An upcoming book by Supriya Vani.
By Supriya Vani.
Socrates says, “All men’s souls are immortal but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine”. The righteous souls achieve divinity because they strive hard to remove all dross from within and empty themselves like a flute to weave magical stirrings of divine love and blissful consciousness and take in their warm clasp the lowliest of the low, the neglected, the abandoned, the orphaned, in fact; the whole of humanity just in the same way as the sun spreads its canopy of warmth on everyone under the sky or the dewdrops leave no petal untouched.
They are pained on finding others in pain. They are aggrieved when they find others in grief. They do not find themselves at peace on finding others in trouble. They find joys in others’ joys. They instantly reach out to others in need of care, of love, of succor or of solace. They are self-abnegated souls and always full of empathy for fellow human beings. They are zealously venerated by one and all.
A peep into the life of all the sixteen women Nobel Peace prize laureates gives this revelation. What led me to foray into the lives of these magnificent women is my father’s motivation. In my early childhood, he would often relate to me stories of valour, of self-effacing sacrifices, of stoic sufferings of great men and women who helped in making the planet earth a place of peaceful co-existence for mankind.
The quintessence of the lives of sixteen women Nobel peace laureates is running the gauntlet of adversity and myriad challenges in life with never-to-yield attitude. After interviewing many Nobel Peace laureates, I have found that each one of them has scripted a saga of rare activism and also of building bonds of love with the suffering humanity. Nobel Peace Prize Laureates like Bertha von Suttner, Jane Addams, Emily Green Balch, Alva Myrdal, Wangari Maathai and Mother Teresa laid the foundation of peace for us and have faded away from the Earth.
Other Nobel Peace Laureates like Malala Yousafzai, Betty Williams, Mairead Maguire, Aung San Suu Kyi, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Tawakkol Karman, Leymah Gbowee are all activists who dared to fight the unjust systems and never dithered even when death stared at them menacingly.
Each one of us can lead a life of ecstatic fulfillment if we borrow a leaf from their book. They say it is never too late. They have scripted a saga. When will we ? We need to always remember that life’s most persistent and important question is, “What are we doing for others?”.
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About the author:
Supriya Vani is a 28 years old human rights activist and an author. She has interviewed several Nobel Peace Laureates for her upcoming book- Battling Injustice-The Stories of sixteen Women Nobel Peace Laureates.
