Devang Desai

“A Letter”

One Day we sat down and wrote a letter…
A letter to Lord in a cry for better…

Yesterday came and went away…
Today is your’s you live your own way…
Tomorrow will come with some new ways…

Of all the battles we fought on battleground…
there were world wars twice that we’ve found…

its a philosophers dream to live life balanced…
but doesn’t even know from where to get that balance…

If for a lover to love and let live…
If for a killer to kill and let die…
Then why for a soldier to suffer the pain and survive…

it was me and the souls who wrote this letter…
so the life be and spread love from this letter…

Theme for the Poem

There was a man in his late twenties living in a metropolitan city.An ordinary and a healthy man it would seem at first sight, but was handicapped due to some reason in his past.He used to normally go to a bar every evening and have a drink or two. Of late he used to have some illusions or rather strange dreams. He did not take these things seriously but then it got more and more into his life…as in even while getting into a train he used to see a village around him and it used to get regular with him. So he decided to see a psychiatrist who advised him that those were just illusions and he need not worry about them.

[His Dream/Illusion]
In his dreams he used to see a village with some villagers having a meet.Small children playing outside their homes and their mothers watching them play..And somewhere in the middle of the village he saw a tree with many rotten leaves beneath the tree…and a few still on the tree as if waiting for a breeze to let them falldown…Next he saw a man sitting beneath that tree as if talking to someone in the air…But he was never able to see that person’s face.
[His Dream/Illusion]

But on a personal note he adviced him to find out a place that he was dreaming of to get his illusions away. The doctor also suggested that the place might be related to his past.So he decided to find that place somehow and amazingly it was a small village close by the city he lived in. In the beginning he lived on the ourskirts of the village and gather information aboutits history. One day he decided to go to the village. He found a similar scenario when he entered the village. He saw a few villagers discussing something. He saw children playing oustide their homesand their mothers watching them. As soon as they saw a stranger entering the village there was a buzz around. Butthey were not afraid as he was handicapped and wouldn’t be of any harm. The mothers calledtheir children to get in their homes.

He walked straight towards a tree as he had imagined, but no one sitting beneath the tree.He saw the tree and the leaves that had fallen down. He sat beneath the tree as if waiting for someone to come. Then there was a slight breeze around and few more leaves started falling from the tree. He started looking at them and all of a sudden started hearing some strange voices of shouting and screaming, as if a battleground. He saw something coming out of the leaves and had illusions of people coming out of the leaves and trying to call him. For the villagers it was just a breeze that had passed by but the person was still in his illusions and continued seeing few people coming out of the leaves and asking for his help as if to save them.

And then he realized it was he himself that was sitting beneath the tree in his illusions.He picked up a pen and a paper and started writing down what those soldiers were telling him to write to almighty Lord about their agony and pain. The people coming out of the leaves were no one but soldiers, a few of them were his ancestors and friends with the help of whom he had fought a few battles.He himself had been a soldier and had fought many a battles and had lost his leg in one of the battles. The Village was once upon a time a huge battlefield where many battles were fought.The villagers depict the normal human beings or onlookers.
So the Letter(Sonnet) is to the human beings and to the almighty Lord about things that have happened with soldiers in this world.

Dedicated to friends in the Army.