A letter to Hitler

Dear Fuhrer,

I write from where I last saw you. It has been a life time, but as I surmised, nothing seems to have changed.  Humans are being marched naked in front of my eyes and some are being executed for not matching with the pace. I sense a sigh of relief to learn that you are not behind this. The only change I notice is Semitists are in power this time. The bombs are here and so am I. The death toll has already crossed 5.5 million as I write to you.  

Smoke crawls around my lifeless being as I try to wring words from the clouds of my memories on this dead paper, mute and white, yet so alive and quivering amidst the blood and flesh in hell fire. As I stare into the past, you emerge, piercing the darkness of time. I remember the first time you called me. It felt like a demon intervened in my loneliest loneliness and said to me: “This life as you live it and have lived, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more.” I felt like throwing myself down, gnash my teeth and curse you in every possible way for having found me. Instead, I floated with you in the stream to the abyss that would soon bring a catastrophe.

I expected you to have been just like others, entrapped by dogmas, blinded by colors. I expected you to see people as black and white, pure and impure. For that is the kind of humans I had encountered. I have seen so many colors from the beginning of my existence, so many races, so many countries, Gods religions and what not. I had expected you too, to be a puppet to these dogmas, dragging humanity to hell with every pull of string. But you, oh Fuhrer, turned out to be different. It felt like you took pieces of them all, braided them to a necklace and put it around my neck. Out of all the people I have led by, Fuhrer, I was given the most known grotesque form by you. But to you, with these chains of racism, creed, caste, religion wrapped around my veins, I was exactly what you wanted. Oh how I wish I could pull the chains and let the beads fall down in the hell fire that gnawed on humanity bit by bit every moment.

Humans seem to have loved me in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age, forever. You couldn’t escape. I remember the afternoon I told you I was leaving. I had heard the demon whisper to me again. The sight of you shaking like leaves by a gusty wind, at the thought of having lost me, still flashes in front of my eyes. That day you finally confessed how different you wanted things to be. And how like a forceful pull, you had drawn yourself and me into this catastrophe. Tears burst down your eyes like water from dam, spilling down your face. I could see your cheeks tremble like a child, as you told me how like wind you had always wanted to be- flowing past everyone equally, without any discrimination. But how the everyday acceptance of behaviors that normalized discrimination had now grown into something so evil that no amount of water or blood could dilute. Covered in the gray dust of ashes of your own citizens, you sobbed, grappling your tears, as your heart leaked something so strong, I could smell a whole lifetime of regret down to the streets, as I paved my way on a tight rope to another set of living assembled bones crowned with religious prejudices and self absorption.

With streams flowing down my face to the darkest corner of my dark heart, I wanted to be called upon by you again. This time not to drag humans to a savage state, but to all the catastrophes I have ever been resulted in.  For I knew it wasn’t you, but the ulterior racist ideologies lying underneath, that were the genesis of all the massacres that I have witnessed since times immemorial. It was the fact that I have known more colors than faces, and the way humans filled themselves with superiority up to the brims of their bellies, and how their genders decided the gender they were to fall for,  was what lead to me. And it was in the way your lips curled down as you saw the little girl being dragged on the road and how you could never stand the sight of men being burnt, that I saw a long lost soul trying to dig its way back to where it belonged. “Only if I had not killed those people”, were the words you uttered. A gunshot followed.

Today, 250 years later, I still see two legged species , with stereotypes and discrimination fit perfectly in the notches of their spines. I feel a sudden rush of hope run through my veins as I realize that in this life, you are not the reason behind the death toll reaching 6 millions a few minutes ago. YOU DID NOT KILL THOSE 6 MILLION PEOPLE. But years after years, and lives after lives, demons still keep whispering to me as they take me to the fount of catastrophes.

I have played alongside of millions of people. Same old hatred, same old minds nurturing discrimination, in shapes that renew forever and ever. I still can’t keep those distressful tears from rolling as I see humanity vanish. But every once in a while, in my dreams, I see you call me and hold me in your arms as you put an end to the everyday insidious practices of discrimination that have bruised minds like invisible wounds. I dream about the day, the innocent blue of the sky will empower the grays and peace will gently perch on each shoulder as their soul cakes back in their body. And I will evanesce in the air to never be found again.

But till that day comes, I promise, I’ll see you again.

Your Magnum Opus,

War