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(excerpt)
At long last I was finally able to secure passage to the United States on the S. S. Philadelphia leaving Southampton. The only space available was in steerage. When I boarded the ship I found the accommodations were a far cry from the first-class luxury I had experienced from Bombay to Plymouth. We crossed the English Channel during the night and stopped at Cherbourg where the ship took on hundreds of passengers from Europe.
The week’s trip across the Atlantic was not very pleasant for me principally because the food was so poor. All I could bring myself to eat was milk and fruit. I was amazed that my fellow passengers were able to eat some of the food that was served until I realized that most of them were people from Europe, many of whom had actually experienced hunger and starvation during wartime. Even though I had come from a very poor country, I had never known what it was like to be hungry.
Among the passengers aboard the S. S. Philadelphia was an attractive and charming young blonde lady who was returning to New York to join her husband. She was interested in India and we talked together quite often. She had an eleven-year-old daughter with her and we all became very good friends. New York was their destination while I was bound for San Francisco. Eight years later we were to meet in Los Angeles again under very strange and providential circumstances.
When we reached New York Harbor we were delayed by heavy fog for two days. Then at last the fog lifted a little and I could see the faint outlines of the Statue of Liberty. It was an exhilarating experience. I had finally arrived in the United States of America.
During the stay at Ellis Island, while waiting to be cleared for entry, I felt lonesome for the first time since I left India. Here I was at Ellis Island. I had come to the United States but I was not yet free to go into the country. Then while I was standing in a long line to have my passport examined a kindly inspector who obviously knew India took me out of the line and had my papers stamped. Finally, warmly shaking my hand, he said to me, “You are now a free man in a free country.” Then he whispered into my ear, “You do not have to Worry about the C.I.D. either.” (C.I.D. stood for the Criminal Investigation Department in India—the dread and hated secret police.)
I looked around and said to myself, “Yes, at long last you are a free man in a free country. You may go where you wish and say what you please.” That certainly proved true, for as long as I have been in the United States, particularly in the early years, while I was cruelly discriminated against many a time because of the place of my birth, not once has my right to say what I pleased been questioned by any man. To me, coming as I did from India, freedom of speech and liberty to go wherever I wished without having any fears of secret police hounding me were of profound and lasting significance.
I set out from New York for San Francisco, California, where I intended to enroll as a student at the University of California to study food preservation and canning. It was a long train trip and I had not as yet become accustomed to American food. So all the way across the country I lived on milk and bread.
At the Ferry Building in San Francisco the attendant at the Traveler’s Aid Society booth directed me to a Hindu temple. There I was told that I should stay in San Francisco that night and take a ferry the next morning across the bay to Berkeley. I was further advised that if I went to Mission Street I would be able to find a hotel room in which to spend the night. It was the most uncomfortable night I have ever spent in my life. I had heard about bedbugs, but this was the first time I had actually encountered a bed infested with them. The bed was impossible, and my only refuge was the floor, but that yielded scant comfort.
The next morning I rushed to the Ferry Building and took the ferry to Berkeley, the seat of the University of California. I went straight to 1731 Allston Way, where I found the clubhouse established and maintained by the Sikh Temple in Stockton, California. The temple had bought this two-story house for the use and benefit of students from India who could live there rent free. The only requirement was that residents of the club be enrolled at a high school or the university. It was run by the resident members on a cooperative basis—students paid for their gas and electricity and we took turns at cooking Hindu-style meals. When my turn came around, I always prepared my specialty—chicken curry.
For the next two years I was a resident member of the club. The resultant saving was a great help to me as it was to other students, because in those days no students from India received any government scholarships since the British Government of India was not interested in educating Indians in the United States. We had all come over on our own and we were all short of funds.
One of the senior members of the club was studying agriculture and he very kindly helped me enter the university as a graduate student, a further help, since no tuition fees were required of graduate students. In the course of my studies I took part in several experiments which were being carried on at the university at that time in the line of food preservation. I worked very diligently in the laboratory and had the opportunity to experiment with the canning and dehydration of fruits and vegetables. It was at this time that a number of tragic deaths were reported as a result of ptomaine poisoning contracted after eating canned olives. It was in the food preservation laboratories of the University of California that a safe formula for canning olives was finally perfected.
Contact with Americans was limited to associations made in my university classes; my other contacts were almost exclusively with my fellow citizens from India of whom there were some eighty at the university. The only times that students of different nationalities ever got together were at meetings of the Cosmopolitan Club, sponsored by the YMCA in Berkeley, under the leadership of the YMCA secretary, Dr. Day.
The student group from India was very well organized and we all belonged to the Hindustan Association of America, which had chapters throughout the United States in different university centers. After I had been at Berkeley two years I was elected national president of the association, which gave me many opportunities to make speeches on India and meet with other groups as a representative of the Indian students at the university. All of us were ardent Nationalists and we never passed up an opportunity to expound on India’s rights to self-government. I took part in several debates and spoke before many groups and organizations.
It was my habit at the time to write my speeches out very carefully in advance. Sometimes I would take two or more weeks to write a speech and then memorize it. I used the best possible language and tried to follow the style of old English orators who believed in melodious phrases couched in flawless grammar. But I soon found this special preparation could get me into trouble. It allowed for no spontaneity, and when I had to have a comeback or an answer to a question on controversial subjects such as Indian independence I was often very slow.
On one occasion when I was president of the Hindustan Association of America, the annual convention was scheduled to be held at the university. I had previously gone to Palo Alto and made arrangements with the president of Stanford University, Dr. David Starr Jordan, to be our principal speaker. A few days before the convention, however, Dr. Jordan had to go East and could not be present. We had difficulty in finding a substitute, but finally a professor of political science at the university agreed to pinch-hit.
I delivered a half-hour talk on the right of India to independence and the inequities of British rule. Then our main speaker rose and proceeded to tear me apart. He floored me with questions I couldn’t promptly answer. “How about the primitive agriculture in India?” he asked. “How about the caste system? How about the disunity between the Hindus and the Mohammedans?”
He easily got the better of me and I felt very sick and sad that the meeting ended by creating an unfavorable impression for the cause of India.
A leadership position among my group was not always an enviable one. Once I was chairman of the annual faculty dinner to which students invited instructors as guests. I worked for two weeks preparing my speeches and introductions of honored guests, and I recall my feelings quite vividly. While sitting at the head table next to the dean of the Agricultural College who was to be our principal speaker, I worried as I tried to remember the big words and resounding passages in my forthcoming speech of welcome. Meanwhile, I could see my fellow students having a wonderful time, chatting and talking with their girl friends and faculty guests. Most of the extra work was my own fault. I now know it was not necessary for me to worry and work so hard on my speeches, but I was a perfectionist, and there was no helping it.