother, mother and uncle were waiting to receive me in their own way. No embraces, no crying, but in almost a quiet and stoic manner, which was typical of my family. They gave me a breakfast of hot coffee and toast. They wanted me to talk about my experiences in America, but somehow I had difficulty talking in my mother tongue Kannada for a whole day, and was replying to their questions in English. The next day, Kannada came back to me easily, and I could talk to them easily. That day , my father arrived from Nanjangud, and there was a lot of talking. The third day, my cousin Vijaya came with her three year old son Sriram, from Hassan, and joined us., and there was a lot of discussions about life in America.

My sister Seetha was in Hirakud in Orrissa with her husband and her two little children, a boy and a girl. My brother Chandu, younger than Seetha , had finished A Ph.D. degree in Physics from Oxford University in England, he being the first Rhodes scholar from India. I had met him in Urbana, Illinois, where he was a research associate in the Physics department, just before I left the U.S.A. My youngest brother Ramadas was going through the Indian Army officer's course in Dehra Dun in North India. I could meet Seetha and Ramadas only later on in the year.

So my stay in the.U.S.A. ended in 1953, and what was awaiting me in India is another story for another time !

Brother Chandu and Rajeswari in Münich, Germany, August 2000.

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