Missed You Today...

(This is one among the few letters from the vault that I used to write to a very dear person in my life who passed away recently. Just felt like sharing. May her soul rest in peace...)

New Delhi,
11th December’ 2006.
2345hrs

Dearest Grandma,
Hope that this mail of mine finds you in good health. I was surprised, excited, moved and lost in wonder when I saw the guard at the office bring me your letter to me. The best thing of all is the fact that this is my first Christmas card for the year. Then as I started reading the letter, I could see those hands of yours that have got old serving wo/mankind inching letter by letter to communicate a message of love so genuine and true. I felt a strange sense of complete and immense bliss surround me. It was like I was lifted, I was floating and was softly touching the clouds and reaching out to heaven. I know that’s quite a fantasy yet something that I could experience through you.

Isn’t life blissful at times Grandma?

I was at Haryana and Punjab recently. Went to Kurukshetra, Panipat and a Commando training place (which was actually the ruins of a huge, really huge fort). If History would come into picture, there is a strange chapter to which these “supposedly” great places get connected to-WARS!

I began to wonder and wondering led to pondering in the place I was wandering. I think its easier to be in war than to live in peace. Its so easy! Yeah, yeah isn’t it easier to train the finger to pull a trigger than to train it to play the guitar. Isn’t it easier to kill rather than to save the dying? Isn’t it easier to steal rather than work hard for that one meal and eat it with dignity? Then the pride and the way warriors are showered with praise all ultimately touches rock bottom when I realize that all this barbaric rush to severe the head of one’s own species is all because we never try for the better option may be because the better options are never the easier options. We always stick to the easier one; the one that needs nothing to be given from our end even if it takes something out of our neighbour. So primitive and so grounded people are that civilization is a word that only a very few know if at all people understand.

Look around. The world is tattered. Children are crying with no one to comfort them. People-human beings-who suffer in silence due to oppression, corruption, violence, abuse, poverty, crime, suppression and what not? Look at them! Don’t we see hands that lift up tenderly to be held, hands that need someone to touch them and help them out; out of that hell they see on a beautiful earth that God gave us? Aren’t they worth enjoying God’s love? Aren’t they just like you and me who need food, water, strength and love? Aren’t they made in the image of my sweet Lord as well? How can I neglect them? Why should I let them suffer? What should I fear to help them? What would stop me? I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Nothing to lose because I am nothing and am just a sweet soldier in the army of my lord where love is the only weapon. My mission is to use the weapon as much as I can. I have nothing to gain as in this army everything is unconditional. My battle field is the whole world and to wherever it can be extended. I must conquer not to establish power yet to make conquerors out of the conquered. No weapon is more powerful than love. No army is more powerful than an army devoted to bring in peace. No man or woman is left unconquerable in front of love.

Many have tried to conquer the world otherwise through violence and have proved repeatedly to be fools who at the end of the day cannot take what they cannot carry. A war centered on violence only aggravates the curse of hatred. How wonderful it would be if we have the choice to love one another and are removed of the chance to hate? How nice it would be to smile and greet and touch and make a difference in the life of everyone we meet? How nice it would be? Can’t Christmas be a time when love is born not just in cards and messages but in every heart? Can’t these battles stop and a new war for love begin to convince the people who have lost hope and faith that there is still a reason to live and a reason for the people who die, to die with a smile knowing for sure that the world is a wonderful place to live in and the one’s they leave behind would be safe and fine? How peaceful and blissful the world would become if only it were showered with love. Can’t people be passionate to love rather than hate? Even though its easier to die than to live…

Miles to go before I sleep. Happy Christmas Grandma. You know how much I love you? Mmmmmh! Let me think! May be just as much love that Christmas can bring into this world.

With lots of love,

Your Grandson,

(Ajith Fredjeev Dinakarlal)