Silent Stormed Night

Just a couple of days ago, one of my friends sent me a computer-painted picture of a star shining brightly and a lone lilly plant with its blooming buds looking faintly at the star. And the caption read, "Silent Night, holy Night, / All is calm, all is bright... The present is just the opposite. Still... we hope for a better 2009". Naturally the sender is a young poet-artist, and she captured the spirit of Christmas as we are about to enter into festivities. There seems to be a lot of festivities, celebrations and fun, but deep down there seems to be a sense of foreboding, a fake smile worn on our lips, cakes to fill our mouths, so we don't mouth curse on the world we are in, and carols to turn our minds to yester years, however bad they had been...

We are on the threshold of yet another Christmas, and peace is something that is hard to find, and the birth of Jesus is primarily associated with the birth of peace in the world. Remember the song of the angels at the birth of the divine child, 'peace on earth to all people of goodwill'! But I wonder if the angels would sing the same song, if the divine savior were born today! Times have changed, and humanity is no more the same. It may be hard to find people of goodwill in our cities and towns. Peace has become the biggest casualty of our times, and it comes with a big price, which we cannot afford to. In fact, we are too frightened of peace, because it often heralds the beginning of yet another onslaught on innocent men and women! Peace has become the most dreaded thing that we can ever think of!

Silence? It is hard to find. We cannot keep quiet even for a while, and so have to switch on our Ipods and mobile phones to drown ourselves in a world of noise, so that even by mistake we do not hear the yearnings of our human heart. Silence is frightening, and we dare not enter into silence, leave alone experience it in our bones! The carol that we had been singing joyously all these years, Silent night, holy night..., has become a song full of paradoxes! But see how the origin of this song too is riddled with paradoxes : The origin of the Christmas carol we know as Silent Night was a poem that was written in 1816 by an Austrian priest called Joseph Mohr. On Christmas Eve in 1818 in the small alpine village called Oberndorf it is reputed that the organ at St. Nicholas Church had broken. Joseph Mohr gave the poem of Silent Night (Stille Nacht) to his friend Franz Xavier Gruber and the melody for Silent Night was composed with this in mind. The music to Silent Night was therefore intended for a guitar and the simple score was finished in time for Midnight Mass. Silent Night is the most famous Christmas carol of all time! (from http://www.carols.org.uk/silent_night.htm). I wish to invite Joseph Mohr today to rewrite this poem, applying it to our situation! How would he do that?

In fact, the world is no more the same as the one that our parents and grand parents had seen and experienced. The blame for killing silence, brightness and calmness goes to us, each one of the present generation. No one can be excused from this responsibility. And yet we wish to sing aloud in unison this great carol! Why? We grope in darkness, and search for that silver lining. We might have lost the golden silence, and the brightness of the shining star, and the calmness of the heart, and yet each Christmas brings tidings of hope, and that is what keeps us going, and that is what keeps us singing aloud Silent night, holy night...

Today I would like to think of the people in Nandigram, who have not heard of a silent night in the recent past... the exchange of gun firing had dotted the silence that they long for. I re-member the little children, branded as adult labourers, languishing in dark alleys and factories, looking for a silver lining, so that they can seen that the world is not as dark as they experienced, or imagined it ot be, those men and women in Orissa who look forward to a day when there will not be violence and bloodshed in the name of religion and caste. Today I would like to light a little candle thinking of all these people, and as I light the candle, I would like to break the silence with words of hope for the people around me! Maybe my storming the silence of the Christmas night may bring warmth in the hearts of at least a handful of people. And the celebration of Christmas is worth, even if I am able to light that little candle of hope....