Dr. Mark J. Dresden was a professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania from 1949 until he retired in 1977. He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 1960 to Bombay University to study and photograph the Denkart: A Pahlavi Text. He passed away in 1986. Below is the letter of gratitude written by his wife Jacqueline Dresden to the US Department of State. In the photo, Dr. Dresden is standing with two Zoroastrian priests and their wives in Mumbai.

November 27, 2009

Dear Members of the Fulbright Committee:

What a marvelous idea the Fulbright Program initiated by the late Senator J. William Fulbright is, giving so many students and scholars a chance to exchange knowledge in so many different fields. Proof of its value is that it continues to grow.

As I look back upon my life now that I am 101, it occurred to me that I wanted and needed to express my gratitude to you for having given me the opportunity in 1960 -- now nearly 50 years ago -- to join my husband, Dr. Mark Jan Dresden, a professor of Indo-Iranian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.

Memories of our trip to India were rekindled last fall when news came of a terrorist bombing of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. During our Fulbright stay in Bombay, my husband and I lived at the Green's Hotel, next door to the Taj.

My husband's project was to find and study Zoroastrian religious manuscripts of the Sassanian times (224-651 AD) that were carefully stored in and near Bombay. The culture and religion are still alive and active today. The Zoroastrian priests, also known as Parsees, took these manuscripts from Persia when they fled Iran during a Muslim invasion around 1100 AD.

The Sassanian Dynasty of Ancient Persia, at its largest, covered an area of modern Iran and Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and large parts of Pakistan. Its literature, written in the Pahlavi language, is one of the primary original sources for the understanding and reconstitution of the religion and culture of this period. One can see, 50 years later, as the US is embroiled in this region, the Fulbright Program's foresight in funding my husband's work.

In 1960, the majority of books written in Pahlavi were not available in a form that could pass even a reasonably strict critical test. My husband's task was to prepare a printed edition of a Pahlavi manuscript, known as the Denkart. Among Zoroastrian books, the Denkart ranks high. Its content matter is more comprehensive and its length greater than that of any other Pahlavi text. A Parsee librarian brought the Denkart manuscript to my husband at our hotel in Bombay.

My husband hired a professional photographer to shoot the more than 800 pages of the manuscript. The photographer created a workspace on the balcony of our hotel room to have the best light. This painstaking work took nearly a month.

During our stay in Bombay, my husband spent a great deal of time and energy visiting with leaders in the Parsee community to gather additional resources to get a better understanding of their culture and society. These insights were critical to his ability to interpret the nuances of their way of life.

After his initial work in India, it took my husband an additional five years to prepare a comprehensive interpretation of the photographic reproduction and other resources he had gathered. The German publishing house, Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, published the work. It stands proudly on my bookshelves today.

I would like to share with you some reflections on our life experiences during this marvelous adventure. For us, coming from the United States, India was so different in climate, languages, religions, cultures, populations, food and problems of daily life that it took time to absorb and adjust to it. The guidance of the Fulbright representatives in India helped a great deal and our living quarters were so excellent that we felt secure and protected by our government.

We arrived in Bombay in September. The next day we and the other 30 or so Fulbright scholars flew to New Delhi where we participated in a two-week introductory seminar that included lectures and trips to important Indian sites. In lectures, we began to learn about the variety of cultures and understand India's practical problems such as scarcity of water, humidity and smelly mattresses, flies, cockroaches, dust and heat. During the two weeks, we went on trips to introduce us to India. The beautiful sightseeing trips included a visit to the Ajanta Caves with its unique Buddhist wall paintings. We also took additional tours of numerous temples with their gorgeous sculptures.

Our trip to the famous Taj Mahal mausoleum was a very special experience. My husband and I hired a big old comfortable Dodge to bring us there. We started in the morning and returned in the dark. Along the way we saw many barefoot women carrying water containers on their heads to bring home to their families. Fortunately, our Sikh driver brought bottled drinks in the trunk of his car to relieve our thirst in the hot weather. The mausoleum, so beautiful in white marble with inlayed flowers all over, was immaculately kept and was located in a big formal garden with an oblong pond in front.

When we returned at night, we were surprised by the intensity of the dark since there were no outside lights along the roads. As we drove, we could see the shining eyes of many hyenas prowling about.

Another very meaningful experience during our two-week stay in New Delhi was a garden party for Fulbright scholars hosted by India's President Radahkrishnan.

After the seminars and trips, we returned to our hotel in Bombay where the Fulbright Program had arranged for us to have a Parsee priest as a guide. He was with us every day.

Once back in Bombay, we traveled by train to visit a boarding school in the mountainous city of Poona where young boys were being educated to become Parsee priests. Although we did not see any young Parsee girls, they are also well educated since Parsees treat men and women equally. Parsees traditionally go to colleges in India and in England.

Some observations I remember are that I was very impressed by the “Choti taxis” (by Mercedes Benz), so efficient and practical. I was also surprised one day when we saw a huge swarm of locusts outside our hotel in Bombay. The locusts flew over the water and continued on because I assume there was not enough vegetation for them around the city. I had never seen anything like it.

Although the English are no longer in power in India today, their way of life still persists. The English language they left behind is an essential binding element in this huge multilingual country.

Over the years I have often reflected on the many memories of our time in India. I again thank the Fulbright Scholars program for having provided this important opportunity to my husband and me. May the program continue to flourish and promote better understanding among peoples of the world.

Dr. Lloyd Rudolph and Dr. Susanne Rudolph are professors emeriti of political science at the University of Chicago. They are former Fulbright scholars to India who are married to each other.

We are writing a joint essay about our Fulbright experience in India. Our Fulbright connection goes back quite a way, to 1962-63 when each of us was a Research Scholar and Olive Reddick was the Director. Lloyd was a Visiting Professor at the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, in 1970-71, in 1991-92 we were again Research Scholars, and in 1995-96 Susanne held a Fulbright-Hays grant.

Our first Fulbright year in 1962-63 was the most memorable. We lived in New Delhi on Lucknow Road just off Mull Road, a short distance from Delhi University. We imagined we had found a neighborhood far away from American and other foreign residents. We would be immersed in Indian life. Imagine our chagrin when we looked over the wall next door to see Alice and Warren Ilchman. They too had located on Lucknow Road to avoid foreigners and immerse themselves in Indian life. We soon mutually forgave each other and became the best of friends.

Olive Reddick and the staff at 12 Hailey Road were immensely helpful inter alia with finding furniture, a refrigerator, and other household equipment. Our household included Jenny Rudolph who had been born on January 11, 1962. She was about six months old when we arrived in India in early July. We were accompanied by Valerie Gilbert, an English au pair, and Frank Hoeber, Susanne’s younger brother who had been rusticated from Columbia for a year for throwing a fire cracker out of his 13th floor dormitory room. We also engaged the services of Bharat Singh who had been recommended to us as a cook by Bimla Nanda, later Bissell.

John Kenneth Galbraith was the US ambassador. In mid-October 1962 more or less simultaneously China invaded India and the Cuban missile crisis threatened nuclear war. It was also the year that the new US embassy deigned by Edward Durell Stone opened in Chanakyapuri, the diplomatic enclave that was just beginning to take shape.

Professor Satish Alekar recently retired as head of the Center for Performing Arts, University of Pune. He was adjunct professor of performance studies in the Tisch School of Arts, New York University, as a Fulbright scholar. He has been practicing theatre in Maharashtra since 1971 and is one of the founding members of India's best-known theatre group, the Theatre Academy, which he administered from 1973 to 1992.

In the spring of 2003, I was a Fulbright scholar in the Performance Studies Department of the Tisch School at New York University (NYU) teaching famous Indian plays like Ghashiram Kotwal, Wada Chirebandi, Hayavadan, Mahanirvan, Begum Barve and many others. It was a rewarding experience to see how a private institution like the NYU functions, how it organizes finance and how the corporate philanthropy functions in the liberal economy. Thinking of the Indian model of higher education, we could benefit by merging the US financial ethos in our education system, including those of the classical and fine arts.

My teaching also gave me an excuse to be in New York, the hub of vibrating theatre. I was under the care of theatre guru Richard Schechner; hence, my schedule included conducting just one class per week and then involving myself in active theatre. It was perhaps the coldest winter in New York in many years. On two occasions the city came to a standstill because of the heavy snow. It was fun to attend rehearsals of the experimental play, Yokastas, in such weather. The play was being directed by Richard Schechner for his own theatre group – the East Coast Artists.

I had been in New York before my Fulbright, too. The first time was in 1983 when I received the Asian Cultural Council (JD Rockefeller 3rd Fund) fellowship as a young playwright. Then in 1985 I went with playwright Vijay Tendulkar to work as a consultant for the Pan Asian Theatre Repertory on invitation by Tisa Chang, the artistic director of Pan Asian. We worked on production of the English version of the Marathi musical play, Ghashiram Kotwal. Ghashiram was first produced in 1972 by Theatre Academy, Pune, a non-profit theatre organization established in 1973 by Jabbar Patel, Mohan Agashe, me and many others. The English version ran a full season in New York. In 1992 I went to Connecticut with famous theatre actor Girish Karnad where we attended the annual theatre event, the National Playwrights Conference, at Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. This was conducted by the American theatre guru Lloyd Richards. Lloyd (1919-2006) conducted this very innovative playwright development program annually from 1966 to 1999 with great commitment and creative imagination.

With more than thirty years in active theatre and my learning from the Fulbright experience, I can say it is time for higher education in India to give importance to providing subsidies in the field of performing arts. Though the National Theatre School in Delhi is doing a good job, especially in promoting plays in Hindi, we need to build more world class theatre schools. We are fortunate in having very good theatre functioning in the regional states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Manipur, Kerala, Assam and Tamilnadu. Young artists from these states are taking theatre very seriously. I retired recently as a professor and head from the Pune University, Maharashtra. Some of my students, after graduating in performing arts, are now studying at US and UK universities supported by various educational funding. The heartening thing is they are inclined to return to join the regional theatres in their states. Because of students like them, I think theatre in India has a bright future for the next 60 years at least. I belong to the post-independence generation of Indian artists; they are the face of the 21^st century Indian theatre!

Indrapramit Roy was the 2004-05 Fulbright Arts Fellow at the University of Arts in Philadelphia, PA and Bennington College in Bennington, VT. At present he is a professor in the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda in Vadodara. At left, Roy works in his studio at Bennington College during his Fulbright grant.

For my Fulbright, I had elaborate plans to stay as artist-in-residence at two very different institutions in the US: one a liberal arts college at Bennington in Vermont and the other a professional art college at the University of Arts in Philadelphia. In between, I planned a month-long stay in the most global of all cities -- New York. Apart from the residencies I taught a course in illustration, exhibited works I made during my stay and gave two illustrated talks, not to speak of the elaborate museum and gallery visits and travel plans that I had made. What a handful! The Fulbright Foundation staff, after some initial hesitation, accepted my rather unusual plan and I remain thankful to them till date.

The day I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport was a perfect fall day of October 7, 2004. My welcome to the United States of America could not have been better. I moved to my first place of affiliation, Bennington, after a brief orientation in New York for a couple of days.

My time flew from the word go and I managed to pack in all that I proposed and much more. For a visual artist and a teacher it is crucial to be able to see the country, its art and its institutions from up close. The Fulbright experience culminated in three solo shows titled This, That & Everything. Two of these were in the US and the last one in New Delhi. Apart from the very fruitful residencies what I cherish are the travels that took me to almost all major cities on the east coast and then on to Florida, Texas and finally Los Angeles. The Grand Canyon was perhaps the most humbling experience and New York the most exhilarating.

Prof. Roy after his talk at the University of Arts in Philadelphia

I have visited the US several times after that but my Fulbright sojourn gave me friends for life. Quite a few of them visited and taught in my Faculty at the M.S. University Baroda. But more than anything it has enriched me as a person. I have learnt the nuances of Indian and American art, the commonness of artistic themes in different mediums and the oneness of artists’ efforts everywhere to try and promote mutual understanding and cultural exchange.