Zara's Witness

by Shubhrangshu Roy

  (And with that, the funnel formed by the whirlwind began to disintegrate, refracting into the colours of the rainbow.)

  That really is the Game

  And in this Game, IOU Nothing

  Therefore, there is no this Winner and that Loser

  This Game is Tied and

  That Tie is Love All.

  ‘That, Zaru, is the essence of life,’ the west wind whispered as Zara began to regain control of herself.

  Level IV

  THE SONG OF CREATION

  REVISITED

  CHAPTER 1

  It was late afternoon in early autumn. The Libra sun shone upon the ageless river, forming golden ripples over its dark and expansive surface.

  On its western bank, rose the city of Zara’s imagination, a day’s sail away from where the river merged languidly with the south sea.

  Nine broad steps in alternating pink and black fluorescent glass ascended from the river to a promenade paved with polished black granite, at the far end of which stood a mile-wide low-rise pink glass and steel building, fronted by a row of shop windows, its facade embellished with slabs of hand-hewn soft pink sandstone sculptures. A blue neon sign scrawled across the top of the facade read: ‘Ah!nandita Hills’.

  Two tall tin soldiers, named Thunder and Bolt, in peacock blue jackets—braided in gold—and shiny green gendarmerie hats pinned with gem-studded butterfly insignia, stood guard at the main entrance to the Ah!nandita Hills, leading to a long and narrow mirrored discotheque, atop which was scrawled a graffiti: ‘Greater the challenge, greater the excitement!’

  At the far right of the promenade, stood a giant banyan in isolated splendour, in the radiance of its illuminating green leaves and translucent hanging roots. A solitary green bird with red eyes sat staring at a lonely blue bird, perched a short distance away, eyeing bright red figs among the leaves. Members of the Rivah!bank Philharmonic Orchestra—instruments in hand, in panama hats, off-white trousers, white shirts and fawn jackets with matching bow ties and gold lapel pins designed as tittiri birds, led by the redoubtable Zubin Em—milled around two ballerinas, one in a white frock and the other in black, serenading each other below the tree to the accompaniment of the didgeridoo, blown by a short dark man in a red loin cloth and curly white hair, practising for the evening’s rendition of the Swan Lake.

  The fragrance of a thousand different flowers enveloped the air. Two pretty damsels in floral-print tunics sat on the promenade in front of a florist, embroidering elaborate finery on spreads of handwoven pashmina.

  Not far away, the wicked Kathakali dancer in silk robe and tall golden crown sat on a wooden bench in front of a beauty parlour, busy painting his face green, next to the hollow man, a mustachioed magician, face painted white, rolling a turban over his head.

  At the opposite end from the banyan to the extreme left, a matron, in a neon-green Lacoste tee and canary-yellow Crocs, stood at the head of five hundred animated acrobats from Cirque du Soleil in canary-yellow Lacoste tees and neon-green Crocs. Below, a banner of the musical Wicked rolled down the building’s glass facade.

  A patisserie, a tea shop, a bookstore, an art gallery, a fashion studio, a perfumery, and a jeweller’s nest sat tidily, one after another, alongside the florist and the beauty parlour.

  A slender skyscraper, clad in polished black granite and topped by a pyramid of white Italian marble piercing the soft blue sky, fused with the mirrored discotheque, stood behind the Ah!nandita Hills. Neat white alphabets etched on the river face of the highrise read: ‘Moonshine Mount’.

  The city of nine gates, abounding in clean water and fresh air, spread out behind the skyscraper in a succession of seven semi-circular grids of singlestoreyed flat-roofed row houses, alternately painted lime white and indigo blue, interspersed with tanks and gardens, and framed at its extreme far end by the curved red oxbow lake of lust and wrath, beyond which, expanding into the vast and endless horizon, lay the dark and foreboding shanty town, without an exit, blanketed by toxic air, and drowning in muck and sewage.

  The city of a million dreams worked by day and revelled by night, housing all the planet’s beautiful souls, each a super hero—masterchefs, jewellers, fashion designers, models, sportsmen, sculptors, artists, singers, musicians, actors, playwrights, writers, filmmakers, architects, inventors, scientists, philosophers, and, above all, the poets—grounded in prosperity, hovering around in wheel-less self-driving electric cars and drones, breathing unpolluted, rarefied air, and feeding off each other in hope and joy, fame and fortune, celebration and euphoria, bereft of dejection and despair, fear and sorrow, and squalor and agony that marred the lives of the calculating creatures, toiling in filth and grime of their minds’ ghetto across the red oxbow lake.

  And so, the unvanquished city, unrivalled in sports, performing arts, music, paintings, architecture, literature, science and philosophy, celebrated the wisdom of its inhabitants, boasting a glorious past, celebrating its marvellous present, and hallucinating on a still brighter future.

  The city, truly, was Zara’s destination. To reach it, she had set out from the riverside at the foot of the mountains on elephant back many, many moons ago.

  ***

  Upriver, at some distance from Ah!nandita Hills, a giant arc of a rainbow descended into the river, piercing through the woolly clouds kissing the heavens above.

  And as the sun prepared to take its last bow behind the Moonshine Mount, Zara came rolling rapidly down the rainbow—moving without feet, holding without hands, seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, crouched in a foetal position inside a zorb ball burnished chocolatey brown with a copper sheen.

  And thousands upon thousands more zorb balls came rolling down the rainbow in the wake of Zara, with her countless lookalikes crouched in a foetal position, some fair complexioned, others pink, some pale, still others brown, and the rest dark, without feet . . . without hands . . . without eyes . . . without ears.

  And Zara, now in full command of her senses, comforting in the warmth of the rainbow, heard the deep sonorous voice that had appeared inside the whirlwind, say:

  The essence of life, Zaru, is to build a relationship by renouncing one’s dignity in love.

  This I is complete in its Game

  That Game is complete in its Dignity

  This Dignity is complete in its Worthiness that is

  Innate to its Identity in the State of Nature

  This Worthiness is awakened by Excellence

  That Excellence is achieved when the Self is One with its Other

  This Oneness is the Basis of Love

  That Love is the Basis of Sharing

  This Sharing leads to Renunciation of the Self in the Other for Common Good

  That Renunciation leads to Division of this Whole, which is the Division of that Self, which is the Division of this Idea, which is the Division of that Identity, which is the Division of this Image, which is the Division of that Excellence, which is the Division of this Love with the Other.

  This Division, in Reality, amounts to Nothing

  That Division, in Virtual Reality, amounts to Division of Everything that makes for Innate Dignity

  This Sharing leads to Splitting the Whole in Two, which then, is no longer One, even when imparted with exactly the same Attributes in Equal Measure That Splitting leads to Creation

  This Creation leads to Preservation

  That Preservation leads to Ownership

  This Ownership between Two results from Ownership of One by the Other . . .

  And that, Zara, is the essence of Love.

  And even as she heard that voice riding the rainbow, Zara bored a wormhole inside her zorb ball to emerge in the open with a thousand eyes, a thousand feet and a thousand arms growing out of a single torso like tendrils emerging out of the creeper’s stalk, wrapping herself around the orb at a space of ten fingers.

  And Zara’s several lookalikes riding the rainbow, some with seven faces, others with twelve hands, and still others with six fee
t, too, bored wormholes to emerge in the open and wrap themselves around their respective orbs ten fingers apart.

  Before long, the thousands upon thousands of zorbs, led by Zara’s, descended into the river, one after another, one upon the other, floating in a multitude of soapy bubbles towards the embankment where the nine broad steps rose to the promenade.

  And in that twilight moment, the rainbow split into laser beams in shades of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Each beam piercing a zorb, one at a time, inverting them inside out into transparent tubes hollowed in the centre on which floated Zara and her countless cousins in human forms. Among them, in pairs, came Lee.Na and Bey. Ree, Bob.Ess and Dow.Raa, and in singles, came Boo. Bee and Vik.Tor and Bun.Too and Baa.Boo and Kno. Dee and Baa.Goo and Baa.Bai and Gop.Poo and Sau. Mow and Gar.Gee and Pee.Yush and Prat.Yush and Dee.Yaa and Ree.Kaa and Tan.May and Pee.Koo, along with a billion other lookalikes.

  And the river turned into a gigantic water park, rising and falling in one giant gentle tide after another. And the seven colours of the rainbow transformed into colourful waterslides, big and small, rising up and falling into the river in twists and turns and hairpin bends and upside down as adrenaline-pumping roller coasters on which Zara and her cheerfully noisy lookalikes frolicked to the music of the Rivah!bank Orchestra, played to the wave of the wand of Zubin Em in off-white trousers and fawn jacket, accompanied with the didgeridoo, played by the short dark man with curly white hair in red loin cloth, on the steps leading to the promenade where the two ballerinas in black and white frocks circled each other in a death dance centred on the wicked Kathakali dancer, while the flower girls in pashmina shawls showered a thousand petals on them and the hollow man stood behind, silently juggling his white turbaned head with mascara-lined eyes and red smiling lips in thin air, tossing it between this hand and that. And the tall tin soldiers marched in goose-steps from here to there and there to here, while the five hundred animated acrobats led by the matron from the Cirque trooped in, vaulting and somersaulting all over the promenade, synchronising every step with the band’s symphony, in harmony with a row of dancing fountains, under the glare of arc lights and laser beams that turned the riverbank into an extravagant open-air theatre under a star-spangled sky.

  CHAPTER 2

  As the full moon rose atop the Moonshine Mount in the ecstasy of the light-and-sound spectacle on the promenade, Zara paddled her tube towards the nine steps, upon which was rolled out a long red carpet all the way up to the promenade and beyond the entrance of the long-mirrored disco guarded by the two tin soldiers. And following her, Zara’s countless cousins, too, paddled their tubes towards the riverbank.

  There, alighting on the first step with her companions chanting, ‘Hu va, hu va, hu va!’ in rapturous applause of the performers, Zara, twenty-four years old and five feet seven inches tall, stood resplendent in an off-white Versace cashmere tunic, a pair of orange Christian Louboutin stilettos with broad wrap-around butterfly ankle ties, matching ochre Hermes scarf and belt with a frog buckle with topaz eyes set in rose gold, an emerald- and ruby-studded lizard broach enamelled green by Van Cleef & Arpels, and a diamond-studded elephant bracelet by Cartier with a matching ring set in white gold. A small red dot, the size of a drop of blood, sat prettily between her eyebrows.

  ‘Where did I come from?’ Zara asked.

  ‘You come from yourself, Zara,’ said the river in celebration.

  ‘But how did I come here?’ Zara wondered aloud, climbing to the step above.

  ‘You came here riding time, Zara. Time, indeed, is your father,’ said the river.

  ‘Time? Fathah? And how did I come here riding time?’ Zara asked, climbing one more step.

  ‘Your desire of you rode time here,’ said the river.

  ‘And how did that happen?’ asked Zara, climbing yet another step.

  ‘Remember those words inside the whirlwind when you cried out that you had become nothing?’ the river asked.

  Zara was silent. She had no recollection of that moment.

  ‘Those words were your desire to become something that expanded in time,’ the river said as Zara climbed up one more step.

  ‘Your desire illumined your senses with the colours of the rainbow, Zara, so that you could reach out to your higher self within, just as the tendrils of the plant reach out for sunlight. And that light generated heat. And that heat created the germ of life in you that we call the seed. And that seed is what you ceded of yourself within you, splitting you into two. And the seed that you spilt from you, split into two—one black and one white. And each of those two seeds split thrice over into a pair of seeds each—three pairs black and three pairs white. And each of those twelve seeds split into two, either black or white. And each of those black or white seeds split into two, either black or white. And each of those seeds split into two pairs of seven seeds each, either black or white. And each of those seven seeds split into two, either black or white. And each of those black or white seeds split into two, either black or white. And each of those seeds further split into two, either black or white, and each of those seeds split into two, either black or white, whereupon each of those seeds split into fifteen seeds, either black or white. And each of those black or white seeds split into two, either black or white. And one of those seeds that split from you, Zara, has now become you in a multitude of your likeness that has come along with you riding the rainbow to my bank.’

  ‘That’s also how one became many, Zara,’ continued the river.

  ‘What then, is time?’ Zara asked, rising yet one more step.

  ‘Time is the distance you covered for the idea of you to become you and, therefore, turn full circle,’ said the river.

  ‘And how does one come full circle?’ Zara asked, rising up to the seventh step.

  ‘Time rides light that reflects itself to come full circle,’ said the river, adding, ‘just like the sun reflected in the pool on my dry bed many, many moons ago, when you came crashing out of your bubble on the wedge on the river bed between the Moonshine Mount and the Chariot Ridge, Zara.’

  ‘And how does light travel?’ Zara asked on the penultimate step before stepping on the promenade.

  ‘Light travels from absolute darkness to bright light to big dazzle, Zara, before reducing to dim light and returning to absolute darkness. The period from complete darkness to big dazzle makes one half of the journey, and the period from big dazzle to complete darkness makes the other half. And each of those halves split thrice over, in a pair of two equal measures, each pair reflecting a mood or season—three pairs dark and gloomy, three bright and sunny. And each of those seasons split into two halves, each called a month. And each of those months split into two, each called a fortnight. And each of those fortnights split into two, each called a week. And each of those weeks split into seven, each in several shades of the sun. And each of those seven split into two, one dark and one bright, called night and day. And each of those days and nights split into two halves of six moods, each defined as an hour. And each of those hours split into two halves, each a period in time. And each period split into two, each a moment, whereupon each moment split into fifteen equal parts, each a second. And each second split into two parts, each a flutter. And that flutter is the time you took, Zara, to ride the whirlwind to my bank from the edge of the forest,’ the river said, smiling at Zara.

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

  ‘That light rests in your eyes, Zara, and it appears and disappears with every flutter of your eyelid.’

  And as the river said so, the thousands upon thousands of the zorbs-turned-tubes on which Zara and her lookalikes came, first rolling down the rainbow and then floating down the river, rose to the sky as lamps, and the sky lit up in a burst of fireworks above the Moonshine Mount under the full moon night as Zara’s countless lookalikes climbed the steps in her footsteps.

  And the Rivah!bank Orchestra reached a crescendo.<
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  And Zara, calm personified, asked, ‘And what moves the eyelids?’

  ‘Warmth moves your eyelids,’ said the river.

  ‘And what gives warmth?’ Zara asked.

  ‘It’s heat that provides warmth,’ said the river.

  ‘And what gives heat?’ Zara asked.

  ‘Food generates heat, Zara,’ said the river.

  ‘Go, walk across the promenade to the entrance of the Ah!nandita Hills, where challenge turns into excitement,’ the river exhorted. ‘There, inside the mirrored disco, you will meet the hollow man, who sees the unseen, hears the unheard, tastes the untasted, thinks the unthought, and knows the unknown. He, alone, will lead you through nine sliding doors, to a secret chamber deep inside the corridor called ‘Mamaroy’s Kitchen’, painted in the subtlest shades of the lotus. There, you will attain the fulfilment of your desire.’

  The river continued, ‘Whatever your spirit has longed for all these years is to be found within that small space that is as great as the infinite space beyond. For there, upon a giant oven, dwell the sun and the moon, the lightning and the stars, the fire and the air, and the water. There is no old age, no decay, no withering away, no hunger, no thirst. There, you can feast your senses to delight your eyes, playing music to your ears, watering your mouth, rejuvenating your mind, and feeding your soul to warm your body to move on, Zara,’ said the river.

  Zara didn’t take long to walk the red carpet to the entrance of the Ah!nandita Hills, where she came face-to-face with the two tin soldiers—Thunder and Bolt—guarding the entrance to the disco.

  ‘Access control?’ she asked, smiling.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the soldiers, straight-faced, without blinking.