Quote

I returned to India after long years of international service, because I had always cherished the desire to make a difference in my own country.

India profoundly changed my outlook on life because you see how people can be content and very happy with little or even no possessions. It's the reverse of the West.

As a child, I felt that the Indian part of me was unacknowledged, and therefore somehow negated, by my American environment and vice versa. Growing up, I was impatient with my parents for being so different, holding on to India the way they did, and always making me feel like I had to make a choice of which way I would go.

I think the best thing about my short-lived political career was that I saw the interiors of Bihar and UP. That is the real India, and, being an Indian, it was really sad to see our own people living in such dismal conditions. It was a real eye-opener.

And then a great thing in my life was going to India.

India somehow constantly rivets and inspires me, and I feel very relieved to have come from this country which has a very 'lifeist' approach to living fully, no matter what one has or doesn't have.

Frankly, I never had any intense desire to go to India. I know that sounds a bit strange, but it just never was someplace I had a burning desire to visit.

I had been a radical, a left-wing politico, and meeting the Indian people made me realize that the politics of the left and the right were so much less important than the politics of the heart and the spirit.

Moving to India was challenging being a foreigner. I don't have any family here. I didn't have anyone to guide me. But I never felt for a second that I am not welcome here.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.