In late August 1981 we moved to California to join Dan Jordan at the Vista Campus of National University, which was about fifteen miles from the main campus in downtown San Diego. After a week’s stay in a motel, we rented a two-bedroom house in Briar Way Court in downtown Vista. The house came with a range, refrigerator, and washing machine, and we bought some additional furniture from St. Vincent DePaul. A week after our arrival, with the help of Don Streets, a good bargainer, we procured a preowned car, again a Toyota Corolla. Nana set up the household as usual. The kids were put in the public schools and Shaku in a special education program. Shaku underwent a thorough neurological examination by a well-known neurologist in La Jolla.

To our surprise, the shipment we had made in August 1979 from Panchgani to Honolulu arrived after two years at Dan’s place in Escondido. More than a third of its contents were missing which included the Indian Teak wood coffee table, the nest of side tables, and the framed portrait of Abdu’l-Baha. Two boxes containing my books were eaten by termites. We salvaged as much as possible from what was left of the damaged shipment.
Three months after we arrived, Nana volunteered to bring dessert for a fund raising event at the Bahá’í Center in San Diego. The proceeds would go to the construction of the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, the administrative center of the Bahá’í Faith in Haifa, Israel. I could not believe that she alone, with just a very little help from me, managed to bake over five hundred servings of assorted desserts! She was baking morning, noon, and night in that small kitchen for two days while worrying about how she was going to store and transport them safely to the venue. A Bahá’í friend with a large vehicle helped with the transportation. Needless to say, the event was a grand success.

The National University
The courses at the National University, since it was geared to working professionals, were delivered in the evenings from 5:30pm to 10:00pm, twice a week for four weeks, and a half day on the last Saturday of the month. This gave enough contact hours with the students to earn three graduate credits per month. Students could enter the program any month of the year. Two three-week summer intensive programs were also available, which gave 16 graduate credits per summer. In the summer of 1982 and 1983 there were several teachers from Alberta, Canada who took the intensive program.

Dan Jordan and Don Streets had set up the schedule for all the courses required for earning a Master’s Degree in Education based on the ANISA Model, which had been fully developed since I left Amherst in 1977. There were about twelve students enrolled in the program. I developed a program leading to a Masters with specialization in Nutrition, Behavior, and Leaning for which three students enrolled. I taught the course in ANISA Theory of Human Development, and along with Dan, the course on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy and its Application to Education. This course was a prerequisite for enrollment in other courses. Often I had to travel to the main campus of National University in downtown San Diego where some of the courses were given.

In the spring of 1982 after long-drawn-out consultations, Dan persuaded Dr. Chigos, the President of the University, to open a junior high and a high school in the basement of the Vista campus. The Academic Vice President moved to the Vista Campus from his downtown office to oversee the completion of the classroom buildings for the school, including a cafeteria, which took three months. The students were enrolled in September 1982. In our team was an independent contractor, Mr. Bob Ackerman, who was a developmental optometrist specializing in eye tracking problems. Don Streets was the school’s Principal in the early months but this position was later given to Mrs. Irene Hartley who had retired from the Suffield School System. It was wonderful to have Irene and Gordon again in the ANISA community when they moved to San Diego. Nancy Jordan served as the administrative assistant to Irene. She also worked enthusiastically in publicizing the school to the community. With the exception of Ruhi Streets, worked as a secretary in the main campus, we were all under one roof in Vista.

The school had a lunch program for which the food was brought daily, punctually at noon in proper containers, from the main kitchen on the San Diego campus. The kitchen staff in Vista would receive, organize, and serve the food in the new school dining room. I was very happy when the chef, Mr. Branko, hired Nana as a member of the kitchen staff. Nana enjoyed her work as she did not have to do the cooking.

In early April 1983 we bought a newly built three-bedroom house on a half-acre property on Edna Way, only a five-minute drive from the Vista Campus where Nana and I both worked. This was the house Nana enjoyed most, but we paid a very high mortgage interest rate of 13%. We had, for the first time, a pet dog named Gabriel and two chicken cages as Shaku was a member of the local 4H club. We bought a new car for Nana, a red Toyota Starlet.

Dan and I thought of having a Center for Remedial Educational Services, which would integrate Bob Ackerman’s eye clinic and a Nutritional Assessment and Diagnostic Unit, at the School of Education’s Vista Campus. We wrote a proposal for funding entitled “Center for the Promotion of Learning Abilities” — with a positive connotation — to be submitted to the Keck Foundation in Los Angeles, where Dan had close acquaintances. Things were going well for my family and my profession.

Unforeseen Tragedy
On October 20th 1983, a Thursday, I went in the morning to the main Campus of the National University to get the final signatures in the proposal from Dr. Chigos, the President, and Harold Wells, the Academic Dean. I had five copies of the proposal spiral bound, and on my way back stopped at Dan’s home in Escondido to get his signature as the school’s Dean. He, with a great sense of achievement and gusto, smilingly signed the proposal. I saw him drive away down the winding driveway of his home and I followed him until we came to the highway. I turned north towards Los Angeles to drop the proposal at the Keck Foundation, while he turned south to the San Diego airport. How could I know that would be the last time I would to see him?

He left for Detroit that evening, en route New York where he was scheduled to speak at the Association for the World’s Universities, at the New York University Club on West 43rd Street. Soon after his arrival Friday night, he called the organization and said he was staying with friends. He never showed up at the meeting the next day, and as Nancy did not hear from him since he had left San Diego, on Saturday night called the Police to report her husband was missing.

On Monday morning I got a call from one of the ANISA students, Richard Hastings, saying that Dan had been murdered. According to the police his body was found at about 11:00am on Saturday, face down at the rear of a parking lot in a commercial area of Stamford, CT. I literally collapsed, even before I hung up the phone, as this was the cruelest bolt from the blue. Soon I got a call from Nancy who invited us to go to New York for the funeral, stating that she already had the tickets for us. We found someone to take care of the kids and Nana and I flew to New York with Nancy, her daughters, Don Streets, and his wife Ruhi.

The funeral was held in Stamford. Don and I were pall bearers with other close friends. There were over two hundred present including Mr. Glen Beardmore, the Vice President of National University. In the eulogy, Dan’s dedicated service to the Bahá’í Faith, as a member of the national elected body and as a prominent member of the Bahá’í community, were highlighted. Then, at the end, mention was also made of his career as an educator. It seems that the Vice President had thought it was going to be a low profile ceremony and was intrigued by the large attendance. More particularly he noticed the presence of the members of the ANISA team who were all, as he realized for the first time, Bahá’ís. He made a call to the President of the University expressing his serious concerns about the ANISA Model and its relation to the Bahá’í Faith. They construed that the educational program at the National University was a vehicle to propagate the Bahá’í Faith. I was amused by this perception as the President knew that the ANISA Model was solely based on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy and had nothing to do with the Bahá’í teachings. It seemed like going to a restaurant run by a team of dedicated Christians, seeing that they were serving the most nutritious meals, and then accusing them of stealing their recipes from the Bible.

Before we returned to Vista we found out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally entered the case, and had already confiscated all the documents in Dan’s Vista office. Dr. Chigos had fired Dan’s secretary Ms. Linda Smith who also a Bahá’í.

The purge had started. Ruhi Streets, who was working in the main campus, was let go and the following week Don Streets, the right hand man of Dan, was fired. The parents of the school children were told that the National University School would be closed when the academic year ended. Within two months after its closing, with the financial help of a dear friend of Dan, the school was reopened in San Marcos and again Ms. Irene Hartley was the principal.

A new Dean of Education was appointed who had no knowledge of the ANISA Model. He continued to offer the program but switched to the traditional model that was then current in the Universities. I was still hanging around teaching human development courses and also physiological psychology since I had a hard science background. I tried to relocate in the same area, and had an interview with the United States International University, but to no avail.

During this gloomy period of September 1983, I wrote a letter to the editor in the popular weekly “India West” that was widely circulated among the Indian immigrant population in the USA. At that time there were more than a million Indian-Americans, a few of them millionaires. In general, first-generation immigrant families feel that they have committed cultural suicide by immigrating to the US, particularly in the education of their daughters. The letter was addressed to parents who may be interested in sending their girls to a residential girls-only school in India, but with an educational value system that would blend the best of both the Indian and American educational models. This would also focus on the role of women, and the station of mothers as the first educators of their children. I stated there were enough highly competent and qualified personnel which I could assemble as faculty for such an institution and I had a business plan for anyone interested in investing in such an enterprise. I got two responses to this letter. One was from Rama Rao, an educator in Bangalore, India wishing me well in such a project. He himself owned few schools in Bangalore. The other one was from a retired American educator, Dr. Philip Walrod from St. Helens, Oregon. He stated that he was an admirer of the Indian Culture and was willing to turn over his ten-acre wooded property, which included a ranch house, for a US/Indian organization that would establish (to quote him verbatim) “a truly first class school in the Vedantic-Buddhist-Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition and to me such an amalgam is possible”. I was gratified to note that Dr. Walrod appeared to be Bahá’í-like in his thinking. I thanked both the responders for their letters. Few months later Mr. Rama Rao and his son, Gopal Rao, a software specialist, were on a holiday tour of the USA. They visited us in Vista and got to know more about me and the ANISA Model of Education.

The year 1984 was quiet and uneventful. We decided to put our house up for sale as we could not afford such high payments. Although the realtor worked hard, there were no buyers to be found. We still pursued the idea and put the house “For Sale by Owner” at the suggestion of an ANISA student, Sharon Jensen, who had real estate experience and a California Real Estate License. Sharon’s husband, Christopher, was an economist and taught in the Business School at the National University.

Surprise Letter
In April of 1985 I received a most unexpected letter from Mr. Fariborz Sabha, the architect and project manager of the Bahá’í House of Worship in New Delhi, India, which was nearing completion. He wanted to know if I would be willing to come to New Delhi to assume the role of Coordinator of House of Worship Activities. The letter also said that it will be a five-year contract initially, with an adequate stipend paid by the Universal House of Justice. On acceptance I would receive an official letter from the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, Israel. He also said that he would call me in two weeks to know my decision on this offer.

During that month, Craig Quick of the Hawaiian Bahá’í community came with his wife to visit us in Vista. Nana and I discussed the pros and cons of the new opportunity and prayed with the Quicks for guidance. Nana was initially skeptical because of her earlier experience in India and also wondered if an appropriate educational program would be available for Shaku. I felt that this was a “calling” for us to serve the New World Order in India, and that this opportunity had come as a blessing after what we had gone through after Dan’s demise. I told Nana that this time things would work out well and there would be protection because this invitation was from the highest Institution of the Faith and not from an individual Bahá’í as it was in the earlier case with Dr. Ray Johnson. Craig Quick also resonated with my feelings and a decision was made to take this opportunity. So when Mr. Sahba called me as he said he would, I conveyed our decision to accept the offer.

However, after thinking about the pros and cons concerning the children’s education, especially Shaku’s, Nana had a change of mind. She decided she did not want to go to India; she was certain that India’s educational system would not answer Shaku’s needs. But I had already give the OK to Mr. Sabah and I did not want to call him saying we had changed our minds. So I proceeded with the plans to relocate to India. At that time my strong feeling was that it would not be right to recant my acceptance once I had given my word to a Bahá’í Institution.

In the next two weeks I received an official letter from the Universal House of Justice appointing me to be the Coordinator of the House of Worship Activities and saying that we should move as early as possible to begin working in the committee they had set up to plan the first phase of the dedication.

We planned our move for July, at the end of summer classes at the University. We finally had an interested buyer for the house but the terms were not what we hoped for. We were leaving in about a month and needed to have this finalized before that. We were not going to make a dime out of this property after four and a half years living there. Sharon Jensen helped us with the logistics of the sale. Sharon also bought Nana’s car. We sold most of our household goods, and shipped the essentials to India through a trustworthy international cargo shipping company. The cargo included a four-burner gas range which Nana felt would be much need in India.

Visit to the Holy Land
In the first week of August 1985 we began our move to India by flying from San Diego to Montreal to see Nana’s parents and her family. They all enjoyed seeing the kids and it was an enjoyable first stop. We then flew to London where we stayed for three nights. Once again in London after twenty-five years, this time with Nana, Shaku, and Vivek. The kids enjoyed sightseeing and rides in the double-decked buses. We went to the gravesite of the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, Shoghi Effendi. From London we flew to Germany to visit the Bahá’í House of Worship near Frankfurt. Nana was quite impressed with the punctuality of the subway trains in Frankfurt and the cleanliness of the place.

I had obtained permission from the House of Justice for us as a family to visit the Bahá’í World Center in the Holy Land for three days. Our flight to Tel Aviv, Israel, was unforgettable because of the thorough but friendly examination, checking, and security clearance at three different spots before we entered the plane.

We spent three wonderful days at the Bahá’í World Center. The first day we prayed at the Holy Shrines both in Haifa and Akka. At the Shrine of the Báb, the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, the landscaping and the gardens on Mount Carmel were a feast to the eyes and spectacular beyond our imagination. At the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh in Akka, after offering our prayers, we enjoyed walking in the gardens. When and I saw Nana walking with our two beautiful children a little ahead of me in that beautiful garden, the following thought came to me: “Here is the Catholic girl I met in Montreal who got married to an Indian, born in a orthodox Brahmin family; now both of us are Bahá’ís, walking with our children in the Shrine gardens of the Promised One of all ages.” I was emotionally choked and I offered thanks to God for all the blessings.

On the second day I met with Mr. Ali Nakhjavani, one of the members of the Universal House of Justice in his office and consulted with him on the nature of the services to be rendered as a Coordinator of the House of Worship. It was a very warm and enriching meeting, at the end of which he directed me to go to the treasurer’s office where I can get the travel and relocation monies reimbursed. The treasurer gave me an amount which included an advance of the first month’s stipend for my services for when I reached Delhi. We also made the arrangements for the regular transfer of the monthly stipend to my bank account in California. When we came back to the hotel there was a message from Mr. Nakjavani which said that Rúhíyyih Khánum, wife of the Guardian, had invited us for lunch the following day at the Master’s (Abdu’l-Baha’s) House. Mr. Nakjavani came to our hotel and drove us to the Master’s House where we had a very enjoyable time. Rúhíyyih Khánum was very gracious and educated us on the importance of the House of Worship in India. Then she took us to the Master’s room where we said prayers for confirmation of our services to the Faith.

On the third day, after praying at the Shrine of the Báb, we walked around the main street in Haifa and enjoyed Israeli falafel for lunch. We did some shopping in the popular glasswork shop where Nana bought an exquisitely designed light-blue glass platter. In the evening Dr. David Ruhe, another member of the House of Justice, invited us for a dinner at their home, and we had a very pleasant evening. We mentioned that we were planning to visit the Christian Holy places in Jerusalem the following day, and Dr. Ruhe gave us detailed instructions on what to see and how to get there. Our visit to Jerusalem was enjoyable, but we could see the contrast in terms of the upkeep of the Holy Places between Haifa and Jerusalem.

Finally we boarded the plane for our second adventure in India.