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A Love Letter From the Womb

by MEETA KAUR

 

Dear Mom, Dear Dad:

We will meet soon. The past nine months have been transformative. I appreciate the hushed conversations we are having amongst our souls.

With my arrival, know our time together is no random act, a haphazard collision of lives. It wasn't written on a fortune cookie message or wished upon when the sky was full of stars.

This is destiny.

You are meant to be my parents and I'm meant to be your child.

It was established centuries ago when we all existed in the same womb where the sky touches the cosmos. We gathered together as stars forming constellations that nomads used in the desert to find their way back home.

We simply fit with each other.

All it took was a fleeting yet joyful thought in your mind, a nice daydream to lean on while sipping a cup of tea, and that was it, I came to be.

To meet you, I will walk forward in time from a glorious past where we gathered in courtyards wearing jamawari in pomegranate red and pashmina in clear water blues.

We savored papayas and custard apples, almonds and cashews. Listening to the smallest sparrows sing God's greatest songs.

And when we were summoned to ride stallions with pounding hooves, we knew it was our greatest glory to serve and protect the creed established by the Ten Kings illuminated by One Light. It was an honour to serve men who wore cotton and ate rationed rice and daal, for their lives held their weight in gold equally.

Please know the day I arrive, within that hour, that exact moment I come to you, I will be shivering, squinting, naked and wet. As you wrap me into your arms and swaddle me with your skin, know I also come to you in complete and utter perfection.

You are my flesh and blood parents and I'm deeply thankful for that, but please keep me close to the mother, the father who has brightly lit my soul.

Yes. There is a lantern in me that has a wick that will be lit the day I am born. The light will shine through my eyes and as you look at me, really look at me - you will see how much I will want to love this life I will live.

I will rely on you to keep this wick burning in me by seeing me for who I authentically am, and by showing me that there is a lantern brightly lit in every being I encounter, and it is just a matter of looking into their eyes and seeing them, really seeing them.

I will rely on you to help me create a quiet and open field in my mind, where we are still, where cherry and almond trees grow, where the air is pure and the water is clean, where I can sit under a tree with myself and seek guidance and wisdom and know everything and anything is possible.

Please keep me linked to my history and my faith and when you tell me stories about the dynasty of the Ten Kings illuminated by One Light and how they believed that life is sacred, life is a perpetual celebration, life is the truest gift, and that we must do everything we can to make each second count.

I will want to know that I am strong enough and brave enough to serve these Ten Glorious Kings and ride with our history's freedom fighters on stallions with pounding hooves, protecting the light in each and every soul.

And when we have to leave that glorious battle ground in our imaginations and set foot into the real world, I will ask you to listen for those riders on stallions with pounding hooves and prepare me to ride with them by sharpening the sword in my mind and expanding the shield in my heart to take on any thought, idea, or action that extinguishes the wick of a brightly lit soul.

Please know your dreams for me are only the beginning of what I am capable of and when I reach the heights of my potential, my capacity - please remind me I come from the minerals and water of the land of the Five Rivers and keep me grounded near the earth, close to the soil.

When I am prepared to leave home to follow my own light, know that I will take with me a love that YOU have given me that is so complete, so full, given in such absolute faith that my heart will spill over with the sunsets we share, it will run over with the waterfalls we stand under, it will gush with each and every desire you fulfill, it will flood in such excess, I will be able to enter the world, serve it with honour, and be that part of the earth people walk on when they are free.

 

[Dedicated to my soon-to-be niece/nephew, and my daughter Benanti]

March 3, 2009

Conversation about this article

1: Parminder Kaur (Raleigh, N.C., U.S.A.), March 04, 2009, 11:01 AM.

A great message from one who is getting ready to come to the world. It is up to the mother to prepare him/her to walk on the path of Sikhi! Chardi Kalaa!

2: Inni Kaur (Fairfield, CT, U.S.A.), March 04, 2009, 4:19 PM.

Exquisite! A meditation in the purest form.

3: Sara Kaur (Union City, California, U.S.A.), March 04, 2009, 4:52 PM.

O my tears, go away! I am seeing a light at the end of this tunnel in which I've been travelling for the last quarter of a century.

4: Ruchie Kaur (New York, U.S.A), March 05, 2009, 12:59 PM.

Thank you for sharing this distinctive, inspiring and reflective piece of writing. Agreed upon, "This is Destiny", set by the "Ten glorious Kings, Illuminated by one Light". It is indeed a grateful breeze.

5: Arvinder Singh Kang (Oxford, MS, U.S.A.), March 06, 2009, 7:07 PM.

Your writing - so elegant. Your vision - so enlightening. Your intention - so noble. Your depiction of the subject - simply brilliant. We are blessed to have writers like you.

6: R.S. Bhinder (India), March 17, 2009, 1:20 PM.

The feelings behind the article of Meeta Singh are pious and laudable. There are, however, historical and cultural/social reasons behind the Indian propensity of killing the female child. Earlier it was after birth and now it is before the birth. It was prevalent even at the time of our Gurus and that is why an edict was issued for the Sikhs to socially boycott the "Kurri Maar"s - that is, the Girl-Killers! Unless parents in this society accept and provide for the right to property for their girl children, this practice will continue. Those who have become enlightened enough to treat their daughters equal to their sons, they are now celebrating the birth of girls as enthusiastically as they do for their sons. Meeta Singh has referred to the ten Gurus as Kings. It is no doubt out of great shardha and reverence, but this metaphor needs be discussed. Our first Guru, addressed himself as "neechaan under neech" - the lowest of the low! But he stood up to the most powerful king of his time. He publicly rebuked him for his utmost cruelty and went on to 'protest' to the Almighty for the sufferings caused by the tyant ruler to the hapless masses. He was a great revolutionary, both spiritually and socially, but would never like to be addressed as a king. The Fifth Guru carried on that spirit. He built Harmandar Sahib, which is perhaps the only place of worship and the symbol of a religion which is much below the ground level. It has four gates opening towards all the four directions, a symbol of human equality and true secularism. Even the domes on the roof of Harmandar Sahib are depressed at the top, a symbol of humility. The Sixth and Tenth Gurus took up swords, again in the spirit of their first embodiment, to resist the cruel onslaught of the contemporary tyrants. They challenged the unjust dictates of the Mughal Emperors and the Hindu Rajas by defying their edicts ... such as the one prohibiting the public from riding horses, or from carrying a sword in protection, or from wearing a kalgi on the turban, etc. That is how the people started addressing the tenth Guru as Sacchey Padshah. It was not in the sense of a worldly King, but a sovereign and pious protector of souls. [Editor: Meeta's reference to the Gurus as Kings is in the latter sense of the word.]

7: Jalmeen Arora (Walnut Creek, California, U.S.A.), March 23, 2009, 1:50 AM.

Meeta, Thank you ~ your writing touches my soul.

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