Dear Baya,

       You’ve always seemed a very peaceful and calm person and I’ve never seen you violent, except in the fierce games we played together when I was a child. So perhaps you’ll think it odd that I’m asking for your help in understanding violence. But there are few things that upset me more than ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ (and to other animals).

       We’re constantly being told to be loving, to turn the other cheek, that humans are kindly. Yet you just have to turn on the television or open a paper and the catalogue of wife beatings, child abuse, rapes, murders, cruelty to animals and all sorts of acts of violence seem endless. Why are we so very violent?

       And come to that, what is violence? If I kick my sister Rosa that is ‘violence’, but if I push her in certain games we don’t think of it as violence. Is violence just physical? When the mafia threaten people, is that violence? If a man comes home drunk and curses his wife, is that violence? Can we, as I’ve heard, even call certain kinds of music, architecture or even speech – for instance what happened at Hitler’s rallies with all those dreadful marches and songs and flags, - a form of violence?

      From your experience of what you tell me was once a very peaceful society in Nepal, but is now filled with fighting, as well as all your other travels and reading, could you explain some of the patterns behind much of what seems random and pointless? Then I could perhaps face it all better.

Lots of love,

              Your peace-loving,