After returning from our trip to Bermuda we spent some wonderful and peaceful weeks in Montreal. We hosted a full gathering of Nana’s family for a lunch in our apartment as mark of joy and Thanksgiving. We were also invited for lunches and dinners by the van der Vliets, Salas, and my Indian co-workers at Ayerst.

One day, after just four weeks of being married, I brought up to Nana my intention to leave Ayerst and go to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I would be earning a degree in Education in the ANISA project, working with Dr. Dan Jordan whom I had met that Spring. I mentioned to her that we may have a new beginning in our life and also how a career in Education will bring a more enjoyable life with an option of having free summers. Nana, being of a gentle and accommodating disposition, acquiesced, not wanting to disappoint me if that was what I wanted to do.

Locating living quarters in Amherst Massachusetts was now at the top of our new “to-do” list. Nana and I drove to Amherst one weekend, and Dr. Jordan introduced us to a Baha’i couple, Dr. Mark and Maxine Rossman who then took us to a newly coming up apartment complex called Village Park. After seeing a few models of apartments we opted to rent a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment which was reasonably priced and had the appliances we needed. I paid a deposit, promising to move in at the beginning of January. I planned to leave Ayerst officially on January 7th, 1972, which was a Friday. I had to enroll in U Mass and register for the Winter Quarter which began on January 10th. New Year’s Day fell on a Saturday and Ayerst gave its employees a day off on Friday, December 31st, to compensate for that missed holiday. I thought that we should take advantage of the long weekend to move the household to Amherst. I would return to Montreal on Sunday so that I could finish my work by January 7th.

Amherst is about 275 miles from Montreal, a leisurely six-hour drive. We rented a U-Haul van for the move. In those days, there was no provision for renting the van in Quebec, Canada, driving it one way, and returning it in Massachusetts, USA. Fred, an energetic, well-built, and friendly Baha’i youth, was free that weekend and offered to drive the van while Nana and I followed him in our car. The van was rented on Thursday evening. With the help of Fred and another friend, we packed the van and our car with boxes, each properly and neatly labeled by Nana to facilitate the customs inspection at the border. I called Mark Rossman to let him know of our arrival on Friday evening and he came to help us move in. I also requested the apartment manager to turn on the heat so that we may enter a warm apartment. Being New Year’s Eve, the traffic was heavy. We encountered icy road conditions after we passed Burlington Vermont. Fred drove the van with extreme caution while Nana and I followed him. We had hoped to arrive by 6:00pm on Friday, but it was 9:00pm when we got to our apartment in Amherst. Mark and another Baha’i friend, Ruhullah Vafadari, the brother in law of Dr. Donald Streets, came over, and with their help we were all moved in by midnight. The next morning we put food in the cabinets and Nana mopped and vacuumed the wooden floors to lay the carpets and set up the living room. We were the first to occupy this newly built apartment.

Leaving Nana in Amherst, I returned to Montreal on Sunday evening with Fred driving the U-Haul back to Canada. Since the telephone and TV were in operation I thought this would be OK. On Thursday morning that week while I was finishing up writing a report, I was surprised to see Nana at my workplace. She said she could not handle the loneliness, although the Rossmans had her for dinner one evening. Maxine dropped her at the station the next morning. Nana was sorry to report that she was pick-pocketed just as she boarded the train to Cote Vertu. Fortunately her wallet contained only a small amount of cash as the rest of the money, her ID, and passport were safely zipped in her hand-bag. We spent the following two days in that empty Montreal apartment and pushed off to Amherst on Sunday.

The following week I registered for the graduate program at the U Mass School of Education and had a two-hour meeting with the program director, Dan Jordan. We were to meet at least once a week when he was in town, as he was very busy traveling. In this program, the student and his major professor wrote the course description with learning outcomes well specified. The course was titled “Special Problems in Education.” We decided that first I would document and review all the available scientific literature on the role of nutrition during the early periods from conception to five years. This was a very critical component in the ANISA Model that Dr. Jordan was conceptualizing.

I was introduced to Dr. Donald Streets, whom I had met at the Green Acre Baha’i School in 1967. He was also tenured faculty at the School of Education and worked with Dan Jordan as the Assistant Director of the ANISA program. His wife, Ruhi, was of Persian origin and grew up in Panchgani, India. They were living in Shutesbury, a town next to Amherst, with their two boys, Ramin and Nabil.

ANISA is an acronym for American National Institute for Social Advancement. ANISA was incorporated by Dan as a separate non-profit corporation that could receive grants from other funding sources. Don Streets was the manager of the funds received by ANISA and also functioned as a liaison officer between ANISA and the University of Massachusetts.

Dan Jordan gave me a very straight forward warning: “You will face many tests, as there are several other Baha’is and non-Baha’is also working in the ANISA project. Do not, even for a minute, judge their habits and behaviors, including my own. Just be focused on your work. How the other Baha’is behave, on the campus or off the campus, should not be a matter of concern to you. Each Baha’i is accountable for his or her own behavior.”

I recalled Abdu’l-Baha’s admonition: “Humanity is not perfect. There are imperfections in every human being, and you will always become unhappy if you look toward the people themselves. But if you look toward God, you will love them and be kind to them, for the world of God is the world of perfection and complete mercy. Therefore, do not look at the shortcomings of anybody; see with the sight of forgiveness. The imperfect eye beholds imperfections. The eye that covers faults looks toward the Creator of souls.” This was of great caution and comfort to me as I later encountered several testing situations.

Nana and I spent the next few weeks settling in to the new apartment, and new environment. In early February of 1972 Nana informed me that she was pregnant, and we were overjoyed. Maxine Rosman was also pregnant with her second child at the same time and she and Nana communicated often to share each others experience. Looking the phone book, we were happy to locate a gynecologist in Northhampton, one Dr. Fraund. His name in German means “friend.” We thought it was a good omen.

Differences in Styles and Personalities
It is one thing for a man and a woman to be in each other’s company for few hours at a time during their dating period. It is completely another experience to live together as a married couple. Very quickly I learned how different we were in many categories. I was an evening and late night person; I really started my work after 8:00pm and went on until midnight. Nana was a morning person. She was a shy and private person, selective in choosing her friends. I was just the opposite, outgoing and a “people person.” Nana played according to the rules in all situations, but I was always looking for the legally allowed exceptions to the rules.

Nana’s drive was towards a perfectionist model. In our apartment, one could see that there was “a women in the house;” she had a flair for decoration. Nana saw much value in having a sense of harmony and order in every section of the apartment. In contrast to my bachelor residence (though I thought I was better than other bachelors in this regard), each thing was in the place where it ought to be. I had rented an apartment, but Nana had made it a cozy home.

In general I am a risk taker while Nana is a careful player. When doing any sort of project, I commit myself; I jump into it and then look for the action steps to achieve it. Nana on the other hand is intensely practical. She will have to be sure of the necessary means to achieve the desired goal. For example, I invite friends for an evening meal and then plan the menu. On the other hand, Nana has to mentally choreograph the entire process and then invite guests for the most convenient evening. On one occasion I invited Dan Jordan and Don Streets for lunch and told Nana of this invitation. Poor Nana! Being new to entertaining, she worried over the menu so much that she lost sleep. This pattern is there even today; no matter who comes, she considers the menu very carefully and the table is always set meticulously.

Nana thought that the Indian food I made was too oily and salty so she bought an “Indian Cookbook” published by Time/Life. She tried many of the recipes and became sort of a local expert in Indian cooking. On one occasion she made 200 Gulab Jaman for a potluck. Up to this day all the Indian cooking she does she learned on her own.

Working with Dan Jordan
The first semester of my studies went well and I got a fuller grasp of the scope of the work involved in this project. There were about fifteen students and three faculty members reviewing the entire current literature in specific areas of human development. There were no PCs at that time and we had to type out our research findings into the computer in the main library. Every two or three weeks, with Dan or Don presiding, we had the entire team share and discuss their findings. This process was very stimulating as we discovered each others potential and contribution to the project.

This was when I realized that Daniel Jordan was not just another professor of education, but in fact a genius. Born in 1932 into a large family in Alliance, Nebraska, Dan was a child prodigy who at the age of nine was paying for his own piano lessons. At the age of thirteen he began his study of the organ at the University of Nebraska, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music at the age of seventeen. At age eighteen Daniel Jordan became the first American to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for music. At Oxford University in England he earned both a Bachelor and Master of Arts degree in the composition, theory, and history of music; and he began his doctoral studies in musicology at the same institution. Interrupting his studies he served in the U.S. Army for two years from 1956 to 1958. Turning down an offer to play Beethoven’s “Emperor’s Concerto” with the Oslo Symphony, which most likely would have set him on the tour circuit as a concert pianist, Jordan changed his career direction to human development and began collegiate studies again at the University of Chicago. In 1964 he earned a master’s and PhD in human development, which was an interdisciplinary course of study examining the development of the human organism from conception to death from biological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological points of view. He specialized in brain chemistry in relation to memory, emotion, and learning. Dan was truly a visionary and had a great passion for the conceptualization this new model of education. He was a charismatic and personable figure. He was a voracious reader, and had an extensive library of his own to which he was adding at least one book a week. He was always extremely generous with his time and carefully listened to and guided each and every student working with him. He worked tirelessly around the clock. It was great privilege to work with a man of such attributes and talents, and in many ways he was my role model. Dan’s wife, Nancy, was a native of the British Isles. She had a warm personality and charm, and she was very well liked in the community on her own merits. They had at that time two daughters, Melossa and Sara.

New Arrival
That first summer in Amherst was extremely pleasant. We were not too far from Tanglewood, where open-air orchestra concerts were given. We went to three different times including a “Boston Pops” concert. It was also exciting to prepare for the baby and get all the little things that would be required. We took Lamaze classes which taught breathing exercises for easing the delivery.

In September 1972 my first cousin Narayanan came to the USA on a business trip and visited us for a few days. This was the first time for Nana to welcome a relative of mine. I picked up Narayan at the bus station in the evening, and when we came home Nana was already in bed as she was a little nervous. Narayan was very understanding of this, as she was close to the end of her pregnancy. The next morning Nana greeted us with a big smile and prepared“uppuma” for our break fast. A couple of days later we drove him to the Boston airport and on our way back bought a “Boston Rocker” which we kept for thirty years.

In August of 1972 Nana and I were invited for an evening at the Streets home, where we were warmly greeted by the ANISA crowd; it was a surprise baby shower! Nana was speechless, as she never expected such a wonderful surprise. Everybody had a great evening and we received lots of gifts for the baby.

On the evening of September 24th Nana felt her labor pains. We immediately rushed to the Coolie Dickinson Hospital, where Dr. Fraund had his practice. I assisted Nana as much as possible in her breathing during her labor. I was one of the first father to be allowed in the delivery room, as it was not the usual practice in those days . Shaku was born early in the early morning of September 25th. We had a beautiful baby girl weighing eight pounds two ounces. We had earlier chosen the name “Shakuntala” if we had a girl. This name is from an Indian mythological story and means nightingale. Nana’s parents visited us a few weeks later to see the newborn. Nana nursed Shaku, as we called her, for a year and prepared all the baby food. She also made most of her clothes during the following years.

 

Shaku was a beautiful baby. She was easy to care for and was growing well, but when she was about two months old she stopped breathing in the middle of the night. It was Nana’s intuition that made her go to the room and saved her. A few weeks later I was coming down the stairs with her in my arms and my sandal broke. We both went tumbling down; I held her tight, but she hit the floor at the bottom of the steps. We took her for a check her up, and the pediatrician did not find anything wrong with her at that time. I found myself on crutches for a week with a sprained ankle.

In the spring of 1973 we had the pleasure of having for dinner, on separate occasions, Universal House of Justice members Dr. David Ruhe and Mr. Ali Nakhjavani with their spouses. By the end of the first year in Amherst, we found that we had a wonderful multinational and culturally diverse community. We were always invited for holidays, weekend potlucks or dinner gatherings at the Jordans’ or the Streets’. Both Nancy and Ruhi were excellent hosts. Nana usually brought delicious baked desserts. I was much relieved to see Nana becoming more comfortable in the English-speaking environment. TV programs helped her immensely in this effort.

In early 1973 we had a wonderful addition to the ANISA graduate program, Ms. Magdalene Carney. She was an African American from Alabama, with a very warm and genuine personality, and like Dan Jordan she was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States. She stayed in our apartment complex and was a frequent dinner guest. She occasionally baby-sat for us; she and Nana got along well.

We were all pleasantly surprised when Ms. Nancy Rambush, the founder of the American Montessori System, joined us to get her doctorate degree working with Dan Jordan. Her professional experience in early childhood education was an additional asset. That summer the ANISA team held the first-ever month-long teacher training workshop for the entire staff of the elementary schools in the Suffield School district in Connecticut. In addition to presenting seminars on nutrition and on cognitive growth, I was given the responsibility of preparing the audio-visual materials, training manuals, and other handouts. This included copies of my first publication relating to the ANISA project. It was “Nutrition and Educational Planning” printed in World Order Magazine. It was lots of fun. This is when Nana and I got acquainted well with Irene and Gordon Hartley. Irene was a kindergarten teacher in one of the elementary schools in Suffield, and Gordon was a retired Navy man. Supported by her school district, Irene eventually got not only her master’s degree in education, but also a new lease on her professional life. This was one of the main objectives of the ANISA program; to rejuvenate the professional competency of the teachers already in the public school system. They could get higher degrees without having to enroll in a traditional university program, so they could continue to teach. There was, and still is, a strong conviction among many people that the most effective way of improving the public school system in the USA would be to fire low-performing teachers and recruit new ones. But those people do not realize that the system in the universities that would prepare these new teachers is tradition-bound and outmoded. In contrast, the ANISA system offered an innovative and theoretically coherent model of education and demonstrated its efficacy in rejuvenating low-performing teachers.

It was during this period that Mr. Vasudevan, whom I had met in Gwalior, India during my teaching trip in 1968, came to U. Mass to get his doctorate in International Education. He and his wife Sitara, one of Ms. Shirin Bowman’s daughters, were a welcome addition to the Baha’i community. It was really funny that Sitara once came to our home hoping that Nana wouldto teach her how to make good “chappatis,” an Indian unleavened bread. Sitara’s efforts, she herself admitted, ended up producing cardboard discs. They had cooks in their household in Gwalior, and Sitara had never learned to cook. I should say that as time went by, she became quite a good cook.

My Doctoral Program
Before I would be ready to conceptualize the topic for my final dissertation, I needed to complete my course work by taking at least two graduate courses outside of the education department. This I did by taking courses in Cultural Anthropology and Cognitive Psychology. The content of these courses turned out to be very relevant to writing my position paper for the comprehensive examination, which was for my committee members to ascertain if I had done enough research to identify the resources needed in the area of my proposed dissertation. A three member committee composed of Dr. Jordan, Dr. Streets, and the Chairman of the Early Childhood Department , Robert Foreman, was formed to guide me through the process.

In August of 1973, I submitted a position paper for the comprehensive examination on “Axiology and its Relevance to Education.” Axiology is a branch of philosophy that examines values. The purpose of a value theory is to understand how, why, and to what degree persons value things; these things may be persons, ideas, objects, or anything else. Nana typed the entire first draft manuscript from my hand-written papers. Fortunately my handwriting was legible those days. The members were very supportive of my proposal and wished me good luck as this subject was very controversial and not well investigated. My next step was to really focus on my final dissertation and I spent late hours in the library to locate and do the required reading.

I found that the concept of “values” has been studied by theologians, philosophers, cultural anthropologists, social scientists, and psychologists, but that there was no consistent definition of the term “value.” In the hard sciences like chemistry or physics there is a universally agreed system of nomenclature. In other words whether you are a chemist in Australia or in Egypt the structural formula of benzene or the definition of trans-fatty acids is the same. Not so in the social sciences. So I had to dig into the literature to see if I could find an accepted definition of the term “value.” On top of this was the question: “Why do we need a ‘value theory’ for the ANISA System at all?” And the next question would be: “On what basis, or by what criteria do you validate the universality of a value system?” These very complex questions were to be answered in my final dissertation.

Though I do not want to overwhelm you with the final challenge I had to meet, an example would help you in understanding it. Suppose that an ANISA teacher, in the moral education class, tells the students that lying, murdering, and stealing are immoral acts. One student may ask on what basis she has come that conclusion? One may say that it is the Ten Commandments or teachings from other sacred writings that unequivocally stand as the basis of judging one’s actions. But in contemporary culture, when agnosticism and atheism are pervasive, the above answer may not be valid since they may not believe in the Bible or any sacred scriptures at all. To avoid this dilemma one has to bring in convincing arguments based on solid scientific evidence as to why these acts are not justifiable in an ever advancing civilization. So my task was to go deep into the literature to investigate what the scientific community has to say on this issue.

In the summer of 1974, Dr. William Furtick, the Dean of Tropical Agriculture at the University of Hawaii, spoke at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley. I went with Dan and Don to hear his presentation. At the end of his talk Dan and Don had a log chat with him which resulted an unofficial invitation for Dan to present the ANISA Model at the University of Hawaii. Dan introduced me to him and he came to know of my contribution to the project. Dan and Don subsequently received a formal invitation and did go to Hawaii.

In the early months of 1974 Dan and I attended a lecture given at Smith College in Northampton by Dr. Philip Phenix, an eminent professor of education at the prestigious Columbia Teachers’ College in New York. After the lecture, with Dan’s approval, I discussed with Dr. Phenix my challenges in finding resources to present my case on a scientific and secular basis. He gave several names and said that the works of Teilhard de Chardin, will be a refreshing and inspiring resource. I found that Dr. Phenix had also written several books and two of them, “Man and His Becoming” and “Realms of Meaning” were extremely useful for me. During the next three months I internalized the works of “evolutionary biologists” including Teilhard de Chardin, who had studied human evolution from the primordial cell to the conscious man. I felt assured that I had a good case to present and was glad to be able to write the initial manuscript of my dissertation by the end of the Spring of 1974.

The doctoral program in education required a teaching internship of three month or thirty hours in any school, at any grade level. I was very fortunate to work in a Montessori School in Fall River, Massachusetts. ANISA had a contract for in-service training with this school and it was only an hour and half drive from Amherst. I drove to Fall River every Friday for five consecutive weeks while my dissertation was being edited and typed.

I met periodically with my committee members for approval of the content of each of the chapters. Nana once again typed these drafts. After getting the formal approval of the manuscript from my committee members, I was very fortunate in getting Ms. Linda Guardina, one of Dan’s part-time secretaries, to type the final document. In those days, fortunately, we had electric typewriters, correction tapes, and copying machines in contrast to the time when I prepared my first dissertation in Calcutta. This process took almost the whole of the summer of 1974. The final oral defense examination was held in August of that year and I passed the finals successfully. The Committee approved the dissertation by signing off the approval sheets but Dan asked me to divide Chapter Five into two chapters for clarity, as it was too bulky. Honestly, I felt like punching him at that moment. But later when I re-read the chapter calmly and dispassionately, I realized that he was exactly right. I did the editing in a week’s time and I had a great sigh of relief when I finally I sent the revised document for binding.

It had taken less than three years to complete my doctoral program, thanks to Dan Jordan and Nana. In my dissertation I had the following the acknowledgments for them:

“My chairperson Dr. Daniel Jordan’s exemplary dedication to excellence, the indefatigable energy, which met its ultimate test as he tried to read every sentence of the manuscript, and his constant emotional support during my periods of fatigue and depression will long be remembered and greatly appreciated.” “I am greatly indebted to my beloved wife, Michelle, without whose selfless efforts, moral support and fortitude it would have been virtually impossible to undertake the task. My achievement in this effort is in no small measure a result of the tolerance and patience of my wife and our little daughter Shakuntala, in living in far from ideal conditions, amidst severe financial constraints, with an often preoccupied husband and father.”

I have to relate to you a very funny incident. There was a Dean’s representative present during the oral examination as a fourth member of the committee to monitor a fair conduct of the examination. While I was presenting my dissertation and answering the questions, I had an intuitive feeling that the Dean’s representative was very doubtful of my capacity to have done this amount of work. After the dissertation was signed off, the Dean’s representative said that it is customary for any graduating doctoral student to tell a joke to show his or talent in evoking humor in any presentation. And he requested me to crack one on the spot, as long as it is not in anyway vulgar. I boldly told the committee the following story:

“Once three religious leaders, a Protestant minister from Minneapolis, a Jewish rabbi from Long Island, and a African-American Baptist minister from Alabama, all died in an accident and were waiting at the Pearly Gates for entrance into heaven. Saint Peter was manning the gate that day, and he told them that it is customary to review a video of the life of each religious leader entering the gate and to examine if they had exhibited prejudice in any form during their ministry. The Protestant minister had a clean bill of health on this issue. He was then asked to spell “GOD” before he was admitted through the gate. Then the Rabbi’s life was reviewed, and it was seen that he had even permitted mixed marriages in his parish with gentiles on many occasions. He also had to spell the same word, “GOD,” before he could go through into paradise. Then the case of the African-American Baptist minister was examined, and it was found that his record was excellent. Saint Peter said to him, “Spell ‘CHRYSANTHEMUM.’” The whole committee burst into a belly laughs. I have included the above incident just to show that new prejudices spring up in our minds depending on situations.

I sent a copy of my dissertation to Professor Phenix of Columbia University to thank him for his suggestions for my doctoral dissertation. I told him I thought of him as a “behind-the-scenes committee member.” His response was as follows:

“Your thesis is a delight to read. You write with fine style and clarity. You deal with precision and passion with topics of capital importance. Your review of value theory is impressive. I am particularly pleased with your use of Rokeach, Hartman, and Maslow et al. And then with the way you move on to establish an ontology of values in a well presented process cosmology, using Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin. As you know, I believe that just such an ontology as you set forth is fundamental to contemporary education, indeed, to the future of civilization itself…. My congratulations for your achievements as a multidisciplinary scholar of real talent and promise.”

Kansas City Baha’i Conference
In the Fall of 1974 came a four-day Baha’i Conference to be held during the Labor-day weekend in the Kiel Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. Over a thousand Baha’is from the USA and Canada were expected to attend, and over 300 children, ages from four to fifteen, were already registered. Recognizing the need for a well-organized children’s program, instead of depending on last-minute volunteers, the National Spiritual Assembly a contract to ANISA Corporation to organize and run the a four-day children’s program at the Conference. Dan invited Nana to go with the Baha’is in the fifteen-member ANISA team and help in whatever way she could. We three, Nana, Shaku, and I, joined the ANISA team which included Nancy Jordan and Ruhi Streets. We had to be there three days before the conference to set up the classroom environment and train the volunteers to deliver the curriculum. On the morning of August 24th the team assembled at the Jordan’s place. A shuttle bus took us to the Hartford airport and we were off to Kansas City. This was the first air-travel for our two-year-old Shaku and she took it comfortably.

We were all booked in a hotel near the conference site and the meeting rooms in this hotel served as ANISA’s operational headquarters. Dan and Don had already choreographed in detail the whole program and assigned specific tasks and timelines to each member of the team in our first planning meeting. For the first time I saw the organizational ability of both Dan and Don, serving as “quarterbacks” in delegating and accomplishing the needed tasks. I had the task of preparing and printing the brochure for the children’s program and other handouts for the volunteers to be ready for insertion in the registration packet. Fortunately I located a 24-hour “Speedy Print” shop just two blocks from our hotel. I was also assigned the task of locating the places of interest for taking the children from eight to fourteen years for outdoor activities, which included the Zoo, the Aquarium and historic sites in Kansas City. The President of the Chamber of Commerce in Kansas city helped me beyond my expectations in preparing an itinerary for these trips in a very short time. Being a religious conference I was able to negotiate a reduced entrance price for these sites.

On Thursday evening, the day before the start of the conference, I brought the printed brochure for the children’s program from the printer. We fortunately noticed an error in the front title page where the word Baha’i was spelled with a lower case “b.” The artist who had designed the brochure had obviously made this mistake which no one including myself noticed when it was proof read. Since the inscription was artistically rendered by hand and not by a typewriter, the lower case “b” could be easily altered to a capital “B” by just one curved stroke. Nana opted to make this change in all the 500 printed brochures, one by one. I saw Nana doing this job with meticulous care in time to be included in the registration packet. The children’s program was a great success and many children and their parents remarked that it was one of the best they had ever experienced.

At this conference we also had the pleasure of meeting once again Emerik and Rosemary Sala from Montreal. We had a lovely dinner in one of the floating restaurants in the Missouri river.

Arrival of Vivek
Three weeks after our return from Kansas City, Nana gave me a good news that she was pregnant. We went through the Lamaze classes again and Nana prepared the room for the new arrival. We had the same gynecologist, Dr. Fraund, again at Coolie Dickinson Hospital in Northampton.

Nana’s mother came from Magog, Quebec, by bus a week before the baby’s birth. We had to pick her up at the Burlington, Vermont bus station. We could not drive to Magog because we had submitted papers to get our “green cards” and we could not leave the US until the cards were issued.

After experiencing a false labor on May 21st, on the evening of May 27th 1975 Nana delivered with relative ease a handsome baby boy weighing 8 pounds. We named him Vivek Kalyan Raman. Vivek, meaning “judicious discriminator,” is short for Swami Vivekananda of the Ramakrishna Mission, who was my spiritual guru. Shaku welcomed her sibling with eagerness, and once even brought a Kleenex when Vivek was crying. Though the child was growing well, early on we found that Vivek had two health issues. When he was few weeks old, our pediatrician during one of the routine checkups identified a condition in which both feet were pointing inward and this needed to be corrected. She referred us to an orthopedic pediatrician for further consultation who advised us to put casts up to his knees which were renewed periodically until the problem was corrected. The second issue was that he was regurgitating a lot and making a mess everywhere. The pediatrician had no positive advice to give us except saying that the valve in his esophagus was not closing well and it would get better with time.

In December 1975 Dr. Patricia Tanner, an ex-colleague in the ANISA project, invited us to spend the Christmas vacation at her home in Tampa, Florida. We spent five cold days in Tampa, during which we drove to Disney World in Orlando. I was also eager to go to Clearwater, Florida, a suburb of Tampa, to meet Dr. Ray Wunderlich, a renowned pediatrician with a specialty in allergy and learning problems in children. When I called his office he said he would be glad to join the whole family at a nearby hotel for lunch. This was the first time that Nana was comfortable when I was having a chat with a professional. As we were finishing our lunch, Nana out of the blue inquired as to whether he had any advice for Vivek’s regurgitation problem. He suggested that she give him a small amount of pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) every day until his condition improves. Nana did not waste a minute after he left, but immediately purchased the vitamin in the nearby drug store. Lo and behold, even before we returned home we were able to see an improvement and in less than a month the problem was completely resolved.

Post Graduation Period
On completion of my degree program Dan appointed me as an Assistant Professor of Education with soft monies from additional grants to ANISA for planning and implementing a Very Early ANISA Program (VEAP) in the Suffield School District. My income doubled. The family was growing, so I traded our small Toyota Corolla for a Toyota station wagon from a dealer in Fall River, whom I had befriended during my internship there. I taught human development courses in the School of Education while I was working in the VEAP project in Suffield. A few months after the arrival of Vivek we were on the lookout for a larger accommodation. Nana spotted a charming newly built house on Henry Street that was for sale. Unfortunately I could not make a decision buy it at that time due to uncertainties in my tenure at U. Mass. We drove by this house every week for weeks and Nana was heart broken when she saw a “sold” sign. She felt that they had sold “her house.”

We rented a three-bedroom house in the outskirts of Shutesbury built on a dirt road in a wooded area. The Streets and Rossmans lived in this town and this move also enabled the formation of the Baha’i Local Spiritual Assembly in that town. However, without a second car Nana felt very isolated and lonely when I was at work at the University.

We were thrilled to have as our first guests in this new house grand-mama Guerard and Nana’s aunt Paulette from Montreal. Aunt Paulette was an extremely charming woman and adored the kids. We had a wonderful time. The second visitor was my brother, Srinivasan, who was on a business trip to Pittsburgh. We picked him up at the airport and this was his first ever meeting with Nana and the kids. I showed him the University Campus. The Streets invited us for dinner and Don played the piano. Srinivasan enjoyed his stay with us.

The second half of the year 1976 was not a good one for ANISA as no new grants were on the horizon. I started applying to the local colleges. I sent my resume in response to several advertisements in the Journal of Higher Education but did not get a single response. Don Streets said that the institutions I applied to were probably intimidated to see my qualifications, as I held two doctorates. It was well acknowledged at that time that applications from minorities, especially from first-generation immigrants, with or without a “green card,” are at the bottom of the basket.

In the Fall of 1976, Hand Of The Cause Mrs. Rúhíyyih Khánum, the wife of the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, came to Amherst to address the Youth in the community. Dan and Nancy held a reception at their place for her, but at their request it was strictly for Baha’is. Nana felt very hurt by this and I went alone. But a few days later Nat and Carol Rutstein, members of the Amherst Baha’i community, invited both of us for dinner so that Nana could meet Rúhíyyih Khánum. Nana prepared a dessert for the occasion and we all had an enjoyable evening.

A Miraculous Save
In the Spring of 1976, I was asked to come to Worcester Massachusetts for an interview with the Chairman of the Nursing Department in the Medical College of the University of Massachusetts, for a yet-to-be-advertised teaching position in Early Nutrition and Child Development for their Nursing School. This opportunity was created unsolicited by John Silber, President of Boston University, who wrote the introduction for my book “Nutrition and Human Development” that was to be published soon. I had met him earlier in Boston regarding his contribution and he knew of my expertise. I drove to Worcester quite early but as I was just negotiating a left turn after getting the green arrow to enter the Medical College, a careless driver crashed into my car while he still had a red light. I got out of the car unscathed. My car was severely damaged under the hood but not totaled. Fortunately there were two witnesses who testified as the police arrived at the scene. The driver admitted his mistake and a truck towed my car away to clear the road. This incident took more than an hour to settle. I sat on a bench on the roadside and said a prayer. When I recovered from the shock, I saw that there were still 25 minutes left before the interview. Mustering all my energy, I slowly walked to the building and located the room where the meeting was to be held. The Chairman of the nursing school had two colleagues with him. I told them of the accident and they were shocked to see my condition. I was given the option to come some other day but I told them that I would go ahead with the meeting while adrenaline was still pumping.

The chairman was interested in the redirection of my career from hard science to soft science. After hearing my story he posed an interesting question as to why they should hire me instead of a regular PhD in Nutrition. My response was that besides having a comprehensive knowledge of the biochemistry need to teach this subject, I am well versed and current in applying the principles of adult learning. I would teach the courses as a social science and not emphasize the molecular structure of the nutrients we ingest or the biochemical mechanisms of the Krebs Cycle. I offered to deliver a guest lecture to a group of nursing students, saying that this would give them an opportunity to evaluate my competency, my style of teaching, and my passion for the subject. I was not sure if they were pleased with my response, but the chairman promised to keep in touch when the position would be advertised. I never heard a word from him again.
I called Nana and told her of the happenings of the day, then took the bus back to Amherst. I said a prayer for thanksgiving. That night I could not sleep as I was getting mental flashbacks of the incident. A few days later my car was fixed and retuned to our place.

In early 1976 our little Shaku was ready to be put in a preschool, and we enrolled in a facility which operated from 9:00am till noon, which worked with my schedule. Nana had for quite a while noticed Shaku’s slow and poor motor development, and this was also observed by the preschool teacher. I allayed Nana’s fears by saying that it was only a developmental delay and would get normal in time. Mag Carney also felt the same way as I did. Nevertheless, Nana arranged for an examination of Shaku with a development specialist at the Gesell Institute in New Haven, Connecticut. As ill luck would have it, it snowed so heavily that morning that we could not get the car out of the garage. I do not know why I did not pursue this evaluation further before proceeding with our future plans. Ten days later we were on our way to India.

By the middle of June that year it became apparent that ANISA had no more funding and I was paid from a contract from the National Assembly contract for designing the K-12 Education Curriculum for the proposed regular Baha’i School in Davison. I also came to know that Dan himself was planning to leave his tenured position at U. Mass to move to California International University in Escondido, which was owned and directed by Ken Blanchard, a former colleague of Dan Jordan at U. Mass. Dan and Don felt there were more opportunities in California for attracting grants for ANISA.

Earlier in the Summer of 1976, I had received a letter from Dr. Ray Johnson of the New Era School in Panchgani, India. He said that they were planning to extend the New Era School by adding a Junior College so that their high school graduates may go directly to this college. He also hinted that he was seriously interested in getting me to come to Panchgani to spearhead this project. With my car fully paid and the accumulated Provident Fund monies with U. Mass, I thought that this might be the right time to visit my family in India with Nana and the kids and also investigate first hand the Junior College plan at Panchagani. Hoping for the best with a positive orientation towards an unknown future, I sub-let the house to Dwight Allen for three months and proceeded with my plan.