A Proud Indian, A Proud Human Being After teaching part-time for 37 years in Japan in a total of nine universities, I am still an Indian passport holder and declare: I'm a proud Indian!
Over the decades I've absorbed several cultural and religious influences, not to mention food, drink and other aesthetics, values which move me every day into a wider and, I hope, wiser space which makes me accept myself wholeheartedly with my multiple identities, finally, as just one more human being. When my students ask me where I'm from I always answer - Earth. And when I enquire of them where they are from, invariably I get the same answer! Yes, I am a proud Indian and a proud human being too. If tomorrow there is an invasion from Outer Space and our planet is threatened we will all join together as one human race. If there is no invasion we will probably continue to fight as we do now, in the name of one thing or another. I'm praying for aliens to land on our planet so there will be peace at last. A student of mine the other day commented on how much human beings love war, and the only way there will ever be peace on this planet is if we all kill ourselves. Forgive me for hoping my student is wrong. The world unfortunately is divided into not a hundred-and-one but a thousand-and-one adversarial poses. With the discovery of water on Mars, have we arrived finally at a cosmic benchmark signal informing us how and when technology reaches a certain level we can expect a group of privileged human beings to take off to the new destination and planet only after they have destroyed this one? And, of course, the first thing they will do is to dig the ground and plant their flag on the conquered planet. How long will our planet survive? As we all know, this planet will one day die but do we have to destroy it ourselves before it dies a natural death? Will suicidal politicians around the world give peace a chance? And also, will we folks from around the world support the destruction of our environment and our planet through relentless greed? Will the ice melt and flood the whole earth taking with it hundreds of smart cities as well as not so smart cities, making Noah's Ark look no more impressive than a 5-star Texas size swimming pool? Will tsunamis finish the job or will it be nuclear bombs which human beings have invented and will destroy the environment, including ourselves? Fortunately, some questions cannot be answered one way or the other with complete certainty even though a human being might have studied and graduated from the world's best university. A silver lining?