What Steve Jobs did in India more than 40 years ago......

Sharing on his birth anniversary.......

What Steve Jobs did in India more than 40 years ago......

Then an employee of video game company Atari, the young Jobs came to India with his friend Dan Kottke. They were here between 1974 and 1976, and spent between one and three months travelling around North India. He was mystified by eastern philosophies; he was on a quest for higher learning, to solve the unanswered questions of science.

According to unofficial Steve Jobs autobiography iCon, Kottke states "He was totally determined to go to India". Kottke goes on to say, "He felt some kind of unresolved pain over being adopted. That was the same period that he hired a private investigator to try and track down his mother. He was obsessed with it for a while."

In New Delhi, Steve chose to don a lungi and roam around barefoot. But India, he discovered, came bundled with beggars on the streets and the reality of poverty, far removed from the hippy-ish existence Jobs had led till then.

There was worse in store for him. He met a holy man in Kainchi near Nainital, who shaved his head on a mountaintop and claimed to know the whereabouts of the elusive and much sought Neem Karoli Baba. Many versions of this story exist. In one such, this man turned out to be a fraud, and when Jobs' finally made it to the Baba's ashram he was found to have passed away. Jobs later said "We weren't going to find a place where we could go for a month to be enlightened". 

By now Jobs' spiritual quest lay in tatters as did his notions of the world. To his emotional turmoil was added a measure of physical discomfort. Both Jobs and Kottke were struck down with diarrhoea and fatigue in the unforgiving Indian summer. Kottke describes this time: "Out there in the dry creek bed, in the middle of India, completely disoriented, all our rhythms and beliefs shattered, where we were sure a flash flood would come through any moment, the two of us praying to any god that could here us; Dear God, if I ever get through this, I'll be a good person, I promise."

Finally, Kottke's traveller's cheques were stolen and they had to cancel a planned trip to the cooler Manali.

India both traumatised Steve Jobs and changed his life. He returned to Atari a Buddhist, and a more focused and hardened individual. 

His Indian sojourn was depicted in his biopic, where Ashton Kutcher played the role of Steve Jobs. The film was shot in various locations in Delhi in 2012.