I cannot express how difficult it is to witness the despair all around us—especially among young people. It is not merely the result of paper leaks or a few isolated incidents. We often look at external causes and engage in political analysis; endless discussions follow. Political parties become restless, competing over who can raise the issue more dramatically . For a few days, some new stars emerge in the public sphere.
Yet, we tend to ignore the thread that connects a human being’s inner world with the outer one. Today, that thread has been worn thin, almost torn apart. We can examine the reasons for its fragility another time. For now, it is enough to acknowledge that our young people are feeling profoundly alone at every level. There is a longing, a restlessness within them that cannot simply be resolved by a short political movement.
The kind of world we have built has left each of us deeply isolated—just as isolated as we ourselves have become. No means of communication, no information revolution can truly fill this loneliness. In fact, the inertia that keeps us glued for endless hours, day and night, to various OTT platforms and television programs reveals something else: we are running away from our own lives, running away from our aspirations. Slowly, we are killing parts of ourselves, preparing ourselves to be consumed by the web of despair.
We can discuss the deeper sensitivities of this another time.
From my university days until now, I have always had opportunities to spend time among children and young people. Even ten or fifteen years ago, young people shared their aspirations, their questions, and their struggles. But the condition in which so many of them find themselves today deeply unsettles me. It pains me. I ache.
How much I can strengthen, through love, that wounded thread which connects their inner and outer worlds, I cannot say. But whenever I meet them, a mother’s longing and sorrow for her child rises within me.
As a writer, if there is one thing I have written more than anything else, it is letters. Many of these letters never reached the people for whom they were intended; they remained tucked away in my diaries. Yet there was a common belief among those who read them: if one removed the salutation at the beginning, the letters would seem as though they had been written by a lover to a beloved. Such was the depth of love they carried.
These letters may have been written to a mother, a father, a brother or sister, a fellow activist, a friend, an unborn child growing in another’s womb, or to a newborn baby girl who had nothing to do with words and letters. Yet each carried the same current of love.
Today, I am sharing with all of you a letter. The salutation of this letter could bear anyone’s name, but I chose the name Chaitanya. It is a name very dear to me.
I first encountered a Chaitanya many years ago during a visit to Nagpur. At that time, he was still in school. His father had requested that I spend some time talking with him in private. I sat with Chaitanya for hours, listening to his silence. It felt as though the sweet melody of a flute was entering through my ears and flowing through my veins as an inner resonance.
I had been asked to explain Chaitanya to himself. When I came out of the room, all I could say to his father was:
“Chaitanya is a river that flows ceaselessly. Let him flow. Do not create obstacles for him. A river knows how to carve its own path. Even if you try to stop it, it will find its way. The noise is not within him; it lies in your unnecessary worries. Let him remain what he truly is.”When it came time to choose a name for this letter, Chaitanya was the only name that came to mind.Every young person is a river in continuous motion. There is intensity within them, and at times, instability too. Yet they know their way—provided they remain connected to that thread, the thread that links them to both their inner and outer worlds.This letter is for you, my young friend—for all of you.If you wish, write your own name in the salutation.
Dear Chaitanya,
As I stood at the gate watching you leave, before you disappeared from my sight, I called out your name aloud. And you turned back. I wanted that moment to remain with you.
So that whenever you look back, you do not remember professors, universities, disappointments, or bitter words. So that you do not see failure or despair. Instead, I hope you see a smiling face filled with trust; only that face, along with the love of countless children, the strength of their laughter, and the sparkle of their playful mischief. I hope you see two eyes waiting for you, believing that very soon the power of all our love will give you enough courage to kick away the burdens of your past and the anxieties of your future, and embrace your deepest aspiration with your whole being.
Have you ever held a child against your chest immediately after it emerges from its mother’s womb? There is a feeling in that moment unlike any other.
That is exactly how you came to me.
And it was your childlike insistence, your fierce determination, that gathered the full force of your being and broke open every door that stood between you and my heart. You need not exert such strength anymore. Do you know that to bring a child into this world, the child within the womb struggles just as much as the mother does? The artistry with which you knocked upon those closed doors—so naturally, so delicately, and yet with such persistence—revealed the deep yearning for transformation taking place within your entire being. I felt that yearning with equal intensity. Just as a mother and the child growing within her share the same pain, the same restlessness, and the same anticipation.
When a baby is born, doctors place the child upon the mother’s chest, or the chest of someone mother-like, so that for even a moment it does not feel alone, abandoned, or alien in this unfamiliar world.
I have held you against my heart in exactly that way.
In my embrace, you are as safe as a newborn child in its mother’s arms.
You had expressed that longing with such intensity, such pain, such urgency, that perhaps no one could have stopped it from reaching where it was meant to reach. Or perhaps it was simply destined to happen, and so it did.
My heart is now your courtyard.
Here, you may play, sing, dance, weep, sit quietly in some secluded corner and write a poem or compose a song. You may open a book and lose yourself in its pages. This heart is now your home. Here you may sit and write new chapters of your life.
You may rest peacefully upon the carpet of flowers spread beneath the Shiuli tree. But there is one thing you may not say—that it would be beautiful if your eyes closed forever while resting there. That permission will never be granted.
Because this is not the bed in the room where you once lay in despair. The bed of flowers upon which you rest here is woven from blossoms infused with the sacredness of loving touch. Every petal carries the tenderness of boundless love. Their fragrance will guide you toward that journey for which every pore of your being longs. Upon this soft and fragrant bed, you shall receive as blessings the ecstasy of love sung by Bulleh Shah, the devotion of Andal, and the divine madness of Meera. They will remain with you always.
Whether my body remains or not,
whether I remain or not,
my heart shall remain—
forever your own home.
This heart I shall leave behind for you.
Everything else you have ever desired from me is temporary. There is only one thing I possess that is eternal: my heart.
And that I have given to you, so that you may make it your home.
Make it so vast that anyone who arrives here in longing may find this heart exactly as you found it.
Just as the meeting of earth and sky creates the horizon, may this heart become so immense through your dwelling within it that everyone may come here and create their own horizon—their own meeting place of earth and sky.
Whether you choose to flow in the current of this transformation or make your home within it—that will be decided by your deepest aspiration.
Now the whole world belongs to you.
Only despair, hopelessness, and depression no longer belong to you; you entrusted those to me. In those moments when you struck so fiercely upon the doors, when your entire being trembled with longing, all the despair and hopelessness within you quietly slipped away and came to hide in the folds of my Aanchal .
This new home, this heart, will seem unfamiliar to you at first. But as you journey through it, you will come to know every corner. The raindrops, the open sky, the vast earth, the moon and stars, the ancient constellations, the countless fireflies illuminating trees older than centuries—they are all yours.
Go.
Wander through your home.
Become acquainted with this house that has neither roof nor walls.
It is yours.
