By Jupiter!

Lieberard Ramos is a lonely man, as lonely as a lost shoe. An art director at a Mumbai advertising firm, he is, well, a Raelian. The only on...

Lieberard Ramos is a lonely man, as lonely as a lost shoe. An art director at a Mumbai advertising firm, he is, well, a Raelian. The only one in India, Ramos and people of his kind8212;around 60,000-odd across the world8212;subscribe to their top-knotted, tunic-wearing leader Rael8217;s basic belief: humans were created in laboratories by another race from another solar system.

Definitely not something that will find favour with most Indians. Even with a plethora of inhumanly gifted mythical characters, we, as a country, have never looked up in the direction of the heavens beyond Sol.

The interesting question then is: Are aliens, and UFO sightings an entirely western phenomenon, like the White Man8217;s burden, Puff Diddy, and George Bush Jr? Even Bollywood, that mirror if grossly exaggerated of Indian life, never took notice. Until now, that is, a good 15 years after Spielberg8217;s E.T., with Rakesh Roshan8217;s new movie Koi Mil Gaya. Ramos, who also plays the guitar at various city restaurants and stands around Churchgate during his spare time with books on Rael, is pleased about the increased awareness the film is bound to generate.

8220;We8217;re not here to either convert or convince. A movie like this will go a long way in letting people know about the possibilities of life existing on other solar systems,8221; he says. Delhi-based Prashant Solomon has been trying to do just that for the last five years through his website, ufoindia.org, the country8217;s only forum on extra-terrestrials and UFOs. Says Prashant, a former journalist and currently a real estate developer, 8220;While UFO sightings do take place here, people don8217;t know where to report it or what to make of it.8221;

But awareness is already increasing, he adds, quoting the number of listed sightings on his site. As if to echo Prashant8217;s convictions, comes along Anand Naidu from Chennai, whose sightings are one among the many on ufoindia.org. Anand, an MBA, and his friend spotted this 8216;8216;huge boomerang-shaped object that flew across the sky at a great height, at great speed.8217;8217;

Says Anand, 8216;8216;We8217;ve never seen anything like it in our lives. It made no sound, it had no lights, and it seemed to follow a pattern. What we saw was definitely a UFO. We aren8217;t alone out here, we have company.8221;

Prashant8217;s site has similar such instances, of early dawns or late nights, and bright star-like objects, but the experts that be are least interested. World-renowned astrophysicist

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Dr Jayant Narlikar dismissed all queries as space age superstitions, though he does believe that there is enough circumstantial evidence for man to believe in the existence of extra terrestrial intelligence. Professor Mayank Vahia, department of astronomy and astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, is a lot more accommodating.

8220;Each and every one of these incidents have been proved to be hoaxes. Earlier, and this could be the answer to why UFOs never figured in our consciousness, everything got attributed to God. But most of the current sightings are from people who don8217;t know what to make of a particular experience they haven8217;t understood.8221;

Vahia goes on to add that the brouhaha about vimanas and nuclear astras in Indian mythology is mere bunkum. 8220;We were always an inward-looking civilisation; there was more emphasis on the mind rather than on the external world, and besides, we were also a less aggressive people.8221;

But he feels the question of the existence of life forms other than those on earth, and how we as living entities came to be, is an 8220;open one8221;.

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Prashant, however, calls for an open mind. 8220;Maybe the visitors are here to study us, or experiment on us or prepare us for some kind of galactic society.8221; An absence of evidence, he says, doesn8217;t mean evidence of absence. Until that all too important stuff comes through, the great question in the sky remains a big maybe; just like all those other ones about whether there is indeed a God or whether you8217;ll go to the gym today.