t2 on Sunday, Diwali 2023

REVIEW: LIFE IS ABRACADABRA

“Magic only happens to those who can make it real in their imaginations”—Baisakhi Saha in Life is Abracadabra

Life is Abracadabra narrates 21 magical stories from travels across the globe that make us look at life with new eyes. It is about listening to the subtle nudges of our hearts and following our calling.

“It is about noticing the signs and synchronicities strewn on our paths and acting on them, piloting life from an altogether new dimension of reality. When we do, life will be on our side too,” says Baisakhi in her second book about how magic is waiting around the corner, if only we would take a step back and recognise it.

Deeply rooted in the German psychoanalyst and theorist Carl Jung, synchronicity undergirds much of Baisakhi’s persuasions and lived experience. As she explains simply, synchronicity provides you with a context to reflect more deeply, to take the resonance of a particular moment into account so that you can create passageways from one level of the mind to another leading to a fuller and more profound communication with the self.

The blue butterfly is a recurrent image in the book and highlights this synchronicity. Uncluttered and with the sound of a brook sallying forth, the crystal waters of Life is Abracadabra gently steer the reader into a peaceful landscape that lulls the mind.

It negotiates its own genre, and could be read as a memoir, a travelogue, a self-improvement guide or a motivational pointer to empowering ourselves. Baisakhi believes in no coincidences, but always a reason why something happens.

The book is riveting as it recounts some hair-raising moments during her travels—almost being killed by the Venezuelan militia, the possibility of electrocution in a flooded room in Nigeria, and so many more, only to be saved by her faith and belief system—the magic that she was a recipient of.

Baisakhi was born into a traditional Bengali family in India, and had a childhood that was pockmarked by a pugnacious father’s regular beatings. She grew up in a family with domestic violence, incessant arguments and irresolvable disagreements among all the adults and relatives surrounding her.

It is her non-judgemental, rational mind that helped Baisakhi keep the light of adventure and joy alive in her heart, and this gave her support and carved out paths to realise her own destiny—constantly supported by the similes of her guardian angels and friends who came to her aid in Europe and Nigeria when she was robbed or just not paid by brutally unethical bosses.

Healing, on the other hand, means creating the opposite of an undesired experience. Because unless we heal, our external realities cannot shift. The best way to heal, Baisakhi suggests, is to give our unconditional love to that inner child within us that was powerless to external circumstances.

It is to her credit that she turned her sometimes violated and violent childhood into a rich and precious opportunity by doing her best pursuing her studies and earning scholarship to first junior college and then university in Singapore. She was selected by Singapore Airlines. After that the world swung open and she continued on her many journeys and studies that took her to work and leam about human limitations and possibilities.

Just for learning to look within ourselves, to find our anchor and our answers, this beautiful book, written with remarkable compassion, grace and glory, could be an excellent book to begin our journey as travellers, seekers for self-empowerment or just readers who appreciate a clear style that is eminently enjoyable.

Book Review - The Telegraph — **The Telegraph – Book Review**

— BOOKS —

The magic of the blue butterfly

Author Baisakhi Saha says why she believes in synchronicity and why it could improve the lives of all of humanity

The Telegraph | Published 12.11.23, 10:01 AM

JULIE BANERJEE MEHTA

Author Baisakhi Saha was born in India and landed up in Central America on her final exchange programme, having navigated through Asia, Europe, Africa, South and North America, and got a permanent residency in Costa Rica. “It is so peaceful that it has no military, only police and is one of the five blue zones of the world. Blue zones are where one can find most centenarians, people living past hundred, and longevity is a reality,” says Saha, who is living the dream that millions aspire to.

In her book Life is Abracadabra, she writes about the Central American country of Costa Rica as a land of “pura vida”, meaning “pure life”, where people greet each other with that phrase rather than a ‘hello’ or ‘how are you’. She shows in her book that every person has the capacity to see the blue butterfly—a metaphor for magic—within themselves, if only they develop the capacity to grasp it. Excerpts from a t2oS chat with the young author…

Magic happens to those who can make it real in their imaginations. Would you say that you were chosen by destiny to beat such unimaginable odds?

I would say that we make our own destiny. Everybody has their chances in life, although it may seem like some are less privileged than others due to the seemingly insurmountable challenges in their lives. We are never ever given a challenge we are not ready for, or that we cannot overcome. And that path of navigating challenges becomes magical when we can hone our imaginations. The purpose of all of life is to provide a context to the little self incarnated into this physical body to become the grandest version of the greatest vision it ever held about who it is! And how can we little selves in our little human bodies have an experience of our grandeur and splendour without making mistakes, without blindly rushing into dark alleys and encountering the dead-end then emerging from it bigger and wiser?

How would you explain this? Is this third dimension or light available only to a handful of folks?

Not at all! Synchronicities happen to all of us. But most choose to ignore them, as our society, our cultural conditioning, our educational institutions, our belief systems, our religions and traditions in place are not conducive for us to think this way, where one can defy logic and reasoning in favour of something intangible, something infinite that you cannot grasp with rational or linear thinking. Hence, it may seem like this happens to a select few. But if you can take heed, that is get out of your mind and allow the guidance within to show the way, then you will experience a magical life! A synchronicity is like a symbol through which the deeper subconscious mind communicates with the surface consciousness, the higher self converses with the little self-incarnated into a lifetime.

FAITH ONLY EXISTS IN OUR IMAGINATION, WHEN WE ARE IMMERSED IN THE BLACK NIGHT WE EXPERIENCE IT. FAITH HAD KEPT MY ANGELS AWAKE WATCHING OVER ME, WHEN I NAVIGATED THE MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD ALONE, A YOUNG UNMARRIED GIRL.

This story would be a very different story had you not really jumped all the hurdles and physically healed, leave alone mentally…

Yes, it would have been an altogether different story. I probably would have never discovered magic if I had remained in my comfort zone, if I hadn’t listened to my heart’s callings, if I hadn’t responded to the announcements of outer intention… I would have been stuck in one corner of the earth, doing something for a living I probably didn’t fancy, trying to live up to the expectations of others without ever being in touch with my own wishes, wants, dreams and desires, perhaps battling some kind of chronic or acute illness… you see my point? The discomfort, the disease, the so-called disasters in our lives are all reminders to take heed, signs that we are not living our true purpose. Life begins at the end of our comfort zones.

Now when you look back and try to retrieve your memories, how can you depend on the instability of memory?

Well, memory or not, it was a medical fact that I had an injured back with prolapsed intervertebral discs backed by MRI reports, that I underwent exorbitant therapies at my university hospital in Singapore on a regular basis, that I used to consume an insane amount of painkillers which had numbed my body to their effects so higher doses couldn’t alleviate my pain, that I had to wear a big thick belt around my waist at all times to support my spine, and that I had lived like that for over two years… until life had become so miserable and unbearable that I was contemplating suicide, more often than not. Doctors had barred me from doing anything that I loved, like athletics, sports, running on hard ground, dancing, climbing stairs, wearing heels, bending, not for a few months but for the rest of my life.

Then one night when I was ready to call it quits, when I didn’t care about the doctors’ diagnoses, when I dared to step beyond the limitations of my physical capacity, was when my pain suddenly disappeared, the excess weight came off and I started dancing in heels! Memory or not, this was a lived experience that happened publicly and my batchmates at university were all aware of.

Could you specifically state what had changed, where did you feel more empowered and why do you think it happened?

Yes, my pain had transcended in that mystical moment when I dared to stray beyond my physical limitations. The joy I felt from such an act had suddenly changed my vibration from that of powerlessness to real empowerment. To explain this from the perspective of energy and vibrations, when I had renounced fear and done anyway what I loved, I created the opposite vibration of fear and limitation, which was joy and healing. This is how miraculous healings and spontaneous remissions happen anyway, when the vibration of the physical being suddenly changes through a mental shift of perspective. Everything is vibration. The animal and plant kingdom communicate through vibrations, but we humans are most times out of sync with our own vibration.

When you prayed, to which divinity did you pray to? Is there a religious element that you were conditioned to praying?

We think God is like us humans, an angry, revengeful God with a huge ego that needs satiating with endless prayers, rituals, and good deeds, else he would punish us and withhold his blessings. So we beg, plead, beseech, implore God to grant us our wishes, and in the process we announce the lack of whatever we are praying for in our lives. The universe is like a giant mirror, reflecting back to us our own internal vibrations. So, when we pray in a state of lack, we experience more of not having whatever we desire. Therefore, the way to pray is to command the Universe to bring us what we wish to experience, knowing and believing it is already done for us, and God will be our delivery man! That is called faith.

Faith only exists in our imagination, when we are immersed in the blackest night, we experience it. Faith had kept my angels awake, watching over me when I navigated the most dangerous countries in the world alone, a young unmarried girl.

I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE NEVER DISCOVERED MAGIC IF I HAD REMAINED IN MY COMFORT ZONE, IF I HADN’T LISTENED TO MY HEART’S CALLINGS, IF I HADN’T RESPONDED TO THE ANNOUNCEMENTS OF OUTER INTENTION…

Yes, I am a Hindu by birth. Because as soon as we are born, we are given a name, a religion, a nationality, a race, and we spend the rest of our lives defending a fictional identity. But travelling helped me see the futility of such cultural beliefs and practices that we give our lives defending.

How do you intend to process your personal experience to an experience for humanity?

I was caught in yet another life-threatening situation when I was shown the book in a dream. And when I awoke, I felt the dream was telling me that “you cannot die with these stories inside you, you will live to share them with the world”. I realised my life until then had been an experience of truth gathering, and now was the time for truth sharing. So, I tell my tales to anyone that would listen, of magical coincidences and miracles. And if such magical experiences could be a possibility for one person, they could be a possibility for all of humanity.

Julie Banerjee Mehta is the author of Dance of Life, and co-author of the bestselling biography Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen. She has a PhD in English and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, where she taught World Literature and Postcolonial Literature for many years. She currently lives in Calcutta and teaches Masters English at Loreto College.