ANONYMOUS LETTERS

To Read or To Ignore?

By

Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji
Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath
SIRIGERE - 577 541
Chitradurga Dist, Karnataka

 

R

ECEIVING anonymous letters is quite common to those who hold public offices. Being the head of a big religious and educational organization, I am no exception. Even while writing these lines, I see one such anonymous letter in today's mail! With more than twenty five years of my experience in public life and at the helm of the affairs of hundreds of institutions, my eyes are so trained that they immediately recognize such letters at the very first glance even before opening them to read. My predecessor, Sri Shivakumara Shivacharya Mahaswamiji, also used to get such anonymous letters. He was very revolutionary in his thoughts and actions and had therefore made many friends and foes besides his ardent disciples. He was a great man with varied tastes from religion to politics, from literature to agriculture and from fine arts to folk lore. He had a life full of vigour and opposition. He was a big terror to his opponents but looked very tender to his disciples. Once he received a threatening letter from an unknown opponent who had written to him desperately like this: "If I had a Swamy like you to back me, I would have challenged you and pinned you down!" On receiving this letter from an unknown person, the senior Swamiji, who had no formal education in the Universities, laughed to his heart's content and showed it to his disciples saying: "Look, here is my Degree Certificate!" This reminds me one of the Vachanas of Basavanna whose teachings were so dearer to the Swamiji.: "If you are a real hero, even the enemies should admire you!" The anonymous letter to the senior Swamiji just quoted above was an example of such admiration from his opponents.

People generally advise not to take anonymous letters so seriously. But I do not ignore such letters and throw them to dust bins as many people would have you them to do. I advise you also not to get disturbed and tear them off or throw them away in a fit of anger. Make use of the pins and the Jems clips, if any, coming along with them, as I do. Why to waste the free supply of stationary to your office when you badly need it! I maintain a separate file for such anonymous letters like other important documents. I read them carefully and try to understand the view points of the unknown writer.

Some writers do mention their names but they are indeed fictitious. They make-believe that the letter is not anonymous, thus fooling you with their pseudo names. Often, it is a difficult task to make out who the writer is and where it has come from, but that does not bother me much. I just care for the contents of the letters and not the harsh words or filthy language used by the writer. Not all the authors of anonymous letters use dirty language and not all of them are your enemies either. They may be your employees who are in trouble and who are dissatisfied with your mode of administration or decision-making. They may also be your friends, sympathizers, well-wishers, and thinkers who disagree with your public statements. Sometimes, they also furnish very useful information about the persons around you and caution you. But the anonymous letter which I have received recently is unusually different from all these types and it reads as follows:

BLESSINGS OF LORD VENKATESHWARA

This letter brings you the blessings of Lord Venkateshwara for his devotees. This letter has gone around the world four times bringing luck and good fortune to the Lord's devotees. Please make twenty copies of this letter and send it as blessings of Lord Venkateshwara to twenty people you know within nine days of receiving this letter.

This is a chain of blessing going around the world. Please do not break this chain. Mr Navamani got Rs five lakhs when he continued the chain. Mr Raman thought it was silly and put it away. Soon he lost his job and then when he sent out the blessings of Lord Venkateshwara and continued the chain he got back his job. Mr Selvanayakan died soon after he tore the letter and threw it into dustbin.

So please do not ignore this letter. Make twenty copies of this letter and send it to any twenty persons you know and within twenty five days something extraordinary and pleasant will happen to you also with the blessing of Lord Venkateshwara.

                                                                                                                               - Devotee of Lord Venkateshwara

Guess from where this letter has come to me if this cowardly act is not of yours! Here I give you some clues. The original letter is in English and the one I have received is a photocopy of the computer print of that letter. I see the perforation and the pin feed holes of the computer paper used for taking the original computer print out. Can you guess now where it has come from?

I am absolutely sure that your guess would go wrong. You may not believe that the said letter has come to me from England! Do you object that I did not give you the most important clue that it was an airmail with British stamps on it? Objection sustains! The hand written name and address of mine on the cover is very clear including the zip code. The sender of this letter must be knowing me pretty well. The "spirit" of the letter also expects that you should send twenty copies of this letter to twenty people whom you know. The original letter must have been drafted in India only, before its "Bon Voyage" to England and "Retour" to India since it promises five lakh Rupees and not five lakh Pounds!

The sender is no doubt a well-wisher of mine. But I am pretty sure that he neither expects me to earn Rs five lakhs nor he hopes to earn Rs five lakhs for himself by way of circulating it. What he hopes in his heart of hearts is to avoid the "life risk" endangered in the letter. He neither wants to lose his job like Mr Raman, nor he wants to die like Mr Selvanayakan. (By the way, do these names suggest that the first letter which set out on its maiden voyage of the Globe must have originated from Tamil Nadu or Kerala?) How can the poor man living in a far away country like England, take all that life risk? After all, he has a family to take care. How can he make both ends meet if he loses his job? How can his wife who turned her deaf ears on his advice to do some job-oriented courses, live alone and take care of the children if he dies? Who will pay the donation and tuition fees for the admission of his school going children? Who will lend the heavy loan to pay off the dowry debts of his dear daughter who is engaged to an young prospective doctor? Considering all these 'possible mishaps', what does he lose by making a few copies which cost him a few Pounds and which would otherwise cost him dearly? Though he fully knows that the names and the incidents quoted in the letter must be all concocted, he simply does not want to take any risk befalling his own life. Any small incident or set back in the family like the children getting fever or cough, or an accident narrowly escaped, will create an electrifying shock and anxiety in the mind. The immediate reaction of all the family members, especially the wife, will be that it is all due to the non-fulfilment of the obligation of circulating that letter.

Though staying in England, a country which is so much advanced in science and technology, the sender has succumbed to such dreadful thoughts of his weak mind and has immediately rushed to the post office for mailing 'twenty copies' of that 'mantric' letter received from a mysterious person causing havoc in his family life. (I wonder whether the fellow has cared to write so many letters from abroad to his own anxious parents in India hopelessly waiting for their son's letter in the mail!) Thanks to the scientist who invented the Xerox machine for facilitating him to quickly make twenty copies before the last clearance mentioned on the post box! But who is that 'friend' who made him rush to the post office so desperately? Is he justified in creating such a horror in the minds of his own friends? Personally speaking, I have neither a job to lose nor a family to take care. I am not worried of my death either. As Basaveswara says, it is not in our hands to be born wherever we want and to die wherever we wish (Ni huttisidalli hutti ni kondalli sayade enna vashave ayya). Before the Death takes us away from this world, we have to pay back our debts to this wonderful creation of God through our good actions and leave this world behind graciously when our time is up.

"Cowards die many a times before their deaths!", writes Shakespeare in one of his plays. My predecessor had a very strong will-power to live. I remember him saying in one of his public meetings that even if Yama, the God of Death comes to him saying that your time is up, he will not beg him to spare him. Instead, he would take him to task, make him "stand on his single leg" and order him to wait at the door step till he completes his duties and obligations to this world. He did live like that only, till he breathed his last in the year 1992, almost five years longer than the doctors had expected him to live. With all the old-age ailments troubling him so much, I never saw any fears or tears in his eyes and when he breathed his last, his face was as cheerful as it was when he was alive!

No matter how well placed you are in life, nobody can ever escape death. Death is bound to come at some point in one's life whether we like it or not. In the eyes of Death, all are equal whether rich or poor. Every living being in this world, is sentenced to death on the very day of its birth! Only the date is not fixed for its execution!

Not all deaths are due to the unknown reasons which the Indian Philosophy terms it as Karma, that theory of merits and demerits accumulated by one's Self on account of one's good or bad deeds during one's past lives. Many of the deaths which we see in our modern life are all due to the known reasons of how recklessly people drive their cars and how wantonly they behave during their own present life! How can you attribute the death of a drunkard to his past Karma, when you know fully well that the stupid fellow 'dancing' on the foot path, came all of a sudden under the wheels and was run over by a speedy truck?

Let me come back to the point in question: Is the writer of an anonymous letter justified in creating the feelings of horror in the mind of his friends? My answer is an emphatic "NO". Writing such anonymous letters to one's friends is nothing short of writing threatening letters to one's foes. The anonymous phone calls received at the airport about the time bomb planted in the aero plane cannot be so easily neglected by the civil aviation authorities. Unless they are absolutely confident of their security measures, they cannot help but searching for the scare bomb in vain. What an amount of inconvenience, fear and anxiety is caused to the passengers! Similarly, people lack confidence in their life. By writing such anonymous letters, they unnecessarily create anxiety in the minds of their friends. We are all co-passengers in life treading the long path of tiresome journey towards Eternity and as far as possible we should try to help each other in reaching that final Destiny of our lives. What kind of a friend is he who causes mental torture and harassment to his friends? A real friend is he who shares the pleasures and pains of his friends. To pass on the bucks to your friends, is nothing short of a treacherous act of deceiving your own friends.

The letter claims that it has gone four times around the world. How do you testify that claim, unless you know the place where it originated from and keep track of its retour to that very place after its successful sojourn of the World Tour? This reminds me of an interesting episode: Once an young man, passing through a Christian cemetery, noticed an Epitaph inscribed on a tomb. The dead man had it written on his tomb stone which read as follows: "Look young man! Once upon a time, I was also standing and walking on this earth like you when I was alive. But remember, sooner or later, you also have to follow my way!" The passer-by immediately wrote beneath the Epitaph: "Listen, I am not a fool to follow you so blindly, unless you tell me which way you went!"

Now the real question that still remains unanswered is: What is the original motive of that so-called "devotee of Lord Venkateshwara" who first drafted this letter and mailed for its circulation? (Hope that he did not forget to make twenty copies!) Why did he cowardly hide his name and address if he really cared for his friend's fortune of Rs five lakhs? Was he trying to popularize the deity or wrote it just for fun? Lord Venkateshwara is already well-known all over the world as the richest God of India whose daily income runs into several lakhs. His popularity is all due to the devotion of his worshippers and certainly not due to such letters in circulation which may attract only a minor section of week-minded people. Unlike the letter claims, if at all I am to recollect anything pleasant that has happened to me within 25 days from the date of receipt of the above anonymous letter (of course without sending twenty copies of it), it is the inspiration that I derived from that letter to write this article on it.

Such letters circulating around the country or the world are not written out of any devotion to God but out of fear for the possible calamities in life! They do not reflect any faith in God but a hidden fear of the weak minded! If you discontinue the "chain of blessing around the world" as the letter warns, be confident that nothing will happen to you. By discontinuing it, please be assured that you are not breaking your faith in God but you are only breaking the foolish act of superstition. Let me emphatically tell all those God-fearing devotees not to get perturbed by such letters but simply continue to believe in God. The benevolent God does not need such advertisements! This is not a chain of blessing of Lord Venkateshwara but a chain of blackmailing of friends around the world! Though it may look unharmful, it is an outrage on your friend's belief in God! There is no need to continue this chain of non-sense and cheat your friends and cheat your own Self. What God needs is your unflinching faith and not such non-sensical letters fooling the people around!

"patram pushpam phalam toyam
yo me bhaktya prayacchati
tad aham bhaktyupahritam
ashnami prayatatmanah"  - Bhagavad Gita

I gladly accept what is offered to me
with true devotion!
Be it the sacred bilva leaf or flowers
Be it fruits or even water for that matter!

 

- Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji
Sirigere

__________