Pranaam!! During my stay in Sri Badrika Ashram, I met one devotee Mehreen who is living in Netherland at present and originally hails from Iran. [To maintain privacy name is changed]. We interacted only once in Ashram and somehow felt connected and therefore exchange contact details. Yesterday, I was very happy to receive them at my residence for dinner before their departure to Netherland. Mehreen is very fun loving and carry very beautiful smile always on her face. She was accompanied by her husband who hails from Norway. He is very silent type guy and appears to be in continuous meditative state. Due to Delhi's chilling weather, they preferred to sit in drawing hall. She complimented me for a beautiful and big house in the heart of New Delhi. It is government house, so I told her that all credit to government. During discussion, I found a chain of awful episodes and brave stories of Mehreen's life back in Iran. She was a social activist which was not acceptable to the regime there. She was arrested once and sent to prison for one day for violating social norms which was very disturbing to me. She said that moral policing is a very big and problematic issue there.
Suddenly, one night, she got wind of some massive crackdown by Iranian authority against social activists. She was frightened and she ran from her home alone without even carrying her purse or pair of clothes. She was hardly of 15 yr old that time. She crossed Iraq that night. She searched manual job in Iraq and started working there. Since, she was living near Iran-Iraq border area, so it was difficult for Iraqi authority to distinguish her as physical features and language were almost same. Since, she did not have any document with her, it was getting difficult to move to any other country. During her stay in Iraq, Mehreen told me that her mother used to send lot of things secretly through tourist bus driver. Bus driver used to charge money for this service and transport eatables to Mehreen in Iraq. In between, war broke out in Iraq, and she was forced to take refuge in nearby country Turkey. She lived in refugee camp for some time and then she escaped to one European country and stayed for long in refugee camp there. She was alone and facing all this alone only. She was unable to contact her parents as authority was watching every conversation in Iran. After some time, she came to know that her father died. Now, only her mother and brother live in Iran.
She finally landed in Norway and want to join nursing. For that, for one year she learnt local language for six months and then took admission in nursing course. In between for survival, she did baby sitting and other manual work. Authority took very long time to give her citizenship in absence of any document to prove her identity. Once, authority established that she would be prosecuted in Iran on her return, they bestowed her the citizenship. After few years, she met the guy and decided to marry him. They don't have any plan to extend their family. They are living happily in Amsterdam now. The thing which pained me very much that from last so many years, she was unable to talk to her mother in fear of reprisal from authority. Later, she came to know that all her friends were prosecuted.
It was very heavy discussion in drawing room, so we moved in dining area for Indian vegetarian dinner. Hope, they liked our preparation. After the dinner, I took them to Bengali market near mandi house. She ate kulfi, Gol-guppas and Rasmalai. Almost everything both of them liked very much. Finally, I brought them to Pan Shop and requested them to taste it. They were ready to experiment with this unique Indian thing and felt very nice after chewing the Pan...It was almost 10:30PM and they need to catch flight today morning, so I dropped them at their hotel in Connaught place. We bid tearful farewell with very sweet memories of time spent together and promised to meet again in near future may be in Amsterdam during our visit or in Sri badrika Ashram .
I returned to me residence after dropping them with deep thought that how much lucky we all of us are who are living a comfortable life with complete freedom. We are not encountering any moral police in the street, and we are not forced to run in midnight to save our life. We are lucky to not to encounter any situation where we are forced to live in refugee camp. I profusely thank God/Sri Hari for a beautiful life. This is the regular message of Pujya Om Swami ji to be full of gratitude all the time. We should focus more on what we have and not what we don't have. That is the way to be happy. The remarkable thing which I noticed about Mehreen is that she is always smiling and laughing while narrating her difficult times. I have learnt a lot from Mehreen. She is a very brave lady. They have plans to roam around the world and visit different places. She has already visited numerous countries. She also has plans to learn a new language. Right now, she knows five languages which is very impressive feat. I wish her a very beautiful life ahead.
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