You say goodbye, I say hello

Zara’s Witness

A Soul Journey Into the Nature of Being

Shubhrangshu Roy

Hay House Publishers India

Pg: 204

Price: Rs 299

And where does this light come from? Asked Zara, nonplussed, climbing up to the promenade.

The light rests in your eyes, Zara, and it appears and disappears with every flutter of your eyelid…

…and Zara, calm personified, asked, ‘And what moves the eyelids?

Warmth moves your eyelids, said the river.

And what gives warmth? Zara asked.

Its heat that provides warmth, said the river.

And what gives heat? Zara asked.

Food generates heat, Zara, said the river.

• Excerpts from Zara’s Witness

Zara the little girl and Elly the elephant travel across the Ah!nandita  Hills across the vast expanse of lush green forests through unknown landscapes with all the creatures of the world in infinite metamorphosis, eternal change and synthesis. They travel with the river, the great gatekeeper, the listener, sutradhar, archive, librarian, museum and art curator. The river is also the narrator and story-teller of all epical tales, the most ordinary of the extraordinary stories, the repository of life and life-knowledge and knowledge systems, and the inheritor of moving and unmoving secrets of nature, dead, dying, waiting for death. The river is celebrating resurrections and revelations yet again in the infinite sea of love, movement and living.

Like a song in the wind moist with the early morning dawn, the leaves fresh with dew of a new dawn, the sensuous night still hanging on the bark and the petals, the silence of the nocturnal empire of mystery suddenly turning into a cacophony of melody with birds, leaves, grass, bark, buds, roots, insects, butterflies, water droplets and cold sunshine, sudden smells and lingering fragrances, odes and laments and looking forward, optimism which is despair and despair which is at once hope. Hope too lingers like familiar fragrances and vintage friendships.

Become free, like the koel. Like the birds, the trees, the leaves, the horizon and the sky. Like the west wind. The birds sing beautifully because they are free. Like the original river.

This is the unbroken and broken sentence of Zara’s journey, or reverse journey, from Sanyas to life-affirmations of youth, from the forest to the warmth, seductions and delicacies of  the dazzle of the city, from the me to the infinite, the self to renewed self, dying only to become eternally eternal, like grasshoppers and butterflies and caterpillars and fireflies. The wind wraps her in a protective warmth, as she feels cold with the first sweep of the green, dense, ‘abhujmaad’ of an unexplored forest. The story has just about begin to unfold, from the end to the beginning yet again, whereby the beginning is only the end and vice versa of this brilliant journey.

“The west wind smiled, then turned about and wrapped herself around Zara once more, whispering softly into her ear, “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll always come back. But you must keep moving on,” sand saying so, she disappeared nowhere with a whoosh…”

In this oral tradition where words disappear only to create stunning images in the lap of the four seasons, not only is the river the gatekeeper, it is also the conscience-keeper. Drops of wisdom are actually dropping by, passing by, saying you say hello I say goodbye; only the seeker should be able to know it, see it, seek it, absorb it. Nature teaches what no book or university or laboratory can. In her becoming from the ‘is and ought’, Zara too therefore is the gatekeeper.

Nature teaches what no book or university or laboratory can. In her becoming from the ‘is and ought’, Zara too therefore is the gatekeeper, like the river.

‘Yes, dear Zara,” the grasshopper said. “That’s quite true. At every level, we all believe and allow ourselves into believing that ‘I am the gatekeeper, and you are the seeker to whom I shall pass on my wisdom, that you, in turn, shall impart to others’. In the process at every level, we want the next individual down the knowledge stairway to believe that “they are the gatekeeper..”

“That’s a nice game, indeed,” says Zara.

SO THIS WORK and journey is constant, and so is the play, like a dance of shadows on a full moon night in the forest. An ode to joy which everyone can hear including the musician on his  pan flute, a gitanjali which the poet has left for the others to celebrate, a song of the road, a pather panchali, in black and white.

Or, two wanderers in wander-lust moving from the Bengal countryside of ponds and palm, to another, from within the vast expanse of mustard flowers to the snowing peaks of the fragile and young Himalayas, to the deep, dense, incomprehensible density of the forest, hearing it whisper in a thousand whispers like a fire crackling lonely on a solitary night, slowly and steadily becoming a crescendo.

However, these are not the crescendos of war. Or unrequited love in the time of riots and killings and hate politics. Or, organised barbarism: innocents lynched to death, homes and schools burnt, markets ravaged, communities savaged, old bonds destroyed, happiness massacred.

Zara’s witnesses are creatures of beauty, humility, sensibility, fragility, frugality. They are imperfect and humble, not egoistic or sadistic

Zara’s witnesses are creatures of beauty, humility, sensibility, fragility, frugality. They are imperfect and humble, not egoistic or sadistic. They are not harming even the little grass which sways near the river shore, or the eyelid of the petal, or the tiny wild flowers which grow in the crevices of fossilized, primordial stones. This is a journey of life, of resurrections and revelations, joy and beauty, dance and play.

Zara’s witnesses are eternal.

So, AS ZARA entered the city, the koel sang:

You are week, he is strong,

Every friendship has a purpose.

Don’t fall in love.

The other birds joined in: Don’t fall in love, they all sang in unison.

Retain your freedom, the west wind tells Zara as it blows sweeping the forest leaves into diagonal circles. Move into the whirlwind. Don’t be trapped.

They tell her to look at the trees who never mourn the loss of their dead leaves. They just let them fall. “Never mourn the loss of the body, object or person, but take good care of all things while they last. Have fun, Zaru, but never possess whateva you consider your own,” said the west wind.

Become free, like the koel. Like the birds, the trees, the leaves, the horizon and the sky. Like the west wind. The birds sing beautifully because they are free. Like the original river.

This book is a letter from a dad to a daughter. An ode to her liberation, her freedom, the wind in her hair, the salt in the air, the gleam in her eyes. A beautiful philosophical tribute, which is not an escape, but a miracle waiting to happen, like magic.

Perhaps, one day, she too would write after her journeys through the earth and the sky and the forest. A letter to her dad.