White Lotus

WHITE LOTUS

Elohim had sensory overload. He had only been in India for fourteen hours and he longed for quiet. The noise, the unfamiliar language at every turn, the rumpus of color and the assault of the unfamiliar scents of Mumbai overwhelmed his usual calmness.

He had been called to India, of that he was certain. He had answered the call, and had booked a flight just hours after feeling an intense urge to travel there. Being a well-read man, he had come upon the notion presented by the American inventor and author Buckminster Fuller, that what you do within 24 hours of having an idea makes all the difference in the world. Elohim had put that notion to the test.

He had made his way from the airport into the city, became overwhelmed and headed for Tulsi Lake in search of more peaceful surroundings. He had stopped to watch a snake charmer. Wishing to handle snakes puzzled Elohim and he felt compelled to stop and conquer his puzzlement.

But then his eyes were drawn beyond the snake charmer into the shade filled background where he fixed his gaze on an alluring woman with tattooed hands. He was mesmerized. She sat serenely, appearing unaware of the world around her. Elohim felt deeply drawn to her and was ashamed that he could not pull his eyes away from her and maintain his usual civilized demeanor.

An unlikely conspirator, a very old woman with an aged face of a thousand deep furrows, offered him a white lotus flower and nodded in the direction of the woman, then disappeared as if she had been an apparition.

Elohim’s heart seemed to morph into a helium balloon as he approached the woman and presented the lotus, which she received with grace. Her eyes were deep pools of sun warmed molasses, exuding calm intelligence yet sensual in a way that changed Elohim’s life at the very moment she met his gaze.

Her eyes fastened on his immaculately groomed white beard and she invited him to share tea with her. Thus began a conversation that felt timeless and lasted for almost four hours.

Elohim told Amrita that he was of Russian descent and explained that Russian is an ancient language of the heart, each word filled with emotion. “As is Sanskrit” she nodded. He shared that English is a very structured language, a language of the mind, a language of inversion, yet had overtaken the world and to make one’s way in the world, it was important to know English. Although they spoke both English and French, they agreed they would prefer to speak the ancient languages, she would teach him Sanskrit and he would counsel her in his mother tongue.

He shared with her wisdom imparted by his grandmother, things he held dear, such as the remembrance of a time when knowledge was received from trees. He spoke of the dacha, the ‘garden’ in Russian and how it means “to give”, while ‘farm’ in English means “to take”. Amrita told him about sigils and what the markings on her hands meant. These symbols of protection had been with her since childhood. Her uncle had tattooed her hands at the request of her dying mother.

They called for more tea. Elohim told Amrita about ephemeralization which is a term coined to mean “doing more with less” and expressed his desire to live the rest of his life that way. They spoke of things the other had no knowledge of, both ancient and modern, and forged a deep and abiding bond that day. She touched his hand on parting and they agreed to meet again the next morning.

When Elohim and Amrita had known each other for 10 days, they began making plans for an adventure together. Amrita’s father had spent time in the Seychelles and there existed a small sliver of land in the family name. Amrita wanted to go to the Seychelles because of it’s essentially matriarchal society and she seduced Elohim into joining her with rich descriptions of islands heavily scented with cinnamon and vanilla, ylang ylang and lemongrass. She described endless blue skies and white beaches, giant tortoises and jellyfish trees, twining around his mind the possibilities of rest and peace and lush island life. Elohim was most persuaded by the promise of space and quiet to write the book he was longing to scribe.

On a gray September day, they left for the Seychelles. Anticipation kept them deep in conversation for the whole journey, spilling over with ideas and plans for a new life on La Digue.

Casting spells with words, as we all do, Amrita described her dream of building a small home of whatever the earth provided in their chosen setting and the flora and fauna that Elohim was unfamiliar with, like the coco-de-mer, the world’s heaviest seed, growing in the shape of buttocks. She regaled him with tales of pirate ships who had found the islands an ideal spot to anchor and bury their stolen bounty. Amrita entertained him with a story about a coup d'état attempt on the Seychelles in 1981 by 43 South African mercenaries masquerading as rugby players on holiday. There was a gun battle at the airport and the mercenaries escaped in a hijacked Air India plane. Her father had been on that plane.

As they both spoke English and French, they rolled from one language to the other and one topic to another, with strange ease. Though an unlikely pair to the casual observer, they had no doubt that they were meant to be and had met in a seemingly serendipitous way once again.

Introducing Elohim to the bit of land they would call home thrilled Amrita. They began their dacha by growing plants that could not be wildcrafted and Elohim told Amrita about the Russian practice of putting seeds under the tongue before sowing, so that the seed would learn how best to grow and nurture one. They swam in the turquoise ocean and she introduced him to sea creatures he had never seen. They marveled at rare black parrots.

Amrita made tinctures and essences and teas and sold her elixirs in the town, often travelling to Victoria on the main island to sell her aromatic treasures. Elohim began writing his book with a fountain pen and a deep ream of paper which he kept in a wooden cargo box he obtained from the wharf. They walked many miles of trails on many of the islands, communing with nature and discovering things that deeply delighted and connected them with the spirit of this small cluster of islands rising out of the Indian Ocean.

Amrita created weavings with local flora and decorated their home with the natural bounty of the land. Low cushions and tables were interwoven with art and flowers and incense, creating the lush backdrop for their thirst for each new day and the warm comfort of each dark night.

After three years, Amrita began to give up growing many of the original plants of their garden, as she came to believe that plants were sentient beings and it was not necessary to harvest or harm them for our healing, as all healing could be done with breath and sound. Elohim conceded but continued growing his own choice of plants because he found it therapeutic and his hands longed for the pleasure of tilth.

For seven years Elohim and Amrita lived a simple yet lush lifestyle, close to the earth, in tune with nature and each other. Then slowly, slowly they began to feel the winds of change. Languor blanketed their days yet it was tinged with restlessness.

One evening, after they had made tender love and had gone down to the sea for a cool dip, Amrita was pulled under the waves and never resurfaced.

Elohim felt his heart descend into the earth, as Amrita had descended into the waves. And yet, in unspeakable grief, as he raised his head to the bejewelled bowl of sky above, he was transfixed by a blaze from the evening star and knew it was a sign from Amrita. He became aware of the visceral sense that everything was Amrita. He came to understand that they had been symbolically saying goodbye for days. Their season of love and soul connection had come to a natural end and Elohim came to terms with it much sooner than he had expected.

His old confidante, the vanilla grower, placed a plate of rice and shark chutney before him. Elohim had come to love the mashed shark cooked in the juices of bilimbi and lime, then mixed with onion, turmeric and fresh spices.

He sat across from Elohim and began, “Listen my friend, if one does not heed the call for change, circumstances, often large, sometimes violent, will exact the change for you. Best to act on your intuition and let yourself be guided, as you may not like the events that force needed change and cycles upon you.”

Elohim sat under the tamakama trees and reflected on how his life had been so incredibly enriched by the presence of Amrita and how they had taught each other so very many things. The life of solitude that he had been living before the day his eyes had riveted upon Amrita, could never have yielded such a harvest of riches. And thus, is the universal longing for connection and companionship, if one wholly accepts self and others.

Quite soon Elohim felt a deep longing to return to Jordan and a keen desire for a strikingly different landscape, the silence and endless horizon of the desert. He returned to Jordan in a state of peace. It was not something he could explain to his brother who fetched him from the airport, but Levi could sense a great change in Elohim and secretly envied the calm countenance and easy acceptance of life that he possessed.

“What is in the wooden crate?” Levi queried. “My manuscript” replied Elohim with reverence. He didn’t mention the bottles of magical tincture and the single white lotus that lay on his great pile of papers.

His serenity broadened and encircled those around him with each snippet of storytelling about his life in the islands. He would tell Levi that Amrita was part of him, separated only by physicality. And physicality on this plane is but a mere pinpoint of focus in a vast, unfathomable ocean of consciousness.

Levi would look off into the distant clouds each time he listened to Elohim and attempt to stretch his mind like the rubber band that was holding up his sock. Slowly his understanding grew and it filled him with peace and hope.

Susan Dickson Barnhart

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Painting by Jane Dickson, Grimsby, Ontario

www.janedicksonart.com