Displaced Depression

No one in our office could believe that he would have mental derailment; he had always been a soft spoken and quiet man, who spoke very little, and that too only with the people whom he considered trust worthy. It came as a rude shock to our staff, when he confided with one of them that he was frightened of the police, of the evil-intentioned people hiding from somewhere close by waiting to attack him. He was terribly frightened and nothing would stop him from believing that he was just imagining all these things and there was not an iota of truth in what he spoke. But he was convinced that he was speaking truth, and every time the telephone rang, he thought that his rivals were enquiring about him, and that made him all the more nervous. He even asked a few of our staff if he could stay with them and not return to his home, and it took them sometime before they could make him return to his home.

It was only today that I came to know that he had been quite upset with the family matters, especially his mother supporting her younger son, and opposing whatever this gentleman did. The younger brother had been trying to usurp the parental property, and therefore had blamed him of having a relationship with the wife of his elder brother. Everyone knows for sure that he is not the kind of person who would entertain anything of that sort. He said that he occasionally call up his sister in law, only out of courtesy, and would just enquire how she was and nothing more. His younger brother made use of this issue to blackmail him and now he is mentally disturbed, a situation he is happy about, so that he could grab the property for himself.

I was feeling sad for our staff, because he is a quiet person, who is guileless and would not think evil for anyone. It is hard to believe when bad things happen to good people, and unfortunately that seems to be the law of the land. Good people suffer far more than evil intentioned people, and it would often appear that this is the accepted norm and we have nothing to grumble about. What could we do to our staff to bring him back to his healthy self? He has already gone to the hospital and had consulted doctors, who have given him medication, and hopefully after some days he will be able to come to his healthy self, provided he is allowed to live peacefully without attempts to sabotage his mind and peace. But it is doubtful if his younger brother would allow him to leave peacefully, at least till he succeeds in grabbing the property.

The world has seen lots of bloodshed due to greed for parental property; it is easy for lazy people to depend on what the parents have augured through their hard labour, and not giving a try to put their best to earn more. Truly honest and hardworking people would not depend on parental property, but would try to get something out of their sheer hard work, and this is the kind of wealth and property which will last. All those who rely only on the parental property may one day find themselves paupers, because they only learn to rely on what others had given to them, and such people may leave hardly anything for their offspring. Even if it hard to manage daily living with the earning, if people make it a point to stand on their own feet, lots of lives could be saved, and the greedy would have time to mend their ways.

It is hard to say what would happen to our staff in the next weeks and months; it is hard to predict how his younger brother would take it, when he comes to know that his elder brother was getting back to normal, and that might foil his evil designs to get his share of property. There is very little that we could do to help him limp back to normalcy, but some of our staff call him up now and them assuring him of our support, and that is what we could do. We would not like to sit in the seats of judgment to condemn the evil designs of his mother and younger brother; it is not for us to judge their actions, because we know very little about objective truth, and even if we know for sure that they had deliberately tried to cheat our staff, and still we cannot condemn them on the basis of what we know. Judgment is not for us, but to support the suffering and troubled hearts is what we could do to ease those who long for fresh air.

Letter to a Wounded Soul

I am aware that a letter is not the most soothing balm to a wounded soul, but I stand here before you on behalf of the whole universe, to tell you that the wound that you bear in your heart today is carved on our bones, and no one in the whole world will ever be spared from the sin of the fallen humanity; and I too am a victim and victimized, just as you are, and I would not try to shed my futile tears to express how I vibrate with your soul. I wonder why the earth did not protest against such a violation of life, when you were subjected to such an ordeal; I wonder why the heavens did not roar to stop the ferocious lion leaping onto an innocent lamb; I wonder why the birds of the air did not protest this gross injustice done to a voiceless child! I stand here to condemn the entire creation, which had let your little heart be pierced so violently that you cannot hide your wounds. I am here to condemn the God you believe in so religiously for not taking your side, and bring justice! Oh no, here I am at last to condemn myself for not opening my mouth in protest.

I can see the wry smile on your dry lips, and you had not believed in anyone speaking on your behalf, not even the very people you thought your own. How could you ever doubt that the enemy could be from within your fold and not from out? You had taken for granted that the people whom you thought would be your guardians had turned against you, and yet like a lamb you spoke not! I am here to condemn you too, not because you silently bore the scars, and did not utter a word against the sward piercing through your heart, not because you did not even open the matter to the parents who callously left you to the stars, not because you dared not jeopardize your future by claiming justice for what had been done to you; but I am here to condemn you for not condemning the world, and teach her a lesson. But you had known how to punish this world – by bearing courageously the scars that bear witness to the world that so long the scars remain on your body, the world cannot be absolved from her heinous crime.

The anger and the vengeance that you bear in your heart is enough to explode the Himalayas, and throw the endless Ganges into her depths; the earth that had given shape to your body is a mute witness to all that had happened to you, and the sky and the naked walls, and the cold earth are witness to what the earth has gifted to you! But were you in your ripe age to receive such a gift? You carry even today the scars of the crimes of humanity in you, like the blood stains of Lady Macbeth, it cannot be washed away, the scars you bear in your body will haunt humanity till there is breath in you. But there is no reason for you to suffer any more, today I have come to reverse the annals of history; I would like to rewrite the pages of the past, so that there will not be a little soul carrying the indelible scars of the crimes of humanity. I may not succeed in removing the scars from your body, but I may succeed in revealing to the world that what has happened to a little soul in a remote corner of the world has the potentiality to bring down fire from heaven and burn the whole universe.

Alas, the world has not changed much even after so many years, and do you think that the one who pierced your heart so willfully will one day return to you with folded hands, and fall on his knees and confess in public that he was not worthy of your forgiveness? No, what has happened to you has made history, but not what they make; it is a routine exercise for some, to pierce the hearts of others, and do it till there is energy in their bones. No water from the holy Ganges can every absolve the world from the crime, and today we have come to pay our humble homage to the scars that still remind us what we had done to you. I wish to bend my head with reverence and kiss the spot that still bears the scars, and shed tears till there is none, so that you may be free from the scars, and return to the fullness of joy and happiness that the universe may offer to you.

Forgiveness is a silly word, and you can only laugh at the people who may recommend it as an easy solution to hard problems. I know even the people who preach the notion of forgive and forget know not that life is not a night of drunken revelry that you would not remember what happened a night after; that would be the last thing that I would ever propose. But I have something else to offer to you. Break my heart with a blow of a sword and break me into pieces, so that the blood flowing from my flesh may wash away the ugly scars that cover your skin; I am no hero to venture into an heroic act of laying my life for humanity; I am no saint to offer my life in vain for no cause, but I would like to do this as a humble expression of what I owe to this universe. If even one soul on earth has been blind to you, it is a disgrace to the very universe. I would like to kneel before your presence and behold your scars in my bloody hands and tell the world, spare this child! Let my words reach the ends of the earth, and return to you, so that you know you have become a healer par excellence, with a power that can heal the broken, wounded universe!