He was awakened from the immediate sleep by a
blazing ray of light entering his torn up tent.
“Aaahh” he sighed, pressing his cold hands
heavily against his under arms.
Navid had spent almost the entire night
trying to find out that hole. His body was trembling down to his soul because
of the chilly wind that had ported the indescribable smell of the snow to his
tent throughout the night. Knowing now that the sun was up, he tried to come
out of his sleeping bag but failed. He felt like a toddler trying to wrestle
his way out of his stroller. After a bit of a struggle he managed to drag his
body out just like a larva coming out of its shell.
He put on his knitted woolen cap that covered
his ears, slid his feet into his snow-boots and came out of the tent.
The sun was entering the valley, looking like
a pale orange disc. Carrying an artist within-- it was sculpturing the faces of
the mountains, the valley, the snow-laden trees and the frozen lake. A museum
of heaven that was hidden under the shade of night was now coming to life.
04th Feb 1987.
It was a different day from the rest of his
life. He had always thought that the sun had only one purpose and that is to
produce a day.
But today he witnessed a sun that not only
produced a day but also warmed up his body, a sun that would now melt the snow
to turn it into water and give way to plantation to grow on the mountain, the
plantation that would drop down the lake to provide nutrition to the fish, the
fish that would flow down the stream to bring food to the people.
He had reached the lake at about nightfall
and had only the time to set up his tent and eat the afternoon leftovers. He had
to trek for almost 05 hours from Desan valley to reach the Izmis Lake located in
the former NWFP now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The only stop he
had made was at Kalam Banda where he had eaten lunch and refilled his water
bottles.
Sitting besides the opening of his tent he
reached his hand into the tent and picked up a can of preserved beans. His
hands were still numb because of the cold and even after applying full force he
could not remove the lid.
Giving up on food he stood up and started to
hike down towards the lake as he had pegged his tent at a height. His boots
were not helping him much as the melting snow had started to give way. Not
knowing exactly where the bank of the lake would be he decided to set himself
on the edge of a bowl shaped rock.
He could hear the water flowing under the
thick ice sheet that engulfed the lake. Apart from this the whole atmosphere was
calm and windless.
“Couldn’t it be the same at night” he murmured,
looking towards the sky with a complaining face.
And now there was this wait. Waiting is
itself a hard thing to fight with and when it is combined with uncertainty it
becomes the impossible. Looking at the ticking arms and the turning seconds on
our wrist watches we think we have conquered time but we forget that it is the
time that is keeping us prisoners. There are three stages of time past present
and the future. We might succeed to understand time in its present form which
may allow us to travel in time but still how can we say that we are in the past
or future. A moment can be described as past and a year can be described as
present. Time is the energy of space which is expanding every single moment
with the expansion of the universe. We can conquer time only if we succeed to
control the expansion of this universe and turn it to a contraction that will
reverse the course of universe, a course that has been designed by the Almighty.
If we happen to reverse the course of universe the time energy will die down
marking the end of times. Miracles do have their place in the time space
quantum as the imbalance can only be neutralized by the Creator of the
universe.
In order to pass time he started to make snowballs and threw them towards the lake. There were a few that disintegrated on impact and a few that retained their shape but in both the cases the lake accepted them the way they decided to be.
“Couldn’t the world accept everyone just like these snowballs, everyone having its own presence but everyone identical at the same” he thought.
His thought was distracted by the sudden sound of movement in the snow.
He looked back and saw a tall white-beard man walking towards him. He was wearing a rusty leather cloak that was tied around the waist with a black ribbon. He was covered well by the cloak but Navid could still make out his naked knees flanking out of the cloak and his bare feet.
The old man approached near, muttered “Good Morning” in a low tone and walked past him even without waiting for Navid to answer. He was holding 3 sliver balls in his hand which were tied together by a metallic line winded around the balls. The man walked fearlessly to the centre of the lake, placed the balls on the ice and unwound the wire.
From a distance Navid saw the steam rise from the place where the old man had placed the balls and saw a hole created in the ice. Adding to his curiosity a Seagull appeared from nowhere and dived into the water. Moments later the bird came out holding a fish in its beak. It dived back again and repeated the same. After that the man held the seagull in his palm and mimicked something in the bird’s voice. The bird took a fish in its beak and flew away.
Witnessing this marvel bewildered him and he uttered “DARA”.
The old man heard his name being called out and he smiled in his heart. He picked up the fish & the silver balls in his both hands, waved his shoulders to correct his cloak and started to walk towards Navid.
“Zar Muhammad Dara is my complete name and you must be The Spring” he said stopping besides Navid for a brief moment and started to walk again.
Navid, who still was startled by what he had seen moments before, got up in a hurry and almost raced towards Dara. He froze in mid-stride as the hike took its toll on him immediately.
“I want to….”
He couldn’t complete the sentence and grabbed his lungs as he was getting short of breath.
“Wait please…” he waved to the old man almost dropping his head to his knees.
Dara slowed down his pace and then stopped.
“What was that with the balls and the bird? Are you the philosopher? Am I at the right place? Why did you call me spring?” he bombarded the old man with his questions.
“whooo!….stop there young man. You haste too much” Said Dara.
“You can’t just plant a seed and make it grow into a tree the same day.”
“Come on now walk with me. I have to tell you a story.” he said.
Navid got up and started to trail Dara.
‘A man entered a Roman Catholic church of Kpalimé city of Togo. The early sun-rays were trying to dim the lighting effect created by medieval candle-lit chandeliers. After saying his prayer he walked straight to the priest who was cleaning the stalls. He asked the priest if he had time to answer his question. The priest without any hesitation granted his request. The man asked that if someone can attain success with shortcuts why there is the need of bearing the hardships of life? The priest straight away asked him to bring a basket full of lemons.
The man was surprised by what priest told him but he still walked out and went to the market to buy lemons. After a while the man returned with a basket of lemons and gave it to the priest.
The priest gave the man a chili red colored berry and asked him to eat it. It was an ordinary tasteless berry and the man found nothing special in it. Once he had eaten the berry the priest asked him to eat as many lemons as he could. As soon as the man tasted the first lemon he was surprised to notice that the sour taste of the citrus was gone and it was all sweet. He sat down on the pew and ate almost all the lemons in the basket. Once he had finished eating the lemon the priest told him to leave and come back the next morning.
The next morning when the man entered the church, he was clutching his stomach and looking pale. The priest asked him what happened. The man replied that since the time he left he has been suffering with severe acidity and stomach disorder. The priest smiled and said “there is your answer”.’
‘We can use a miracle fruit to avoid the sour taste of citrus but we forget that by using this shortcut we are only deceiving ourselves, whereas we cannot at any point change the alchemy of the lemons. In our lives the miracle fruit is a shortcut, the alchemy of the citrus is the path laid down for success and the acidity caused by the lemons is the suffering of the hardships that we tried to evade.’
Navid immediately understood what the old man wanted to say and he didn’t ask any question after that. After walking along a narrow trek for a few minutes they reached at the opening of a cave. Izmis means cave in the local Kohistani dialect and it is obvious why this lake was named Izmis as the surrounding mountains are housing many of them.
The face of the cave looked like an inverted triangle. Fresh water from the melting snow was dripping down from top of the entrance and was being collected in the water pots placed under it. The sound of the drops produced a mystical rhythm and his mind was involuntarily set to a state of trance.
Déjà vu.
“I have been to this moment before”. He said
Dara gave a denying notion and asked him to enter the cave. The inner of the cave was altogether different. It looked like more of a dome rather than the triangular figure that the face presented. It was equally wider and had chalked walls of indecipherable writings. The old man was now cleaning the fish over a small stone slab placed adjacent to a stove. The dome type roof appeared to be lit up more than the rest of the cave and it seemed like the light coming out of the oil lamps had some sort of bending effect as they were placed at the corners of the cave walls. Placed on one side of the cave was an antique book shelves containing old thick books and encyclopedias on alchemy & philosophy while on the opposite side of it was a shelf containing scientific apparatuses, flasks and some labeled bottles of acids. The most unusual thing however was that he could not find any bedding or a place to sleep.
The temperature inside the cave was much more comfortable than his tent.
By the time he finished exploration Dara had cleaned the fish and was now waiting for the oil to heat up to fry the fish.
After putting the fish in the pan he turned to Navid and said “sit down on the floor please, and yes, now I am ready to answer all of your questions”.
Navid erupted out of the silence like a volcano and said “why did you call me The Spring and how did you know me”?
Keeping an eye on the fish Dara spoke “Well…unlike all the other polarities of this world, wait and wish are two entities that always happen to have the same polarity but still draw each other closer. When both of them turn positive they give birth to hope and that’s what we both witnessed today at dawn when the first sun of the spring ascended the horizon. The product (sun, hope) was there before my eyes and I was carrying a matter of wish within myself. That’s when I realized that the other substance for this reaction (wait, you) must be around. ”
“Furthermore….”
He cleared his throat and said “when we reached the cave you mentioned about being to this moment before, Déjà vu, as the French call it, seen before.”
“It’s not always essential that the perception of déjà vu in your mind had been imagined by you only. When our mind creates imaginations, it stores them in the form of energy. There are those imaginations or perceptions too, which contain a strong desire like being with someone, going to some place, getting something etc. Energies of these insights and imaginations are not only stored but are also released to the atmosphere in the form of radiations in a process called pre-Emboria. These radiations then wander the vastness of the earth carrying your desire so as to trade it with the person or place or sometimes both you wished for and to be transformed back into energy and then the remembrance.’
‘On one similar day I had imagined being beside you exactly at the same place and I am happy to know that my desire was strong enough.’
‘Why did you wish for me, when it was I who needed you rather that you who needed me’ Navid interrupted Dara.
‘I will answer that on some other day. And I called you The Spring because I name all of my disciples by the seasons. So, you are The Spring, season of Hope and Resurrection.’
“It means….” Navid burst with joy.
“Yea I take you in as my disciple” Dara cut him off to complete what he was about to say.
“And about the Balls and the bird, it was just a trick I played to inveigle you into belief that you were at the right place. Disappearance of silver balls without any source of heat was just a chemical trick; a reaction of water and potassium. The bird however was an allegory of trust, a trust that the bird and I have developed through years of companionship.”
“Oh! I almost forgot that” Dara said hearing the frying pan sizzle.
