HOLDING HANDS, REACHING OUT, CRYING TOGETHER

\"Holding Hands\" is a metaphorical phrase though we usually take it in its literal sense. \"Hold\" therefore, suggests being together, looking in the same direction, walking side by side and fighting battles together. 'Hands' extends the parameters of 'Holding' that precludes materialistic implications like money, goods, a car, a house, a holiday tour, cosmetic surgery, gymming etc. \"Hands\" can attach to abstract aspirations like togetherness, warmth, love, sharing, belonging. In a more concrete sense, \"holding hands\" to me, can mean anything from crying together over thousands of lives lost in man-made massacres such as the 27/11 bombing of the Taj Intercontinental in Mumbai a year ago; or, over natural disasters like the Tsunami that orphaned hundreds of innocent children, left families without a roof over their heads and reduced well-meaning citizens to penniless paupers, pointing out to the fragility of everything we are made to believe is permanent. It means sharing the empathy of a young actor who left everything he was doing to personally monitor that relief in the form of food and clothing and medicines were actually reaching the victims of Tsunami.

\"Holding Hands\" means smiling together when we discover the young actor Rahul Bose setting up a foundation to educate the bright but poor students of the Andamans who were affected by Tsunami with fellowships initially funded from his personal income. \"Holding Hands\" means taking a nostalgic journey down memory lane with my sister and brother to revive those happy and sad moments of our childhood spent together with our parents who took us out on a Sunday to treat us to that cherished ice-cream though their pockets were really slender but we did not know of it.

\"Holding Hands\" means praying together for Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai 27/11 blasts who has been sentenced to death for being part of the genocide so that God gives him the gift of remorse.\"Holding Hands\" means imbibing the quality of forgiveness together from the Catholic lady in Orissa whose priest husband and two boys were burnt to death but she did not want punishment for them. \"Holding Hands\" means praying together for all the fundamentalists in the world who are conditioned to believe that wiping away an entire community from the face of the earth is the only way to heaven. \"Holding Hands'” is 'togetherness' in every sense. “Holding Hands” is more giving than taking – together.