For the longest time ever, I have felt I have no kinship with Earth and it felt like a foreign land. Even in my childhood, I would look up at the stars and know in my heart that my true home was out there and I was the proverbial “million miles from home”. As a young child I did not have many friends and tended to always sit on my own when there were breaks at the school I was going to. It was called the Good Shepherd Convent and was, as you could guess, a school for female students only. My parents were of opposing religions and from countries that did not see eye to eye with each other. He was a Tamilian black Indian Hindu and she was a white Tunisian Muslim. They couldn’t have been further apart and their life together was a story in itself but I might talk about that later.
As a teenager, I still had that yearning feeling to go back home but I was able to mask it better and was sociable enough to make friends although I could count them on one hand. The friends I made, I was very loyal to and shared a deep connection with. Later on, as a young woman in a University in Nabeul this was still the case. At University, I tended to embrace what others called lost causes and one of them consisted of a direct clash with a special group of Muslim brotherhood called “Ekhwan Al Jihad” or the brothers of the Jihad (holy war). These people, whose shortened name was “Khwanjia” for all of us Tunisians resisting their backward rules and oppression, had gained a disproportionate level of power and Bourguiba, the President at that time, did not seem able to easily get rid of the hold they had – something that Ben Ali had been able to do after he orchestrated a coup against Bourguiba several years later.
Meanwhile, one of the higher level recruits of this brotherhood who lived on the same campus, had gotten besotted with me and decided I was to become his wife. He was very surprised at my resistance and later on, he joined those who would stop us from going to the University in our western attire and threw the large and heavy lid of a dustbin at me in one of his hate-fuelled acts against me. We were all wearing just jeans and normal sweatshirts or shirts that were buttoned to the top but they could not bear the sight of us, refusing to cover our heads and wear long dresses or skirts instead of what they perceived as “figure-hugging, male-enticing jeans from hell”.
There were other happenings where this madman tried to hurt me but I evaded most of the time his hateful attacks. I then changed University to go to ENSI in Tunis, a University for IT engineers but decided to leave after two years because the level of power and hate-fuelled acts of the Khwanjia had gotten too much to bear. With my very Hindu name of Geetha which related to the Bhagavat Gita, one of the holiest books in Hinduism, I stood a lot to lose if the Khwanjia were to seek me out and do God knows what to me. My path had always been one of peaceful resistance but that did not stop them from beating us, attempting to tear our hair out of our heads or throwing stones and other large objects at us.
I finally left for Geneva rather than Paris because I felt I could not handle Paris after being in such a small place as Tunis. Geneva was a lovely quiet town which I enjoyed living in a lot even though the immigration rules were quite tough in order to get there. Throughout the time in Tunis as a young woman, it had always been about resistance and avoiding getting into trouble with the Khwanjia so I had not thought much about my ultimate goals but as the quiet of Geneva seeped into me, my previous levels of extraneity took over and I started to feel homesick again, wanting to be out there in the stars.
Life took over while I still stayed firmly entrenched in my dreams of going to sleep and waking up in a planet I could call home again. I went through two marriages and had children from my second marriage whom I loved more than myself to the point of concentrating all my energy on them and almost feeling at home on Earth. Things had gone awry with my first husband because the values we lived by were at odds and he had issues he had never disclosed to me before our marriage. Things went awry with my second marriage as well leaving me in a situation where I was taking care of my children almost single-handedly and our expenses as well as the tax situation were making our financial situation stretched and our relationship as tense as it could ever be.
A break came in the form of a posting I was given in Dubai in 2007, where I was told there were no taxes on income and it seemed like a good idea to go there and at least ease the financial burden on us. Initially, my ex-husband was supposed to come and see if this could change things and he did come to visit in September 2007 but he did not want to lose his position as a Partner in the law firm he was working at so he decided not to join us, after which I decided to file for divorce in the fall of 2008.
In Dubai, I gained more financial freedom initially and was able to start reading again, not having to clean up everything and have to always cook like I was doing during my time with my second husband. I had a cook and a maid taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of. It was lovely to be able to keep my mind occupied with more than just my work and the children’s needs and I started even envisaging to write again. Suddenly things got out of hand in 2010 and I then created a blog to report most of what was happening, share literary produce such as poems and short stories I wrote or share my artwork. What happened from that fated date of August 12, 2010 (note that my birthday is August 12) is mostly laid out in my blog so I will not reiterate what I already wrote. This break in my life, though deeply disturbing and painful, brought out the spiritual side of me again and all that I had been thinking about during my teenage years and as a young woman began to take shape again.
After 2010 I became involved in several charitable endeavours and worked towards trying to make the Earth a better place, one person at a time, changing the sides of myself I felt did not sit well with the person I wanted to be. So many things happened, the culmination of which pushed me to the path of healing which I embraced wholeheartedly starting first with the study of Pranic healing after having experienced healing people with just the healing touch – later on, I became a Reiki Master and worked with Bach flowers remedies. The more I healed people, the more I felt myself being drawn into what I perceived as myself roaming the Earth in sleep, healing others in my dreams. At one point in Dubai, while I was doing a distance healing I felt inclined to create an energy pattern that was all around me. This became a daily work and I was given to know that I was building a Merkabah using Indian mudras.
Several months later, the Merkabah was apparently ready and I experienced in my dreams what I later understood were astral travels. I did not remember much of those travels which I relegated to the dream world so as to keep my drive to work and take care of my children during the daytime. As the years passed by, I started having the conviction that I had to build more points of energy in the Merkabah so that it could work for much longer distances. This was achieved in January 2017 and I experienced a great deal of light entering my body after which my astral travels became clearer. After a few days, around end January, however, I realised that the Merkabah had been ruined and I could not get back to weaving it.
The points of energetic alignment using mudras were no longer leading anywhere as if my mind could not make them properly anymore. My Merkabah had truly been broken beyond repair and I could do nothing about it as my correct weaving of mudras had been damaged. The years 2017 to 2019 dragged on until the passing of my mother in summer of 2019. Somehow, her demise triggered something that made my pattern of mudras able to align correctly to create the Merkabah again. I am still weaving slowly but surely and I know the Merkabah should be fully ready at least by 2026, perhaps for my birthday in that year to be a day of fulfilled hope again. I had fallen but I may just be able to go home and bask in blue again.
I hear You
Your call is whispers
shaking trees
rustling leaves
the breeze that sings in my mind
Memories unwind
I call You
Your ears are torrents
winding paths
lavish baths
The water falling from lids
meanders and skids
I see You
Your face is fragments
dazzling eyes
mouth In skies
The space in between you flies
Universe to size
Reading of the poem:
Cascading thoughts fly
Riveting performances
meet my starry eye
Fireworks reveal
a universe in a sigh
that slow flows me by
A peal of laughter (Appeal)
a sacrifice to the stars
in quest of the hours (Inquest)
Urgencies dissolved
natural phenomenon
unwinding my veils
Pray reach out to me
your hands token of despair
stroking sad my hair
Observe me throughout
I am a bunch of flowers
now ready to dry
Reading of the poem:
Dwindling spot of light
sinking in the skies
Ebb of the sun’s rays
Wane moon rises high
Dribble of silver oozing
a stream runs through night
Reflux of the breeze
Bubbles of air in river
Flow of the current
Three weave the stories
Their fingers points of flux gush
with oncoming rush
The stars now retreat
The winds drop on rising tides
The throngs flood the gates
Drift in the bees’ hive
A goodbye to royalty
stages in decay
Reading of the poem:
She looked at the water that was breaking into foam at the edge of the sand. It was a pale grey colour, unlike the blue water of the day before when the sun had been out. The night fell gradually upon the beach plunging her in a temporary darkness before some street lights flickered and illuminated the edge of the water. The deep side of the sea remained pitch black and undistinguishable from the edge of where the sky had ended at sunset.
The disappearance of the sun changed nothing in the stickiness of the atmosphere around her. Crows cawed as usual high above, their restlessness never curbed, not even by the night. Just before sunset a batallion of dragonflies had fought the crows for some space in the skies and though they outnumbered the latter, they still looked remarkably fragile in comparison and she had wondered what the outcome would be. For some reason her thoughts had drifted back to the boy in her childhood who used to pin down dragonflies with needles or a side of a safety pin. The memory of that cruelty had made her shudder.
She looked back at the skies but all the dragonflies had left now. Only the cawing crows were hastening back to the shelter of the surrounding trees. She felt the waters call to her again and she turned back to gaze at the black outline of the waves that she could hear breaking on the shore. She would have loved to plunge into the waters had they not been so polluted at this spot. She longed for the beautiful beaches she had once been at and where she could first soak her toes before plunging in delight right into the sea.
Her gaze went up beyond the waves and she saw a flickering star. She wondered how it was that something that looked so alive was but the last message of a dying entity. Something within her stirred. She could almost remember a journey through the void and in between a myriad of planets. Her eyes glazed over with tears. She wanted to be back up there, on that roller coaster ride far away from Earth. She could almost hear that other deep calling out to her. She sighed and looked back again at the shadow of the sea. One day she would be back there. One day she would return to the stars.
The road was getting darker as she drove further into the wilderness. Looking back into the rear view mirror she could see the city fading behind her. Soon the city lights would all be gone. She pondered whether she should continue on this road as there were no street lights. She realised that if she got lost here there would be nobody to turn to help for as not many people chose to go through this road, especially at this time of the night.
As if in answer to her internal question, a small light flickered ahead and she thought it to be a good omen. Surely there would be a few people ahead of her whom she could ask for help if she were to get stranded on these external routes. She pressed the pedal and sped toward the source of the light which flickered before it went out. Her doubts returned again but she decided to carry on all the same. All around her she could feel the desert slowly closing in on her as the road branched into smaller desert paths.
She drove on in almost pitch black except for where her headlights cleared a path in the black of the night. At times she was not even sure anymore that she was still on the path except for the fact that she could feel hard ground under the wheels. She decided to pay special attention to the feel of the road and to return in case she felt the front wheels touch any sand. She was aware that if she got stuck in the sand here there would be little chance of her getting out of it before the morning.
She marveled at how just a few kilometers away from the heart of a buzzing city full of nightlife one could go to such pitch black silence. In the distance she could hear the hum of the electrical posts that were relaying life saving electricity to the residents of the city. She thought to herself that while people could use candlelight to replace the bulbs in case of an outage nobody could do anything against the heat if such a thing were to happen. She remembered the month in July when her air conditioner had been out of service and the landlord had taken weeks to repair it. Each day had then been like a journey into hell and her helper had had to change the bedsheets every day.
She noticed a flicker again in the sky and decided to drive in its direction. The tiny flicker grew a bit and was joined by other flickers that started to grow in size as she drove nearer. She could see in the distance an outline of trees with the flickers just above the treetops. She hastened towards the point where all the flickers seemed to converge, anxious to find out where the flickers came from. Soon she reached the end of the desert path which then turned into sand. She took out the torch light from the glove compartment and proceeded toward the source of the flickering light.
After a few meters, she came into what seemed like a growth of several palm trees and other trees she could not identify. At the top of the trees she could see hundreds of them flickering in the sky. It was like a cosmic dance of light and she realised that the flickering was from fireflies. The sky was full of them. She wondered how the fireflies had gotten here and then decided to enjoy the sight without further questions. She raced back to the car and took out the mat that she kept there. She unfolded it on the ground and lay on it, gazing up at where the fireflies in the sky competed with the light of the stars. It was the first time in a long while that she could actually see the stars. The fireflies with the backdrop of the stars was so beautiful it brought tears to her eyes as she lay back gazing at the illuminated sky.
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