Didi had been traveling in India for one month. She discovered India is a place of extremes – where the poorest and the richest people you can imagine live side-by-side and where extreme dirt and extreme beauty walk hand-in-hand. Didi could not help but think about the sentence she heard people say so many times; India … they say you love her or you hate her. But what Didi found the most striking is that India is a land of chaos, and that there is absolute harmony within the chaos. It is in this country that miracles happen and the impossible is possible. Or as the Indians say it Sub kuch melega; everything is possible. This is exactly what Didi discovered. In India even world peace seems very possible and everyone wants the same thing. What seemed impossible in the West, to her seemed very logical, here, in India.
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Today, she got invited to a New Year’s party – an Iranian New Year’s party, celebrated on the spring equinox. Didi walked, with an American girl she had met before, in the south of India, to the hotel where the Iranian celebration would be. Entering the driveway of the hotel, they saw a beautiful garden with a huge variety of trees and in the middle, aprieeltje covered with flowers. Inside, three Iranian women had prepared a celebration table, full of foods and things that represented seven bad behaviors to leave behind in the old year. Slowly people gathered together in the prieeltje. When everyone had arrived there were exactly thirteen people. Thirteen people all from different areas of the world, all with different cultural backgrounds and with different religions. Thirteen people representing; India, Iran, The Netherlands, Israel, Kazakhstan, United States of America, Turkey, Ireland, Austria, Siberia and Greece.
Didi sat silently watching all these different people sitting together as if they were all one big family. One of the Iranian women stood up. ‘I would like to start with two prayer songs. These two Iranian songs are more than 6000 years old and interestingly enough they sing the same prayer songs here in India’. She slowly sat down and started chanting the prayer song. Everybody closed their eyes and started to sing or hum with the tune of the Iranian woman chanting. After the last prayer song the Iranian woman opened her eyes and smiled. Slowly she grabbed the hands of the people next to her, and as they did the same a circle was formed. ‘I would like to ask you all to make a wish, to make a prayer for this New Year. I wish for a world where peace is possible and people will be able to see that we are all the same, Amen’. The Iranian woman looked to the person next to her, silently asking this person to follow her and make an out loud wish too. ‘Amen…’ everybody repeated. ‘I hope that we can now move into peace in all countries, that we don’t need these borders anymore and that we can visit each other whenever we want and wherever we want’. ‘Amen’; echoed in thirteen voices. ‘I wish that every single human being will be able to look inside themselves and discover we are all one’. ‘Amen’. ‘I wish and hope that peace will rule this world’. ‘Amen’. Didi slowly opened her mouth to say her wish out loud. ‘I wish peace and joy will rule this earth and that people can truly love their neighbors.’ ‘Amen’. Everyone there, one by one, made their wish. All thirteen people made a different wish, but in essence all the thirteen wishes were exactly the same. Peace between people, acceptance of one and other, and being able to live life in harmony and joy… together as one. ‘I would like to ask all of you to say your prayer again, but this time in your own language, just for the vibration of the words and the difference of each of your languages’. The Iranian woman started herself, and one by one the others followed her. Didi looked around and noticed that everybody’s face looked touched by the words of one and other. She could not help but notice there was an intense feeling of understanding, of knowing, we really all are the same and really all do want the same; peace, harmony, joy and sharing love for each other.
The day went on as everyone celebrated, making music together, dancing together, singing together, and sharing food. Everyone felt and knew that if on a small scale 13 people all from different countries, cultures and religions can be together in peace then, on a big scale, peace is possible. Didi smiled and softly whispered sub kuch melega, that every single human being will wish and dream for the same thing. And as a wise man once said; a dream dreamed together becomes reality.