I met Steve in April 1972 in Delhi. He was with Hilary Kitz, who I had met through Tony Dubovsky in Berkeley several years before. I had reconnected with Hilary, on Facebook of course, and I asked her about their trip to India. By the time they got to India, where I had been for about 8 months at that point as student on the UC Berkeley graduate program, they needed a break from each other - it was hot and they were tired! I just remember Steve in a cheap hotel in the center of Delhi - with long hair, beard, and Indian shirt - we became friends. Hilary and Steve completely lost touch with each other after the trip - she got married, moved to Tulsa (she is Canadian, from Nova Scotia), had children, and now has grandchildren in Berkeley! Here is Hilary's account:
Steven and I went to the concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square gardens and left on the QE II the next day. We traveled to England, picked up the green long wheel base landrover complete with small fridge and stove. We drove to Florence where we pick up a friend who was going to a wedding and then drove to Istanbul, Tehran and Kabul. With war between India and Pakistan imminent the border between those two countries was soon to close. We left the car in customs in Kabul and caught the last flight into Delhi before service was curtailed on December 1.
We traveled to Agra, then down to Bangalore for Christmas, Kerala and Trichy, Ajanta and Ellora, all by train. Then we took the ferry to Sri Lanka where we rode on the elephant of the ex prime minister. Back up the east coast of India to Madras and then to north India to catch a plane to Nepal. We spent about a month there and then to Benares and back to Delhi.
At Delhi we were joined by Ann Woodruff who flew in from Toronto. I do remember dressing in saris and dancing to the parade, it must have been wedding season. (ZE note: they were staying with my roommate Chander Chopra and me, and somewhere I have photos of us dancing in the heat)
After a trip back to Agra and then Jaipur we flew back to Kabul and picked up the car and drove back to Europe landing in Paris in May.
Steven continued on with his third year of law school.
I didn't see of hear much about him after the trip, I think we were both exhausted. I did move into a house with four of his classmates while I went to grad school.
That sounds more like an itinerary than a memoir.
I met Steven the new years of 1970 when I went to Cambridge with my brother. I was teaching school in Kingston Jamaica at the time and he came down the following March to visit me. We both wanted to go to India and dreamed up the trip that spring and summer.
ZE: After I came back to California, I reconnected with Steve and went to visit him in Cambridge. The following December (the memorably cold winter of 1972) he came to visit over the holidays. I took him to a New Year's Eve party (or maybe one a few days earlier) at David Gancher's house on Harrison Street in Oakland. He met Betty Lynn, Judy, and David, and the rest is history. He moved to California shortly thereafter, and I moved to the East coast. I miss him so much, even though I haven't seen him for several years and not in any depth for some time. One very clear memory I have is of driving him to the airport at dawn, maybe even after staying up all night on December 31, and watching the sun come up - we both said "the crack of dawn" - it was a new world. I'm glad he moved to California.
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