India is Her Foster Motherland
Diane L. Wells, UCLA
For 13 years, I have lived in Bangalore, India, where the climate is exactly like that in Los Angeles. Like California, India has extremes of rich and poor in terms of money and in natural resources. Indians have infinite patience and everything reflects living close to nature, even in how they build roads and houses. Recycling is not new to them.
 I have learned to accept dirt as a natural presence and miss feeling the earth
beneath my feet whenever I'm in a concretized city! My favorite thing
is to ride in an open auto-rickshaw over country roads and take in the beauty
of this bountiful land, where God's name is everywhere -- on cars, trucks,
stores, even people's names!
India is a spiritual land being invaded by the cyber bug and eastern technology. The
cities are competing with western stress levels, but the villages are the heart
of the culture. Epic story tellers regaled in extraordinary customs perform
on stage outside, all night long, as they did centuries ago, extolling the virtues
and righteous deed of their historic and mythological heroes. I love America,
yet India has become my foster motherland. I love her, too.
In the Department of Philosophy at UCLA I served as Librarian in their Philosophy
Reading Room for 26 years. The fact of my dealing with students, staff
and faculty who came from all over the world definitely was a factor in my choosing
to live in another country with mixed cultures, where the exchange rate keeps
me in the upper middle class! At heart, all peoples are the same. Traditions
differ, but the unity of human values worldwide does not change. My experience
of living in a different culture has broadened my perspective and made me a better
person.
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