It was a gasp of surprise that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to president of the United States of America who has served his nation not even for a year and who has not demonstrated anything worthwhile, except in his statements for disarmament. The question is why the Academy was in a rush to honor him.

The Academy could have waited for a year at least to let him justify to receive this honor. If it was mainly for his talks, then there have been leaders and presidents before him who made similar statements in favour of disarmaments and to make the world nuclear-free.

The accurate representation of the feelings, thoughts, moods, sights, ideas and a variety of emotions is a serious enigma which poets face. Their representations are about personal opinions that are in the mind. Without going into philosophical or logical depth, I call them the god within.

Language is inadequate to bring out the god within, because this god is intangible. In addition to a mastery over the language, communicators need special skills and movements of hands, raising of eyebrows, changing tones, shrugging of shoulders and other gestures. Still, communications are not fully accurate and are likely to be misunderstood. Verbosity does not help either. Communication becomes more difficult in poetry because it is a form of condensed expression.

Normally, I forget numbers, especially years and dates. In spite of this weakness and a lapse of substantial time, the year 1999 is secure in the locker of my memory. One reason for its security is Shrine that was released by World University Press in 1999. Even in 2008, after nine years, Shrine resurrects traumatic feelings, touching the spots of deep pain from the days of the partition of India. This collection of my poems of social concerns is the turning point in my pilgrimage as a poet, because it received encouraging reviews and is still receiving encouraging. The year 1999 is unforgettable to me for this reason and also because the poems of this collection have appeared in more than one hundred publications and several have been translated in other languages.

The year 1999 is unforgettable also because of my visit to India after a long absence, and my return to Canada with weird experiences. For nine years I carried these experiences in the womb of my soul, debating whether to share or not to share, and when and how to share. Whenever I write about India, 1999 is there in the museum of my mixed feelings. When I plan to visit India, its ghost emerges. It is now my shadow.

The word Diaspora is not a substitute for the word immigrant.

Diaspora essentially is a bitter experience of dislocation that leads to alienation, a sense of loss and nostalgic desires. It refers to that particular class of immigrants who are unable to go back, primarily because of the hostile climate of discrimination in the country of birth.

The government of India has dedicated the 9th of January to celebrate the overseas compatriots. The story goes back to the BJP (Bhartiya Janta Party) Government that was defeated in 2004 general elections. When in power, the BJP Government approached the Indians abroad, using the word NRIS (non-resident Indians) to seek their help to save India from bankruptcy.

They played on their nationalistic sentiments to motivate them to play a major role in the economic landscape of India. The BJP Government and other Hindu nationalist parties were already collecting funds from the nationalists abroad for political activities, including their elections.