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 . . . maaaa . . . 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.
‘Who are you?’ Zara asked her image.
‘Who are you?’ the image asked her back.
‘Who am I?’ asked Zara, peering deep within into her own self and then deep outside at her image in the pool.
Ripples went out in circles on the pool’s surface and then sprang up in a fountain from its centre, spraying droplets on Zara’s face, drenching her all over in the midday sun, as a sing-song voice rose from deep within the bowels of the pool. ‘I am Who,’ came the voice.
And then, followed a sweet song, ‘Jo tu hai, so main hoon; jo main hoon, so tu hai!’ (What you are, so am I; what I am, so are you!)
‘Come again’, Zara said to herself, stare frozen, ears erect, those magical, comforting words, incomprehensible.
‘Have faith in yourself, Zara,’ said the voice from within the pool. ‘No one here is bigger than you, nor is anyone smaller than you are. Not the ant, not the housefly, not the butterfly, not the dragonfly, not the grasshopper, not the frog, not the monitor lizard, and, least of all, not the elephant. Come look again, little Zara, neither is there any joy for you around this place nor is there any sorrow . . . what you are, little Zara, so I am; what I am, so you are.’
And then, all fell silent.
Dazed, Zara took a while to regain her bearings before she turned to her surroundings again. The elephant, the lizard, the grasshopper, the dragonfly, the butterfly, the housefly, and the ant were all gone.
Silent, Zara raised her ears. The frog croaked once more, then, hopped out of the pool. And hop, hop, hop it went, towards the steps on the eastern bank.
It must have been a long crawl for Zara from the time her bubble burst open till her rendezvous with her self by the pool. Shrugging off her magic encounter, Zara pulled herself up. And as the frog hopped out of the pool and went off towards the steps, she turned, one faltering step at a time, in the footsteps of the frog.
Hop, hop, hop, the frog jumped, pausing at every hop, letting out a croak; its tongue darting out time and again, much like the lizard earlier, snacking on every flying worm that came its way, gluttony bloating its stomach.
Zara giggled at its sight, imitated the hop, and fell. Then, she collected herself, toddling in unbalanced gait on her tender legs over the rocks and pebbles on the river bed.