Life at XLRI sure takes me by surprise - just as everything seemed to have settled into the regular routine (what with a term of a million activities!) - the 1984 riots shook students into a frenzied discussion.

And while I refrain from quoting anybody - here's my take on it.

Maybe it's just time we stopped looking back into the past to just point outmistakes that have been made - there is no undoing them. Maybe it's time weleft caste, creed, religion and all of that behind and just looked at beingan educated human-being as opposed to literate. Maybe to contribute to achange we don't have to start a 'movement' so to speak - but simply do ourparts as a citizen of the country without always putting ourselves first.Can we just do that?

I am a Bengali and am proud to be so. I am an Indian and am proud to be sotoo. I don't believe that just because I am an Hindu, I would have to beanti-Muslim, and that because I am Indian, I have to be anti-Pakistan. Idon't believe that just because I am Bengali - I have to hate othercommunities. I am a human being - and that's what I believe I am first andforemost.

I don't support many things that happen and no, I cannot claim to have done a lot of things to contribute to these sentiments. But I can say I have, at every chance, stopped what I believed was wrong - not because I was a part of a country, or religion but because I am human-being with a sense of rightand wrong and a mind of my own.

I am proud to be who I am - and I am what I am as a function of my ethnic, cultural, religious and educational background. I am proud of them too.