I never got past New Delhi. I left for personal reasons, really having nothing to do with India. In retrospect it’s definitely within the top five of the dumbest decisions that I’ve made in my life. And on occasion, a fair amount of regret. The only thing that sort of palliates the regret is that the subsequent course of my life put me in places where great and wonderful things happened and perhaps if I had finished the Williams-in-India program and graduated from Williams, those sorts of things would have never happened.

My father was very, very ill at that point and it had to do with issues of sort of wanting to wrap everything up, have everything sort of taken care of in one’s life by the time I was 21, which of course is silly. The interesting thing is Gaudino wrote me a letter, which I have somewhere. I’ve never thrown it away. It was a very insightful, kind letter basically pointing out that I don’t have things wrapped up so you’ll never have things wrapped up, certainly not by the time you’re 21.

I’ve often wondered if India triggered it. But I actually liked India and I reveled in the differences of it. In many respects I may have been having an easier time than a lot of people, I mean coming from Hawaii, because it certainly didn’t bother me being a minority, being a Caucasian minority. That’s what you are in Hawaii anyway. I loved New Delhi. I was taken by the architecture. That’s where my lifelong interest in the British Raj dates from. I would very much like to go back and visit and show my wife the sort of British remnants that are still in India.

David Lee '71