Part III: A Name Plate, Mother Teresa and a Lot of Travel
When I was a young girl, I distinctly remember looking upon Chanakyapuri— an affluent neighborhood in New Delhi— with eyes of absolute amazement. Known for housing diplomats, ambassadors and other such individuals, Chanakyapuri smiled at me with shining eyes, telling me that someday, I would also be able to build a residence of my own within its inviting quarters. As I read about Drummond’s time in India during his time as a New Delhi Bureau Chief, and learned that he had a house in Chanakyapuri, the twelve-year-old girl within me began clapping her hands in excitement. In his office, there is a distinctive name plate which says ‘William J. Drummond. New Delhi Bureau Chief. Los Angeles Times.’ During my excursions in India, I’ve driven by several houses with similar name plates on their doors, and seeing one up close is enough to send shivers of excitement down my spine. Maybe this is how it feels to see a dream up close, I slowly realized, wondering if Drummond would notice my staring eyes.
“So what was India like for you?” I asked, eager to relive my homeland through his eyes.
“When I first arrived in India in August 1971, there was a lot of trouble in East Pakistan. There had been a cyclone which led to refugees being wound up in India. Then, in December 1971, the war for Bangladesh broke out and I covered that. That was the first time I covered a war, and it was a very exciting experience,” he said, as the recurrence of the adjective exciting makes me smile. Journalistic excitement is now a prominent motif in my conversations with Drummond. “I also travelled across Dhaka. During my travel, I came across this incident where the Bengali women of the countryside were claiming that they had been raped and impregnanted by the Punjabis. They did not want to bear these children and were seeking abortions. Back then, Kolkata was very closed, so these women decided to get in touch with the abortion clinics on their own. This is when Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity showed up. They began getting these women to deliver live births, and would run off with the fetus, attempting to sustain it. It made no sense, and they were still really into this,” he said.
Confusion led to curiosity, and Drummond describes how, when the war was over, he wanted to know more about Mother Teresa. “So I made an appointment with her,” he said. “I toured her ashram, and it was all very remarkable. Back then, she was an international figure and I had to really sit down and interview her. She had spent all her life in this mental state of utter devotion, so the interview wasn’t very satisfying. Mother Teresa had an answer ready for any question that you would ask her, and that made it a really opaque interview,” he said. “It wasn’t really a profile of Mother Teresa, but of this very astonishing spectacle of the enormity of Kolkata as a city, the plight of people who were dying on the street, and the nobility of the people who were trying to make their last moments on Earth more humane,” he said.
From California and Martin Luther King to India and Mother Teresa, I felt as though Drummond had taken me on a mini world-tour. These locations were very different from each other, but at the same time, they were deeply connected by the spirit of active motion. In both California and India, I could see Drummond moving—whether it was marching behind Martin Luther King or walking through the streets of Kolkata. Journalism was so much more than the active transcription of a story. It also involved a fair amount of exploration, living with the realization that a story might always not be placed in your palm, and sometimes you need to go out in search of it.
