Chris Banyas
Staff Writer
“I don’t know if I’m interesting but I’m a people.”
This phrase was uttered by a man born and raised in India, who was educated there and in the U.S., and who eventually became an English professor at Idaho State University.
After traveling the world in his younger years, Alan Johnson would return to India to lecture and study under the Fulbright Scholarship in 2010.
The idea of this man being simply “a people” is quite an understatement.
Johnson was born in Pure, India, in 1961. His parents lived in India before his birth and remained there until their retirement.
“They were Protestant missionaries,” said Johnson. “They started a community center in one place for all religions.”
During the winter break of Johnson’s last year of high school, he and several friends embarked on a train journey across the Indian region.
“In that trip we took a short flight into Nepal. We took a bus back and that was pretty hair-raising because it was a truck converted into a bus, it was pretty scary,” said Johnson. “At the border coming from Nepal into India, the border guy was drunk, so he tried to extort us; he kept saying, ‘You have drugs.’”
The border guard held the group up for several hours, threatening them with jail time until they paid the bribe.
“Bribing happens in India, you have to bribe sometimes. It’s part of the culture,” said Johnson.
On another journey after graduation from high school, this time through Europe, a friend of Johnson’s had a similar encounter.
“The worst place, unexpectedly, was we took a ferry from France to England. At Dover, he was interrogated for four hours because they were sure he was smuggling drugs. He was stripped and sweated for four hours and I was waiting outside,” said Johnson. “The funny thing is he became a DEA agent.”
After graduating high school, Johnson came to the U.S. on his own for about six months, but ended up returning to India because he got homesick.
“My friends and I in India arbitrarily chose a state university that would have all our interests and would accept all of us and so we all went to Southern Illinois University,” said Johnson.
Johnson started in journalism, but ended up switching to English.
After graduating from SIU, Johnson briefly spent time in Ohio taking language classes, before attending the University of Virginia and earning his master’s degree in English.
“I went back to visit my parents after my master’s degree around the summer I turned 27 and I met my wife-to-be,” said Johnson. “She was from India but had gotten a degree from California. So she had gone back and she had kind of reverse culture shock.”
After marrying, Johnson and his wife taught in Alexandria, Egypt, for a year. He then went on to California to earn his doctorate.
Johnson returned to India under the Fulbright Scholarship in 2010. The student-teacher relationship in India is much different than in the U.S.
“There is almost a religious aspect to it. You may have heard the indian word, the word we use it in America called guru. A guru is the master in anything,” said Johnson. “It always implies a kind of wisdom and someone who is older and there’s a lot of respect, it’s almost a sacred thing. The same terms are used for religious areas. So when you go to study, that’s why Indians take education so seriously.”
When he was much younger, Johnson dreamed of becoming a Hindi film star, and is still passionate about those films to this day, citing “Sholay” as a favorite.
With all the traveling Johnson has done in his life, there are still places he wants to get to.
“I’d like to go to other countries too, China, some places in Africa,” said Johnson. “There are still many places in India that I’m determined to get to.”
