A quirky but fascinating novel which, presented as a letter from a father to his daughter, covers serious philosophical and existential issues through parables and Vedantic reflections.
— Dr Karan Singh
Chairman of the Auroville Foundation,
politician, philanthropist, and poet
***
A brilliant and original novel by Shubhrangshu Roy, Zara’s Witness uses fantasy, myth, science, music, poetry, and stream of consciousness to communicate deep insights on the nature of inner reality. Zara begins her journey up in the mountains and by the river. She wonders who she is, and she is taught by creatures of the forest—a frog, a lizard, an elephant, a hyena, and a turtle—the elements, and the river. She confronts questions of being and identity and learns that willing renunciation is the essence of bliss. The book is like a prose-poem that asks to be read and re-read, while nudging the reader to mystical truths.
— Dr Subhash Kak
Author, Vedic scholar, professor, and
on the Indian prime minister's advisory council on
science, technology, and innovation
Hay House Publishers (India) Pvt. Ltd.
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Copyright © 2019 Shubhrangshu Roy
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him. They have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use – other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews – without prior written permission of the publisher.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself – which is your constitutional right – the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
ISBN 978- 93-86832-89-4
ISBN 978-93-86832-90-0 (e-book)
Printed and bound at
Rajkamal Electric Press, Sonipat, Haryana (India)
To the one within
CONTENTS
Introduction
Level I
The Song of Creation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Level II
The Illusion of Identity
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Level III
The Essence of Being
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Level IV
The Song of Creation Revisited
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Level V
The End of Story: The Game Begins
Nothing Stirs!
Appendices
The Essence of This and That
This Space Is Time
End Note
INTRODUCTION
Dear Zara,
This book is for you, but it’s not your story.
It is more of a coming-of-age manual for you as you step into your teens today.
Zara’s Witness is a philosophical fantasy capturing the journey of a girl—from infancy to adulthood—in search of an answer to that eternal human question: who am I? That search meanders along the course of a river to its final destination in the sky where both the river and the human spirit merge at the end of the journey to discover the one eternal truth revealed to mankind since time immemorial—universal love.
The book has been scripted since you were one year old and is based on conversations with one of India’s least publicised masters of a spiritual cult—that has some of India’s wealthiest citizens among its select followers—at the foot of the Himalayas. In Zara’s Witness, the pupil becomes the infant girl, Zara, journeying to her destination along the course of the Ganges. The Master becomes the river.
The book combines the wisdom of the spiritual master with over 5,000 years of Vedic expositions in a series of hallucinatory journeys that deliver the core of Indian philosophy in a little over 35,000 words of adventure-driven drama in primordial, contemporary, and futuristic settings.
Reader: Zara’s Witness is primarily aimed at you, the young-adult reader, to introduce you to Indian spiritual wisdom in an age that is widely believed will usher in the return to Indic knowledge traditions for balanced global development. At yet another level, it is also aimed to arouse the aesthete in you so that you may grow up to be well-versed in the best universal values and appreciate the finer nuances of life.
Technique: According to noted Indologist Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, the conversation is the centrepiece of the book, for which, the narration is merely a frame. The book deploys several tools used in other crafts and science such as literature, poetry, theatre, classical Indian and Western music, cinema, and quantum computing to narrate Zara’s inner exploration.
It uses jump cuts, techniques of landscape painting, elements of magic realism, jungle adventure, theatrical and musical extravaganza, and culinary craft to tell the story. It also draws on the technique of alaap* in classical Indian music and the concept of arias and libretto in classical Western opera, in order to reach crescendo in rapid bursts, before culminating in rapture.
Adapting influences from classical Indian texts, the first three sections of the book—Level I through Level III—serve as the purva paksha*, narrating what the masters have said and say to this day. The last two sections—Level IV and Level V—draw on the deeper mysteries of the Universe expounded in the age-old texts to leap forward and illustrate a robust, contemporary philosophy. It is here that shlokas from the English renditions of the Upanishads by Indic scholars, S Radhakrishnan and Eknath Easwaran, have been woven into the narrative in Zara’s final conversations with her higher self before she ascends to the sky to confront the one and only reality of her being—I am who thou art, thou art who I am—rendered eloquently in our mystic traditions as Aham Brahmasmi, Tat Tvam Asi.
A final section, an after-conversation, is a copyright blueprint of the ‘equation for everything in the Universe’ articulated as ‘the essence of this and that’. You will find this equation interspersed throughout the narrative. The concept of
time and space, as measured by ancient seers, is elaborated at the end of the book. It has been used to map age and distances in the story.
Hope you enjoy reading this book in your journey through life.
Happy Birthday!
Dad
*Alaap is the improvised section of a raga, forming a prologue to the formal expression.
*Purva paksha is a tradition in dharma discourse which involves building a deep familiarity with the opponent’s point of view before criticising it.
Level I
THE SONG OF CREATION
CHAPTER 1
Zara woke up to the first flush of light, peering out of the giant plasma bubble, as she lay damp, cradled in the wedge between the rock and the nine rock steps to the river on its eastern flank. It was early autumn. The night sky was giving way to the first ochre rays of the sun over the eastern horizon from behind the Peacock Ridge.
The western sky was still dark as the moon prepared to take its last bow behind the Moonshine Mount—so called because of the massive crest of snow atop a giant black granite that glowed in the radiance of the full moon, its feet skirted by the pink sandstone Ah!nandita Hills, kissed by nine similar steps climbing the far bank of the river.
The barren rock was too steep and too foreboding for humans to set foot on. Folklore had it that whoever climbed the rock and reached the snow-white peak would ride off to paradise where no human mind had ventured before.
Since time immemorial, that folklore had been a great temptation for mind adventurers and, yet, a great deterrent. So, they let the mountain be. For no one dare tread its uncharted path for fear of what might lie ahead.
It had been a different story with the mountain to the east, however, that stood a fair distance from the riverbank. Everybody came to the river from far beyond the Peacock Ridge—that glistened in the dazzle of massive gemstones that lighted up its crest by night—where the glamour of human mind revelled in the great metropolis, rolling the dice since the dawn of civilisation in hope and joy, fame and fortune, celebration and euphoria, rubbing shoulders with dejection and despair, fear and sorrow, and squalor and agony.
And so, it was from beyond the Peacock Ridge that countless souls found their way to the river, down the ages, and across age groups, in search of an answer to that eternal existential question in the mind of every living and in the memory of every dead who had left their calling card behind. And that question repeated itself in three simple words:
Who . . . am . . . I?
And with the eternal flow of that question, the river, too, flowed forever as the great divide between the dazzle of the body (as represented by the Peacock Ridge) and the barrenness of the soul (as represented by the Moonshine Mount).
It had been one long journey for Zara till she had got stuck on the wedge. No one quite knew exactly when she came to be perched here, in the cover of dark, to be eventually delivered.
And now, as the orange ball of fire rose to the east above the ridge, Zara lay warming in her bubble, looking up at the mellow early morning sky in wonderment. It had only been a while since she had let out a shrill cry of panic as the long dark shadow of fear crossed her face at the first wink of the light. Soon, however, that frown was replaced by a bewildered smile at the pleasant glow of dawn.
From where she lay, head south, Zara turned her face to the left, catching the flight of an unending flock of tittiri birds, sending ripples of their shadows across the river face below the Ah!nandita Hills. Zara laughed, turned skywards, looked west again, and laughed louder; she looked straight up to the sky, turned right to the sun in the eastern sky, and laughed still louder as the wind picked up her mirth and flew off towards the flight path of the tittiris heading north, the fading ripples of her laughter echoed across the sky. And those ripples mingled with the clang of a thousand bells that now rent the sky.
And Zara’s mind raced back to where she belonged.
Zara’s story was scripted first at the bottom of the glacier, at the head of the river, high up in the mountains, where, across a desolate landscape lay countless plasma bubbles, one heaped upon the other, one beside the other, packed by the zillions in unglued bonding, in the fearful darkness before dawn. Zara, a thousand times smaller than a speck of dust, lay there among a multitude of her likeness, one of many, waiting in silent stillness. Waiting and waiting and waiting.
And then, darkness crept upon darkness in slow motion, in warm embrace, in the frozen wilderness, and high up there in the valley, as emotion gave way to motion, and motion gave way to warmth, and warmth gave way to speed, and speed gave way to heat, and heat gave way to friction, and friction cracked the glacier.
That’s when the tongue of the glacier rolled over, licking its own bruises from the tension of its heat, melting. Melting drop by drop in a watery trickle; and so, the bubbles drifted from their moorings and slipped out . . . one by one. Growing, growing, and growing. First, a hundred thousand times larger to the size of a tip of the human hair, and then five times as big. Speeding, riding the torrent, one colliding against another, choking each other of breath, drowning one too many, ripping each other open . . .
. . . before stillness regained control once more.
Zara’s existential race had begun, among the multitude of her likeness. One of many, she alone would survive to see daybreak by the riverbank, having grown to the size of a mustard seed, round and perfect, a millimetre across.
CHAPTER 2
Slowly, morning gave way to noon, and noon to sundown. And the tittiris headed back to the nest as a thousand bells rose to rent the air in unison to the accompaniment of the heart-tugging blows of a thousand conch shells.
And the river came alive at dusk as a thousand upon thousands of lamps in small leaf cups floated downstream past the bubble, still perched atop the wedge into the distance, where the cows lowed, from where they ascended heavenwards.
Zara lay still. Still bewildered. Watching the day go by. Thinking deep. Taking in her surroundings in silent amusement. Till the dark night sky lit up to the glitter of the Peacock Ridge to the east and the dazzle of the snow-crested granite beyond the Ah!nandita Hills to the west.
Soon, the play of light and sound reached a crescendo, as a thousand giant glow-worms sprang up to dance on the promenade leading from the eastern steps. And one by one, one after another, one and together, they danced in night-time revelry in a psychedelic display of merriment by the river. Zara watched, watched, and watched.
And the night sky in the distance beyond the ridge glowed a thousand miles away in the neon-lit revelry of the metropolis trapped in a whirl of illusion and delusion, euphoric, celebrating hope and joy, fame and fortune, till the wee hours, before daylight ushered in dark dejection and despair in fear and sorrow of the squalor and agony of life.
Life in the metro lived by night as dozens of damsels in skintight leggings and hot pants with tank tops and off-shoulders gyrated on the floor of the neighbourhood disc—bare shoulder to bare shoulder, bum to bum, to the beat of synthetic music—cheered by the shrill whistles of countless leering bystanders, far, far away from where Zara was stationed this very moment, her life still hanging on the wedge.
And night gave way to dawn, and dawn to day, and day to dusk in an endless cycle; life went on from season to season. And Zara grew, first to the size of a grain of rice, to a barleycorn, to a thumb, a palm, a foot, and, finally, an arm’s length.
And the torrential monsoon rains gave way to pleasant autumn that gave way to winter chill, and winter chill to severe cold, and severe cold to refreshing spring, and spring to scorching summer, when, suddenly, one hot morning, unpredicted by the tittiris on the western bank, the bubble ruptured, and Zara came crashing on the dry river bed strewn with rocks and pebbles.
It had been 24,192,000 seconds to the dot since she had slipped out of the glacier’s tongue, 2,520 miles up north.
Jolted out of her reverie, Zara panicked and let out a primordial cry.
‘Whoaaaaa . . . maa
aa . . . eeeee?’ Zara broke her silence, aloud, crawling, face up to the midday sun.
‘Whoaaaaa . . . maaaaiii?’ she cried aloud once more.
‘Whoo . . . am . . . aaaii?’ the wind answered as Zara’s heart-rending existential cry went knocking to and fro between the Moonshine Mount and the Peacock Ridge. And the tittiri birds, which had been busy with their morning chores in the shade of the giant banyan at the foot of the Ah!nandita Hills, sprang up in a flutter, their diligence disrupted, before silence regained its creep once more.
Zara turned around towards the eastern steps on the bank.
Crawling, tumbling, creeping, and growing, when she chanced upon a monitor lizard peering from between the rocks, in silent meditation, in a handsome slant, erect from shoulder upwards, gauging the sky before its tongue darted out to chase the dragonfly hovering above; at a short distance, in a pool of still water on the dry river bed, a frog croaked aloud; a train of busy ants crawled the bed on its way to the bank. Zara looked on.
A common housefly that had all along been busy at a nearby rot suddenly appeared on the scene and squatted prettily on the tip of her nose. Zara peered down the ridge of her nose for an eye-to-eye with the fly, her bright brown pupils glaring, as a pair of huge red bulbous protrusions stared back at Zara, sending ripples down her spine.
A couple of grasshoppers had parked themselves on the steps by now, even as a giant butterfly swooped down the bank. Zara looked up in awe. The frog croaked aloud, again, beckoning Zara to the pool. Distracted, Zara turned to her right and crawled. Turning over the rocks and pebbles that lay strewn between her and the pool. It was a while before Zara made her way to the watery patch.
Right across the pool, from where she crept, Zara looked up to a large brown pillar rising to the sky, and then another, and another two behind. A long, fat rope came hanging down from above, swaying left to right, right to left, as another rope swayed behind the rear two pillars. It was the elephant.
Her world was as much new to Zara as Zara was new to her world—the lizard, the dragonfly, the frog, the ants, the housefly, the butterfly, the grasshoppers, the elephant, and . . . Zara. Zara stared at the pool. Her mirror image from inside its glazed surface stared back at Zara. And so, Zara stared at Zara inside the pool, the overhead sun, now a tiny ball in reflection.
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