Hello, is it June already?! Wowza, almost half the year disappeared in a puff of smoke!... This month the prompt at Write...Edit...Publish... is Please Read the Letter by Robert Plant and Alicia Krauss – and I'm really excited to see what everyone does with it, because in the previous two challenges, writers totally ROCKED the prompts!
Here’s my interpretation…
Don't Return to Sender!
Dear -
Please
don’t return this too, unopened like all the others. Or worse, tear it up
without reading. It’s been just eight years but it feels like I have been
sending you these letters forever, reaching far back into some earlier births aeons
ago. I keep thinking what can I do to make you understand? - to make you see things differently, to get us
back, if not on the same track, at least on tracks close enough for you to
appreciate where I am coming from. And where you are heading. How can I make
you understand?!
Together,
we are more beautiful, more resilient - more armoured in our love for each
other - than anything else in the universe. And apart, we are just broken human
beings, isolated in pain, unable to handle problems, unable to handle life. The
weakest, the worst versions of ourselves. The past few weeks are proof of that.
Please read this letter. I’m nailing it to your door and to every door around you. You cannot send it back this time!
Why
must you so isolate yourself and make your home in a parallel world that no-one
can reach? Many people would argue it’s not a real world at all, but a figment spiked with fear, greed and hatred. Step out of it once and see
how easy it is when we do it together, how pleasant and right it feels when
we work towards it hand in hand without conflict and without drama. Without the
lies. Because that’s the world you’re in, the one you’ve created – imaginary,
unreal. Another word for that is false.
At
first I thought we were having teething problems, all relationships do - they
will work themselves out. But no, that hasn’t happened. One lie was followed by
another and another, one abusive action followed by more and more. A world
built upon falsehoods can never prosper. It will sooner or later come down like
a house of cards. Surely you know that? You will argue that none of those words
are yours, the abuse isn’t yours. But that is exactly it! - you are quiet while
your family run amok, your silence enables them, encourages them to greater
heights of cruelty and hatefulness. Why do you remain silent when the crisis is
so dire? Why do you just stand there and watch homes being wrecked and not say a word? Do you really care so little?
The
past is history. Neither you nor I can change it. Who screwed whom, what was
broken, what was built, what was converted and diverted with what intention –
that’s a never ending loop of futility, because we can never know for sure.
Human beings change over a lifetime. And their intentions and actions are often
in conflict. Also how do you know what the intention was behind a particular
action anyway, whether it was a thousand years ago or at this very moment? Was
Shah Jahan the most romantic husband ever to build the Taj Mahal for his queen,
so he and Mumtaz could be together for eternity? Or was he a sex-obsessed
maniac who drove his beloved wife to an early death by forcing her to go
through 14 pregnancies in a time when childbearing carried the very real risk
of death?
If
it is the thought that counts, then we can’t ever know the thoughts that
created history. Sometimes we can’t even know the actions, because not
everything is recorded. History is not exactly watertight, it's just a bunch of
interpretations about this or that written phrase. And the historians are in a
better position to analyse it, let’s leave it to them.
It
is pointless to brood on the past, it ties up the brain in knots and keeps us
busy holding grudges instead of actively finding tools to build our lives with.
It only creates ill-feeling where none need exist, it doesn’t help. Far more
productive to focus on what we can change and get on with that. And what
we can change is the future. Not the past. Please let it go, I’m urging you.
This
whole debate about who belongs and who doesn’t is completely specious. The entire
world, every nation, except for maybe Ethiopia, has been built by
migrations. Out of Africa, out of
Central Asia, and equally outward from here to further east and to the west. How
far back do we go?
Several
Mughal emperors had Rajput mothers and married Rajput women. Their bones and
that of their family members, generation upon generation, are interred in the
soil here, their sons’ blood spilled on this very ground. Home is not just
where the heart is! It’s where the bones
of the ancestors are, it’s the land that they have tilled or taxed, the
orchards they have grown and gathered from, the waters they have sailed and
fished in.
A
foreign individual residing here for 12 years is eligible for citizenship. Just
twelve years. And here we’re talking of centuries. Sapta purush jethae
manush se mati Ma-yer baRa Tagore wrote – where seven generations have
been raised that land is greater than the Mother. And Rahat Indori said in
more recent times - sabhi ka khoon hai shamil yahaN ki mitti mein…everybody’s
blood is an integral part of the soil here… How would you disentangle the
soil, segregate and demarcate which grains belong to whom?
So
come, set aside those grudges, the uncontrolled rage, the manufactured outrage
and mindless criminality. It’s never too late. Let’s get back together. There is nothing to
fear. All we need to do is pull together, use and share resources sensibly.
Respect each other’s boundaries. Value and celebrate diversity. It makes us
stronger, not weaker. Come, live a life of freedom. Free from fretting and fear. From
anger and greed. A life of love, of
inclusion, of justice. A stress-free, happier life.
Yours,
An
ordinary citizen.
~ ~ ~
Tagline : An open letter that could be nailed to too many doors in the corridors of power right now.
FCA
WC - 992
Please read the other entries here and join in with your own -
