Hey, he is an Indian... nope: of "Indian Origin"

Just recently Dr Venki Ramakrishnan won the Nobel Prize (2009) in Chemistry for his seminal work in elucidating Ribosome Structure and Function along with Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath.

And as expected everybody Indian started celebrating his "victory" and how that he was Indian in origin and was only the 4th Indian to win a Nobel and all what a great thing it was. Celebrations galore.

And then the internet came alive with blogs and tweets as to why all these celebrations, Venki did his Phd from US, his Post Doc from US, his research from US, using US dollars in grants and using resources provided in US by US and US and US. His discovery is beneficial only to the US and not to us in any way. And is he even Indian anymore?? Why the hell Indians in India are going over the top. The main question was why are we raising such a hue and cry over it.

Well I beg to differ. First and foremost, I dont think his discovery is beneficial only to US and not beneficial to us, because his discovery was for Science, something which transcends international boundaries. His work has resulted in understanding the mechanism of antibiotics that work in every Human, not just US citizens.

Secondly I ask, when does one stop being an Indian?? How does one define Indianess?? I mean, now that i live in Pune, i have come to love Mumbai more than before. Bombay is a place where i spent my whole childhood in, and whatever happens and whichever city i live in, there will always be some Mumbai and some Bombay in me. Similarly when and if i leave this country, does it mean i will cease to be an Indian?? That i will drop the values, principles and morals i follow. I feel to whatever different places we go to, we always come from one place, may be birth place, may be where u spent your childhood, may be home town, but mostly a place where u feel u are from. That place stays with you. Always. And wherever you go, you always have some of it in you.

So should we be asking whether Venki is Indian or not?? Einstein was from Germany, but won his Nobel as a US citizen, just like Khorana and Chandrasekhar. Does it make their work any less important or less meaningful??

It must also be noted that we have excellent research institutions in IISC, NCBS, TIFR etc. but look at the papers published from IISC, how many are Nature publications??. NCBS does publish in Nature and Science level journals but at what rate?? These institutions must be given the things they need (chiefly funding) to do such work, Venki winning the Nobel only goes to show that Indians have it in them to achieve such heights, only they have to leave the country to do so, and then face accusing questions by other people.

Instead of celebrating Diwali prematurely as we (Indians) are doing, we should rather try to provide opportunities in India to scientists for doing such fundamental work.

Mumbaikar.

Sometime he/she has kids, sometimes he's a bachelor or a student, he may be a native or a migrant, he's been here for the past 5 decades or the past 5 years perhaps, he loves this city. He gets up in the morning at 6, picks up his lunch tiffin and the morning newspaper and goes to the station, he catches the 7:30 train, rush hour has started, sometimes he gets a place to sit, in the evening he always stands though. He meets office colleagues, train friends, talks cricket and rain. He works hard through the day, in the evening he buys something for his kid, or fruits or something else. The train journey back is a literal fight which can border on dangerous and can even be fatal sometimes. His friend lost a leg when he hit a pole while traveling in the train, but our MUMBAIKAR is not worried much, he holds on for dear life. Bus isn't an option, his office is far, he cant afford a 2wheeler everyday and definitely not a 4 wheeler, atleast not yet. The traffic is anyways so bad that he'll get a double cross everyday if he travels by any other mode of transport except train and probably loose his job. He trusts the trains though. He reaches home, tired but happy. One day he gets up in the morning and sees there have been bomb blasts in his beloved city. He is pained and grieves for the friends he lost, some of his train friends, no one he knew by name but faces that could have been his. He knows this. Mumbai stops for a day or perhaps 2 minutes(?) and there are voices screaming to be heard but no one listens, fingers are pointed, someone resigns, situation - status quo. The next day he goes to work as usual, he is scared and there's silence on the roads and in the trains people talk in hushed voices in the morning. But our man didn't have any CLs left for this month, he had taken 2 days holiday when his kid was sick of leptospirosis. Some label this as the Spirit of Mumbai. But he didnt have any choice other than to move on and he knows this. Is he immune to terror?? Does he tolerate terror?? Has he accepted terror as a part of his daily life?? His kid asks him in the night why did the trains blew?? He says there are some bad people who do this and the kids asks "TERRORISTS??". He is surprised at his kids vocabulary. Then one day he dies in the train blasts. Or maybe a gun totting man kills him, or may be he drowns in the floods or falls into an open manhole never to come out again, perhaps he falls off the train and dies, He died a little every day anyways. He/She was a Mumbaikar.