A Letter like a Sack of Santa’s Presents
"I may not be there this Christmas, but I’m singing along with you."
Here is a letter written in 1991, to Tarun's parents and and grandparents in Kerala, while he was in Bombay. The emotion in it is as relevant today, when loved one's are kept apart by Corona.
Dearest Family & Friends,
I love writing letters, the slow kind, the ones with Time in them ...and richness and laughter.
The ones that are like days building upto Christmas, slowly step by step, hour by hour, second by second, full of anticipation and bustle and decorations going up…and boxes of stars and tinsel, that when opened smell of rich Christmas cake, a carol soaring into the wintry air…in the coloured Christmas ball your face changes like magic and you become older and younger and happier and sadder.
I imagine a letter like a sack of Santa’s presents abustle with colour and filled with joy… knowing that you care and are cared for, showing in the odd packs, the carefully drawn but crooked Santa; and like these presents, the words are of some rare joy (a heap of raisins to be chopped…or batter to be whisked.)
Oh and think of the glorious sack on Santa’s jolly shoulder (almost a carol of colour)!
Oh but as you look around it’s misty dark and forests of loneliness rise… and haunting feelings of separation. And the tiny glow of red-nosed sentences are just that, a very small glow.
Oh it’s dark as dark can be and lonelier still and all inns seem closed and winter feels like the dead of winter. Words stumble over each other other as the donkey must have, through the friendless streets of Bethlehem.
Fearful the paragraphs become and gruff-voiced like an inn-keeper tired of the horde…and one more couple not riding up on a Mercedes but on a donkey. (And the woman in an obvious condition.)
But somewhere the word retains its star-like quality of hope, and a stable door is opened, warm with animal warmth and low “moos” and sleepy bleats.
It’s dark now, but the darkness has departed and the gentle almost-quiet of the first cathedral, the stable, fills the page – it’s silent, the stable is, and it’s holy.
I’d like to share this moment with you, where we add our voices to the lowing of cattle and the bright alto of hope.
I may not be there this Christmas, but I’m singing along with you.
Love, Tarun & Celia...
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.