Yearning for peace
This is that special year that will end on a Sunday so that the new year will literally start on a fresh slate. Be that as it may, as I sit down to write my last column for 2023, my mind goes over some landmark events that have changed our world forever. Equally, it is a time to remember those dear souls who we will miss as we step into 2024 and those wars and strife that have scarred this year but will hopefully find resolution in the coming one.
All around me are the familiar scenes of X-mas celebrations: brightly lit streets, shopping arcades and shops. Fake fir trees garlanded with fairy lights and cheery Christmas decorations with a star or angel on its crown. Yet, is it not ironic that Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Palestine in general, where Christianity was literally born, are today drowning in darkness and death? A few years ago, on a visit to Israel, we attended the Midnight Mass in Bethlehem’s Church of Nativity. In this bitterly divided territory, Bethlehem is still zealously controlled by Palestine. However, since Christmas is a season for peace and goodwill, it allows access to Jews and pilgrims from countries across the world to its part of the Holy Land. Long lines of believers wait patiently to enter the birthplace of Christ the Redeemer. Even non-believers are moved by the carols that sing: ‘Away in a manger, no crib for a babe/The little child Jesus lay down his sweet head’ and that famous hymn, ‘Silent night, holy night’, acquires a different timbre when it is sung at that time of the year. The term ‘heavenly peace’ acquires a significant dimension if you hear it in Bethlehem, believe me.
However, what we have seen in this land lately are flying missiles, drones bombing homes and settlements. Even hospitals have not been spared, nor children, women and the innocent citizens who are not Hamas. As I see news clips beamed from there, my eyes well up when I see terrified children, many who have lost their parents, grandparents and siblings in one day, running away from the rubble that was once a home. I cannot understand how those who carry out instructions to kill can bring themselves to destroy hospitals and kill children. If this is not the opposite of the spirit of peace and goodwill among men, what do you call it? Words fail me for even terms like dystopia cannot convey the horror of such bestial behaviour.
Israel has weaponised its memories of the Holocaust so deeply that it has now raised an army of heartless avengers who have no compassion for those who had no role to play in the Nazi pogrom that exterminated their brethren decades ago. How long will they carry this legacy of revenge? Despite the severe criticism of their determination to reduce Palestine to dust, which has now shaped into unacceptable war crimes, Israel has not let up its hunting of Hamas. Not even after appeals from the WHO and the UN. When will we learn that there are no victors in war; ultimately, we are all losers. I pray that peace returns to this embattled war zone and that the true spirit of Christmas inspires them to restore peace and goodwill among men.
From there, let me turn to an incident that gave me such joy that I must share it with my readers. Every month or so, I do a story-telling session in our club for little children between the ages of four and 10. For an hour, I am alone with them and instead of reading ‘good’ stories from the classics, such as the Panchtantra, I make up characters and adventures that ignite their imagination. So the children become storytellers (you will be surprised when you hear how hilarious their suggestions are). Logic and reality are happily dispensed with as they join me in adventures that take them to forests where trees speak, owls and monkeys share their knowledge and where doing all the things forbidden to them by parents and teachers are allowed. I have always known that children love other naughty children for in making up stories about them, they are able to sublimate their hidden wishes. So, when they hear of a naughty chap called Agdum Bugdum, they giggle when they learn he wears his chaddis over his pants, eats from a chair while seated on a table and walks backwards when going to school.
By the end of the session, they were making up scenarios where Chunnu-Munnu smuggle a monkey into their home and teach their pet to steal mangoes from the garden of the crusty uncle next door. Or how the owl they meet one night in the forest outside their house has a friendly ghost who waits to serve them all kinds of goodies when they visit him. I have to confess that by the end of the session, the kids had taken over the storytelling and I was rocking with laughter at the improbable tales they thought up.
In our ‘normal’ world, there is a shrinking space for innocent fun. Parents are more concerned about their children learning how to sing, dance, play games and what have you. Remember what children love above all else is having fun with other children and being naughty. Keep moral lessons for later.
Merry Christmas to all!
