Dr. Smith, you were a political journalist in America and I was told that you've chosen to live here, a mountain village like this in the Himalayan Community. Could you please tell me why you came to India and settled down here?
Yes, of course. I came to India a year ago to have a better understanding of the country. After I arrived, I had to find a place where I could live and write. Of course there were many places for me to choose. But after some months I settled down happily in this village because I like the countryside better and it is a little cooler than those in the plains.
Have you ever thought of a typical village as a better choice?
Yes, I have. Yet no such thing exists. In fact I wasted a lot of time looking for the typical village. Conditions vary too widely. But the villages I stayed in had much in common- poverty, dirt, and ignorance.
But in spite of all this, you still feel very happy. Is the experience in this country so important to you that you came all the way from the United States?
Well, that's also the question that the villagers ask me. They think that I'm crazy to give up my comfortable life in the United States and isolate myself from the outside world in this remote village, like a retired old man Why have I come? I've put aside my work as a political journalist because my ideas have changed. I've come to believe that what is happening in the Third World is more important than anything else. But to understand how three-quarters of the world's people live, and how their future might affect the rest of the world, I feel that I first have to try and share their way of life.