Damodar Hall,
Parel, Bombay 12
19 – 01 – 26
My dear Dattoba,
Your letter came as an agreable suprise. Long time had elapsed since Mr. Shivtarkar wrote to you about my son’s death and as there was no reply from you, I thought that you had ceased to care for me. That it was not so and that atleast on occasions of grief and sorrow you feel bound to drop a line of condolence is some evidence that frame is not wholly out.
There is no use of pretending that i and my wife have recovered from the shock of my son’s death and I don not think that we ever shall. We have in all buried four precious children, 3 sons and a daughter, all sprightly, auspicious and handsome children. The thought of this is sufficiently crushing, let alone the future which would have been theirs if they had lived, we are living no doubts in the sense that days are passing over us as does the cloud. With the loss of our kids the salt of our life is gone and as the Bible says, ‘Ye are the salf of the earth, if it leaveth the earth wherewith shall it be salted?’ O feel the truth of this every moment in my almost vacant and empty life. My last boy was a wonderful boy life of whom I had seldom seen. With his passing away life to me is a garden full of weeds. But enough of this. I am too overcome to write any more.
With the best regards of a broken man,
Yours in grief,
B. R. Ambedkar
