Letter To My Niece, Little Kiara: From Her Aunt
Dear Kiara,
You are so little now. It’s 10 am, you are still sleeping. You stay up late at night and wake up late. At 6 months you are a happy child just that at times you get angry. Your stomach hurts or you want to be taken around the house. But most of the time, you play and stay happy. You will be going back to London in a few days. We will miss you. Then, we will see you less, maybe once in a year and you will grow up faster and faster, so your Maahi (aunt) decided to write this letter.
Hope you are a healthy child, in both health and spirit. Health is very important darling. Stay healthy to explore the world.
Hope you question. When one day you see the Pyramids, what would you see? Human endeavor or the slaves who toiled without rest? Whatever you choose to think is your freedom. Real freedom lies in your thoughts. Never give it up for anyone or anything.
There never was, never can be, or never will be anything bigger than the human spirit: the spirit of quest.
Hope you know about this man, he left everything to find himself. He made that one journey, from being Siddhartha to Gautam and rose to be the Buddha. The world bowed.
We call him Gautam Buddha.
That’s the power of the self.
When the whole country was subdued to slavery and was seeking vengeance, one frail man with a cloth on his body breathed Ahimsa. A country rose to freedom. That man was Mahatma Gandhi
That’s the power of conviction.
There was a time when in the West being black was bad and a slave. One man said that he had a dream. After generations, one black man did become the president of the U.S.A. and two black children played in the white house. That dreamer was Martin Luther
That’s the power of dreams.
Be a dreamer and stand by it. The world was never changed by cynics, but by dreamers, who awoke generations.
Remember the fable of Santiago? On his journey, he met everyone- the king, the merchant, the stranger, the lover, and the teacher.
So in life, we also meet everyone.
I must have been 6 or 7 years old when we went to Chennai on a family vacation and were on a sea beach. It was crowded; one stranger held me in his arms, picked me on his shoulders, and showed me the sea. I do not know how I felt, I must have been mesmerized. In life too we all meet those strangers who literally lift us to light.
Hope you find a teacher, and a master discovers you. There is a joy in both.
Hope you feed a child on the street and never speak a word to anyone not even to Daddy and Maa. There is a great pleasure in secret goodness, and wealth for you to cherish.
Remember those people who cheated Santiago in the fable? In life too we meet that one person whom we need to forgive; mostly that person often comes in the closest garb of love and in time leaves us.
When I met that one person, I questioned life. Life like a beloved revealed to me so many of her mysteries and when I finally forgave and moved on, life opened her abundance to me. There is a mystery in love and forgiveness. Maybe it holds the whole mystery of the universe and our beings- both finite and infinite.
And if you do not forgive, you carry that person on your shoulders. No matter where you go that person grows heavier and mightier. Forgiveness is your freedom to enjoy the bounty of life. Do forgive and let go.
In life I have met that one friend who crossed borders to meet me, and also that one person who lived next door; I cried, I wilted but that person never came.
So many people left notes that said I was loved, and some I wrote of immense love that went unread, only then I realized, I am neither the abandoned nor the beloved, I just am. Just like life, neither this way nor that way. But just as others just interpretation.
Many parents leave a frozen photograph to their children of how they should be, years pass, people die, and no matter how far their children move, the photograph always seems better than life, and a lifetime is wasted to outbeat that photograph. People in general hate the lives they live and are unhappy, and deep down scared that their child will too become like them and pass over an illusionary photograph.
Hope you choose to paint an empty canvas.
We all love you and though you are so small now, we tell you that you are precious. Hope as a family, we tell you enough that you are loved. People learn to love and hate themselves as they were treated as a child. I hope we are telling and showing you that each day, you are enough, you are beautiful and you can always come back to us, no matter what. I do understand, the way we treat you, you will learn to accept and reject the behavior people met out to you. Hope, our love tells you to have the highest standards for yourself.
May you shine. May you stay healthy. May you know, that you are a gift of the Universe and you are always enough to be what to choose to be.
With all the love of my being,
Maahi
Maahi is Assamese for maternal aunt
First published here
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