Zakar Kiran

The day breaks and Zakar Kiran looks through his bedroom window, wallowing and wandering through his cluttered thoughts. Light at the end of the tunnel, but how long was this tunnel? How much longer did he have to keep walking along this tunnel? The first teardrop broke free, and the rest followed, forming what seemed like an unbroken stream. While everyone expected the outrageously beautiful and liberating day, his world was full of storms and he had known no calm waters.

On the left side of the four-sided wall was an enormous portrait of his father. A man he wished he spent enough time with. To learn how to man up from him. To have an undoubted shoulder that he could lean on, on dark days such as today. With every glance, his soul was agitated by the agony of unfairness and bad luck. He cursed the brevity of life for prohibiting him from one of the most important gems, a protector, a gift, a father, someone to believe in him. His father passed on when he was five and memories of him were vague. All he could remember was an image of a man he called “dada”. Today it’s all a memory.

His desk held a time machine portrait. Travelling back to his childhood with the only love he knew, his mother. The softness in her tone, tender love and care she showed him. Her affirmation of his beautiful name. The one person who believed in his potential. She always told him, “ZK, I’m afraid that the world might not provide enough space for your wings as you keep soaring”. Her words always elevated him to a world of possibility. His heart sank that the world didn’t provide them with enough time to see the dreams come true. Her picture reached and fixed what no existing literature could. He was a ghost in his machine. Journeying through time and space, the world was a fusion of impossibilities, pain, agony, and distress.

Today he turns twenty-four, wishing his parents would see how much of a man he had become. As he dries his tears, he picks a note from his desk that his best friend wrote him four months ago;

Dear Best Friend,

I’m grateful for the journey I have experienced with you. We have hoped and created a story that only we can tell. Tales of joy and sadness. We have hustled our way to gain the knowledge we have today. Remember the classes, the sports, the jokes not to forget when I pranked you and you walked into the principal’s office looking like a clown. Those were beautiful memories we created.

I hate to begin this second bit of my letter because it wrecks my heart to accept the fact that I will soon be gone to join your parents. I want to blame the divine powers for my sickness, but I’m grateful I was graced enough to spend days with you. To write our elaborate history with no fear.

My pledge to you is both in this world and the next. I hope you get the beach house we dreamt of, that sporty car whose brand you have kept a secret, build that family with a woman who respects and values you, write those lyrics and books; that you will be an irrevocable blessing. A force that cannot be ignored. My journey has ended from what it looks like. Always remember that I cherish and treasure you. My final thoughts are based on how blessed and lucky I was to have you in my corner. I hope I will be given the power to watch over you because I will never leave you.

Thank you for making my days in the hospital feel usual and full of surprises. You will always be my best clown. Love and peace, the brother I have known.

Yours,

Nay Ainsley.

His heart crashes further, his life has been wave after wave! “How I’m I supposed to carry on?” he whispers to himself. On this day, Zakar had planned to put an end to his suffering. Reflecting on Spinoza’s writing, he says, “hope is nothing but inconstant joy which has risen from the image of a future… whose outcome we doubt”. He progressively feels the void that nothing can fill as he contemplates his life events. Today he is still jobless with no bleak of hope. He is on the journey of life, but he is a weary traveler.

He leaves his inherited home and walks to a pharmacy as he counts the number of hours he has left on earth. In his hands is a note he drafted the previous night to prepare for the awaited happening. Finally, he makes it to the exquisitely well-furnished pharmacy, chats with the friendly pharmacist and cracks a couple of jokes, trying to make his ultimate moments counts. Like animals waiting for their destiny in the hands of the butcher, he silently says his last prayer, only that he takes his own life. The pharmacist interrupts his prayer by handing him a receipt that he should present at a different counter. Committed to his course, he goes ahead and hands the paper to the attendant, however unknowingly he hands his suicide note instead of the receipt. The attendant reads it through and asks him to meet her in the consultation room. Kiran, still unaware of his fortunate mistake, walks into the consultation room and the attendant wraps her hands around him. She is in tears and he is in shock, by the realization that he had his receipt in his hands.

“ZK, I don’t know you, but I would like you to walk with me to the river" - which was commonly known as Mayim Chaim {translated as living waters} - she uttered. Zakar was fuddled. The stranger attendant called him ZK, a name that only his mom used. The sparkle from her teary eyes somehow reflected her mother’s glow. Silently, he held her hand and together walked out. They strolled through the park, observing different individuals enjoying the breeze and nature. As they drew near the thick forest, she broke the silence;

“How incredible are they that created these trails when the forest was simply thick and dangerous? They travelled roads that no one had. They went through neither what no man had faced, nor will face. The objects represented here are intertwined with every soul, a clear sign that there is a mightier force that holds our universe. Even though life can be a complex web, there is a glimpse of hope that glimmers from divinity, encroaching every soul through the darkest of time”.

Zakar paused, looked in her eyes then continued with his walk as he dismissively argued that, “gods are mindless advisers who instill fear and gullible hope, with the misfortune I have experienced, I would be a schmuck to continue making myself miserable, it is better to rid myself of life”.

As he concluded his statement, they approached the magical flowing river. He looked into the water and saw his dazzling reflection. He heard a calming voice say, “the coward is a despairing sort of person, for he fears everything. The brave man {is of} a hopeful disposition.” He quietly said, “Zakar Kiran”! Zakar's Hebrew translation is “remember” while Kiran's Sanskrit translates to “a ray of light”. “Remember a ray of light,” he said reverently. All along, he had borne definitive and divine power in him.