Seeking the magic in life

SANJUKTA DASGUPTA

Baisakhi Saha’s book Life is Abracadabra 21 magical stories reiterates T S Eliot’s observation, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” (Four Quartets).

Saha’s 21 magical stories prove that the hopeless, mundane, depressing, critical moments of frustration and psychic tensions gesture towards what Bertrand Russel, senor contemporary of T S Eliot had stated, “The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

The energy and zest of the language used by Saha to narrate her incredibly amazing journeys to diverse parts of the world is truly magnetic. The magic of moments lived is captured in the magic of words capturing and defining lived moments with the power and sensitivity of words that have arisen out of a magical mixing bowl of thoughts, feelings, emotions and lived experiences. But even if the book opens with the author’s desire to fly into the sky, like Wordsworth’s Skylark Saha is ‘true to the kindred points of heaven and home.’

The dazzling cover, with the blue winged eyes, perhaps suggests the butterfly effect implying the synchronicities that network our life and the ways in which we can connect the dots. Each journey as recorded by Saha is a dual journey, a journey of discovery and self-discovery. Each journey therefore spans two planes of reality, experiential reality and subjective reality, the world-scape and the soulscape.

This is a remarkably refreshing narrative that prioritizes self-actualization. It delves into psychic tensions and aspirations, with an evangelist’s ardour, celebrating spiritual support and divine guidance. The 21 magical stories that Saha narrates are pages from her personal memoir of multiple journeys in diverse geographies and journeys within the soulscape, where dreams, intuition, emotional intelligence, visions, imagination, and ideas are fused into a kaleidoscope of sights and insights, retrospection, introspection and extrospection.

SpotLight
LIFE IS ABRACADABRA
21 MAGICAL STORIES FROM MY TRAVELS TO MAKE YOU LOOK AT LIFE WITH NEW EYES
BAISAKHI SAHA

NEW DELHI, HAY HOUSE PURISHERS INDIA, 2022.
PRICE RS 399/

So, magic for Saha is not about conjuror’s tricks but about extra sensory perceptions, synchronicities and the charisma of a divine order that seem to play the role of a guardian angel, out of sight and yet an unparalleled vigilante. Speaker, writer and globetrotter Saha is obviously a skilled motivational speaker and influencer, as her free-flowing narrative style bears out. Life is Abracadabra creates the confidence of self-belief in the readers, who are coaxed to believe in themselves, take risks, think clearly and deeply.

The message of the narrator to her readers is to break free from fear, guilt, depression and stess, think out of the box, in order to chase one’s own dreams with conviction and hope. In Saha’s life, such an attitudinal purposiveness has resumed in dead-ends leading to turning-points, roller coaster rides flagged by fear and disillusionments, transforming into positive
milestones.

Young readers who desire to chase their own dreams irrespective of hurdles and stumbling blocks will find Saha’s refreshing and readable memoir as a self-help manual, which underscores thar despair, defeat and retreat must be conquered by faith and intelligent self-analysis. All the 21 magical stories admit the ubiquitous presence of God as the guide and protector who effectively propels our lives, steering each one of us to our respective goals. In the foreword written by the narrator of the tales, the very first line tells the reader that her compelling urge was to fly out of the known borders and boundaries and translate her dreams into reality. Saha writes unambiguously that her magical journeys have had an all absorbing target that she desired to share with her readers- ‘make you look at life with new eyes.’ Saha stresses that her sole-empowering mantra during times of crisis has been the Gayatri Mantra which she had memorized.

The first story sets the readers’ expectations about what may follow. Saha’s ability to regain her strength and mobility and rise out of the debilitating condition of a damaged spinal cord is truth remarkable. She however adds a disclaimer, forewarning others not to follow her example blindly unless they are sure that they “have really nothing to lose, when we can trade fear with faith, that’s when the real magic happens.”. In the Fun Facts section that concludes the story Saha comments, “I now know that diseases are caused due to emotional and environmental factors. Today they call it epigenetics.”

Interestingly, most of the chapters are followed by a framed section titled Fun Facts or have an Addendum section and these are in sync with the experiential narrative of life experiences and how each crisis is overcome in ways that could not be anticipated. While narrating how she tracked her missing wallet, Saha added the tagline, ‘Encountering my wallet in a dream followed by its materialization…’. Saha elaborates, “We can encounter creative solutions to our problems in dreams. We can have precognitive dreams that tell us about future events.”.

As a high-skilled white-collared worker Saha could have opted for a cushy life of material comforts, rather than be a bourgeois bohemian, a globe trotter. Her remark about corporate workers is quite intriguing – “Spendint the next 40 years of my life in a small cubicle, slaving for a big firm that promised great profits in exchange for my soul. Even the thought of it filled my entire being with dread.”

Saha’s fascinating experiences in Europe including the Black Forest Wedding with Indian rituals and vows and her negative impressions during her sojourn in Nigeria, where both the place and the native people prove to be completely untrustworthy at every level of her interactions for the entire period of her stay, are memorable. Saha’s experiences in Venezuela are narrated with zest, including the challenging moments when the Venezuelan military behaved in a frightening, aggressive manner. The captivating description of the flora and fauna of the areas in Venezuela that Saha had visited will invariably tempt readers to visit the places which very few young and single Asian women have visited. In fact, it is in Venezuela that Saha began her writing career, as a storyteller.

In her perceptive Afterword, Saha concludes with several caveats which gesture towards a world that only magic can enable us to transcend. Independent thinking rather than the herd mentality and social behaviorism that are embedded in the eco system should be prioritized, according to the young thinker.

Saha urges the need to train oneself in “authentic confidence” and be on guard about the narcotic entrapments of contemporary society. Unequivocally, she warns her readers, “What society values in us is mostly what kills us or makes us sick. This is not just the case with the beauty industry. It is everywhere. The billion dollar pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in keeping us diseased. The food industry has a vested interest in messing with our health. The capitalist society has a vested interest in keeping us emotionally isolated. Healthy people are not good for the economy. And we are vulnerable to these systems.” A similar logic may lead us to add that the profits of the global military weapons industry ensure that wars continue and ordinary people suffer. So if the proxy war stops in Ukraine, war somewhere else is bound to start elsewhere, as a sustainable development goal, unfortunately.

Life is Abracadabra by Baisakhi Saha is bound to captivate, motivate and inspire young readers and not so young readers to think and act independently and lead their lives according to their dreams rather than become mechanical cogs in the wheel.

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(The reviewer is a retired Professor of English and a former Dean of Arts, Calcutta University)

The Statesman
Thu, 16 February 2023
https://epaper.thestatesman.com/c/71701648

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Life is about magical experiences for solo traveller and author

ASHOK CHATTERJEE
KOLKATA, 1 FEBRUARY

Kolkata girl and Costa Rica-based Baisakhi Saha released her book, Life is Abracadabra at the International Kolkata Book Fair.

The author insists that the book, which is more than a travelogue, is also about her brush with spiritual experiences, something of an inner journey for her.

Baisakhi says the book, which has 21 magical stories from her solo travels and stay experiences from the last 20 years. She is also an international motivational speaker and was a guest speaker at Women Economic Forum this year.

About her book, the author said “Life is also like magic because you create it when you think or do something. But we do not do it consciously. We spend most of our time reacting to life. But if we can rise above it and look at it from a new dimension then life would become a playground of creation.”

Through her stories she had tried to show humans have a two-way communication with life.

Recounting her magical moments, she said, “It has happened with me many a times that I was into life-threatening situations and it appeared to be the end but then suddenly life rearranged itself, some magic happened for me. For me at those moments an inner guidance propelled me to do things to come out of such situations. Since I was travelling alone my intuition became very strong.”

In the chapter The Street of Nines readers can read how dangerous situations became magical for her.

Baisakhi had a crippling back injury during the first year of her university. The pain and restrictions led her to a situation where she tried to take her life. “When that moment comes, when you have nothing to lose, that is when that magic happened for me. That night I was spontaneously healed. I can explain the process through epigenetics.”

She recounted another of her such experiences from Venezuela where she had an encounter with the military, where they tried to misbehave with her. But her forgetfulness to comply with a regulation led to save herself.

About her wanderlust, Baisakhi said she got into the habit after being inspired by her fellow German mates in the university.

“They backpacked all the places, which also inspired me,” she said.

Talking about her magical experience she recalled how her waving at the planes flying to Europe and telling them that she too will be in Europe soon became a reality when she won an all-expenses paid trip to Switzerland. “There is a mind-body connection which even the doctors can’t explain. I believe imagination is our source code. It is our divine gift. In imagination, lies all our power,” she said.

Travelling solo she spent one-and-half-years in Africa, two years in South America, three years in central America, proving her spiritual lessons.

The Statesman
Thu, 02 February 2023
https://epaper.thestatesman.com/c/71575290