Daughter of Ganges

My soul friend has recently published her first book and I couldn’t be prouder. I’ve known her for the last four years in my time of working as a flight attendant for a short-haul airline in the UK. I met her at the briefing table in the crew lounge right before a bitter early Malaga duty. We immediately connected and had the time of our lives on many other flights that followed where we shared our minds, feelings and sometimes lunch too in the aft galley hiding from nagging passengers behind the curtain. Turn-around flights meant no break EVER, so whenever we found a couple of minutes to sit down in that stuffy small “kitchenette”, we’d take it. I was so captivated by her stories from the time she worked for an airline based in Qatar. This woman had wandered around the globe and her storytelling skills were those of mysterious Scheherazade. Her stories always had a final moral whether it was about adaptability to different cultures, modesty, light-heartedness or finding oneself. She entered my life in a watershed moment without even knowing it. I was battling my inner self in the hope of discovering my identity. The thought of coming out into society as a convert to Islam was overwhelming. Paradoxically with my newly chosen religion, she was my guru to the extent that she always guided me back to my own spiritual convictions. I would easily lose my confidence and at times I didn’t see myself as a strong woman, but she always reminded me of who I really was, at least to her. People like her have a venerable place in others’ hearts forever. I’ve never really had friends in my 27 years, at most a few acquaintances with whom I’d usually keep things formal, so to me she was a fresh breeze in the middle of a scorching desert that I had lost myself in.

We shared this immense passion for the Orient and we could lose ourselves in stories about Caliphates, pashas and Persian mosaics for hours. Every time she told me about her journeys in India and Sri Lanka, I swear I could feel the taste of laksa noodles in Colombo and the smell of New Delhi’s stuffy air. She later turned her leather notebook that served for years as a travel diary into a fiction masterpiece called Daughter of Ganges which was originally written in Romanian, her mother tongue. She is currently working on a Spanish translation, her second language and she is doing it on her own. What a genius, right? I took the liberty of working on an English translation and despite she is such a humble and modest person, I’ll probably have to insist that she publishes it so that people indulge in her ingenuity and creativity just like I did. She confessed to me that she’s just beginning to walk on this road, which I agree with, however the tremendous writing skills that her grandparents have instilled in her ever since she was a little girl cannot and must not stay hidden. The same way that her Amelia opens up to the people around her like a Lotus flower, petal by petal, my little writer, my spiritual teacher, my own Lotus friend begins to blossom right before my eyes.

I meticulously scanned her writing methods and managed to read the novel as if I hadn’t known the writer’s behind the scenes. I detached myself from the present world and let myself flow on her oriental wave. She brought me back to my adolescence right from the first chapter where I easily identified myself with a rebel Amelia, always looking for trouble. I later discovered Mark and Giselle’s dark secret and when I was finally ready to celebrate my triumph of uncovering a terrible truth, my Lotus flower flew me over to the south hemisphere of Australia where a new side of the story was being introduced to me. The transitioning from foggy Berlin to heated Vrindavan, the man with the iron face to boring college boyfriend Oleg, from past to present were so enticing. And right when you think you’ve finally got it, she quickly reminds you that you’re not even close. I was astonished at her ability to interweave her life experiences with vast imagination and endless creativity.

The little girl in me was jumping out of my skin when Amelia recollected her sky map in the attic room. I had spent hundreds of nights in my childhood looking for the Pole Star on the skyline and counting shooting stars. It wasn’t long before I arrived on the alleys of poor Varanasi and walked by the Ganges along Mark and Maki. Then, Shaina Kumar came on the stage and shared her most inner thoughts. I felt pity for her and contrary to people’s rumors of her witchcraft and a family of bad reputation, Shaina confessed her truth while bringing me new insights on a corrupt and unjust system which rules to this day. I discovered a darker and creepier side of India when Shaina took me on the forbidden shore of Ganges and really felt for Mark, a hopeless romantic in search of his love life.

I must admit, my heart often got small and lumps were fighting in my throat whenever I reached the stories of the Aghori people and their enigmatic traditions to which the writer brushed a subtle touch.

I like to believe that at core, this is a love story, but it wouldn’t do justice to the book. It is so much more than just a love story. It is about the adventure of our lives in discovering who we really are. We mistake self-understanding for self-indulgence, and we carry on without asking the perpetual question Who am I really? We are reminded of this existential question in Amelia’s story, who embarked on the road to her own terrestrial moksha. But this made me wonder: is finding yourself an inherently self-centered goal or is it actually an unselfish process that is at the root of everything we do in life? I scribbled five pillars for my journey of discovering myself on a big piece of paper and glued it on my bedroom wall.

1. Think about what you want

Roy T. Bennet said in his The Light in the Heart, “Believe in your heart that you’re meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles”.

Life would be unbearable if it lacked purpose. It’s categorically necessary that we ask ourselves what our values are, what truly matters to us and then follow the principles we believe in.

2. Seek your meaning

I shudder at the idea that we focus on the negative more than the positive. We let ourselves fall into victimized thoughts and sarcastic complaints about our circumstances and then we look at our imaginary self-made innocence through the eyes of our tired minds. Knowing what we want is fundamental to finding ourselves. We should separate our own point of view from other people’s expectations of us. Find happiness in yourself and not in others! That’s the key! Easier said than done, right?

3. Recognize your potential

Challenge yourself to take power over your life. By now, we should have already cast the spiral of negative thinking out the window. Now it’s time to take the reins of our life and lead. It proves the huge effect our decisions have on our lives. We create the universe we live in and we’re in charge of it. We need to shape our goals and take all actions available to achieve them without forgetting to experience our emotions.

4. Practice compassion

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”. People automatically feel fulfilled and complete when they create goals that go beyond themselves. In other words, sharing is caring, my loves!

5. Contemplate the value of friendship

It’s easier to have friends when life is easy, but a real friend never allows someone they care about to go through difficulties alone. Whatever hardships the world has in store, true friends stay together. I had to learn this the hard way; it took me 27 years but here I am. Friendship is an under-appreciated gift life has to offer. When you find it, don’t let it go. Nurture it and value it.

For this, I am grateful to my own Lotus flower. I am grateful for the sea of advice and serenity she brought to my life. To her I dedicate my courage to wear the scarf on my head today that says, “I’m a proud Muslim” and to her goes all my gratitude for finding my true meaning of friendship and companionship.