I am really enjoying teaching math and yoga to the students of Las Rabonas, Cordoba, Argentina. I also had the chance to talk a little bit about Bangladesh, my country of birth. I gave an hour long presentation about Bangladesh and I started with independence from the British in 1945.

As some of you know when the British left the Indian subcontinent – two independent countries were born – India and Pakistan. It was a plan designed for failure (whether intended or not). The two Pakistans – East and West – flanked India on either side. East Pakistan had more in common with West Bengal in India and Pakistan had more in common with Punjab in India. The main commonality between East and West Pakistan was the religion – Islam.

Almost all the students at the school had never even heard of these events and they have very little knowledge of things that happened on the other side of the planet. They listened intently to my presentation taking it all in.

I then went into a discussion about how West Pakistan was treating East Pakistan like a colony and not treating its people with respect. The leader would always be in the West and all the resources went to the West and not much would be given back to the East.

On top the economic implications, the East also was at risk of losing it’s cultural identity – the West wanted to make Urdu the only official language of Pakistan. That was unacceptable to East Pakistanis, most of whom spoke Bengali.

Culturally the people of the East are Bengali. They take pride in their culture, and language is a big part of it – contributing to poetry and theater and folklore, among other things. In fact in 1912 the poet Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his book Gitanjali.

I also talked about another Nobel prize winner, Mohammad Yunus, who invented Microcredit, where small loans are given to alleviate poverty. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for this. The students listened intently.

I also talked to the students about rural Bangladesh and how there are big rivers that sustain life. I showed them pictures of my great grandfathers village where electricity came just about 20 years ago. We talked about the advantages of living the simple life.

I had a chance to talk about the flora and fauna of Bangladesh. They were fascinated to learn that Bangladesh has the largest mangrove forest in the world and it’s home to the Bengal Tiger.

Of course no discussion about Bangladesh is complete without discussing football (soccer). And when I asked if they knew how crazy Bangladeshis are about the Argentinian national football team (La Selección), they didn’t know. I reminded them that it was first Maradona who captured the hearts of our people, and decades later this continued with Messi.

I really enjoyed giving this presentation and opening the eyes of these young high schoolers to a very different part of the World. It was a very well-received presentation.