An exploration of existence

In Sanskrit, ‘Asariri’ is a voice that comes without a ‘sarira’ (body), usually from the sky. In the Tamil tradition, it stands for a disembodied voice with access to an ancient pool of mystic and infinite wisdom. In Arabic, it refers to ‘slave of god’. Well, in the book under review, our protagonist Nisha meets Asariri, the eponymous hero of this wonderful discourse on life and death, happiness and suffering, effort and destiny on a hilltop covered in daisies and irises in the Himalayas. Nisha is a young doctor who is distraught as she has lost her husband and father within a span of two years. Although quite sceptical about the ‘voice’ which sounded just like that of her father, she soon befriends him and lets him guide in her journey of self-realisation and self-fulfilment.

As a storyline, it is fairly plain and simple. After her father’s death, the family comprising her booa (father’s sister) and her two young school-going children Neil and Sarah return to their home, while she rejoins the small hospital attached to a training academy in the Queen of Hills where her children attend the school chapel and recite hymns with much the same reverence as they have for the Upanishadic verses, Sikh scriptures, and the Indic folklore which is ingrained into them in their bedtime story sessions with their booa. The sublime voice is the same across languages and beliefs and time zones.

Nisha is an outdoors person, and together with her kids, she undertakes a trek to the snowcapped mountains beyond Har-ki-Doon with a clear view of Swargarohini – the stairway to heaven which as per legend could be ascended only by Yudhishthira and a stray dog he had befriended along the way, even as Draupadi and all the four brothers – Bhim, Arjuna, Nakul, and Sahdev — dropped along the way, one by one. Two years later, she volunteers to work in the tsunami-ravaged Karaikal in the Union territory of Puducherry where she comes across an unlikely hero, the revenue officer, Nagaraju, who continues the relief work even as everyone in his immediate family is lost to the ‘monster of the ocean’ and his own humble dwellings are completely grounded.

There are so many questions in this two-year transformative journey of Nisha’s life. The first of these is about the language of silence:

‘You don’t need to talk/I comprehend silence. Sit in silence, and you will become fluent too/Embrace the calm, inhale the peace/Let tranquillity talk to you!’

Then Nisha gets a bit of advice on parenting too, which is valid for all the helicopter parents across the world.

‘A child’s presence in your life is not to allow you to relive your own;/minus the mistakes you have made in the past./Also/Your child is not in your life to provide you with an alternative path/to live out the dreams you could not attain in your own’

And again: ‘Understand/their point of view. See their perspective, but accept when they don’t see yours’.

Over the next few weeks, Nisha and Asariri are in conversation over a range of topics – some of them on anger and ego sound almost Upanishadic in their tone and tenor. As, for example, their discussion on ego and anger,

‘Anger and ego are partners in crime/once ego goes, anger goes away too./

Remember/that if you do not manage your anger, it will engulf and submerge you;/that it vitiates the atmosphere and takes away all that is ugly and harms your well-being/that it is the herald of the exit of tranquillity and peace of mind/that it leaves a trail of misery – for the other, and for you!’

In the pristine environs of Har ki Doon, Asariri asks Nisha:

‘What do you really want from life?/What is it that you aspire for? What is your ultimate desire?’

And to Nisha’s response that she wanted success, contentment, peace, serenity and fulfilment, Asariri tells her that these cannot be granted by anyone, other than herself, and that he could only ‘help her understand her own wish list.’

Nisha then quizzes him on the difference between karma and kismet, and she gets an answer that is best explained in the famous verse of the Bhagwad Geeta that an individual’s right, as well as a duty, is limited only to action, and not to the expectations of fruit thereof. In Asariri’s voice, the way Karma and Kismet pan out is something like this:

‘You see, karma and kismet/are fundamental to serenity/your karma is what you do/your kismet is what you get/The karma you do defines your kismet/since no one can take your kismet away/what is yours will come to you, and inevitably indeed./that erudition alone brings with it an element of serenity’.

Finally, it is at the site of the tsunami when death and destruction and reconstruction are going hand in hand, Asariri delivers his final pearls of wisdom which bring a new life, cheer and spring to Nisha’s life. To the distraught Nisha, much like the despondent Arjuna in the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Asariri explains the fundamentals of metaphysics in a contemporary idiom:

‘Come... come! you must accept probabilities,/in the post-Einstein/era of quantum physics/and Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty/Even all you Hom sapiens/Recognise that/there is an unknown, unexplained realm of life/You too are now aware/it is possible -/for solid matter to actually dissolve/into ‘waves of probability’!’

Welcome to the world of Asariri!

Disclosure: The book is also available in an audio format in which the author speaks for Nisha, and your columnist lends his voice to Asariri!

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature.