Make your life a fairy tale

A part of my bookshelf

Happiness is as simple and frugal as a glass of wine or a roast chestnut. I learned that from a book which I have read again and again, one of my favourite books. It is Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.

I was introduced to Kazantzakis in my mid-twenties by a casual acquaintance. “Have you read The Last Temptation of Christ?” I was asked. I had heard about the book but was not aware that it was available at the Ernakulam Public Library whose member I was in those days. I made a beeline to the library as soon as I learnt about its availability. The book engrossed me so much that I sat up a whole night to read the latter half. I was hooked to Kazantzakis. I read all of his books which were available in that library and later at the State Central Library in Shillong. Later when I was teaching in Delhi I got personal copies of both Zorba and The Last Temptation.

I don’t know how many times I have returned to Zorba. I could just open any page randomly and find something inspiring whenever I was down in the dumps. The novel does not have any neat plot. As one of its earliest reviewers famously said, the novel is “plotless but never pointless”. 

I was quite the antithesis of Zorba in all those days. I could never imagine myself to be as gaily liberated as that cheeky yet profound old man. I was more like the young narrator of the novel who is seeking to gain wisdom from books. “You understand, and that’s why you’ll never have any peace,” Zorba shouts at the narrator angrily. “If you didn’t understand, you’d be happy.”

Life is not so much to be understood as to be experienced. There is an eternal rhythm in nature. The real sin is to violate that rhythm. When you tune yourself to that rhythm, you experience the Sacred Awe. The highest point one can attain is not knowledge, virtue or goodness – but the Sacred Awe. Life becomes a miracle once you reach that point. Life is a fairy tale.

As I’m approaching Zorba’s age, I have become a little like him. A little. A fraction of his wisdom has seeped into my soul. And my life is quite like a fairy tale. I know what it is to have no ambition and yet work like a horse as if I had every ambition.  I have learnt to live far from men, without needing them, and yet to love them. I have learnt to listen to the music of the oceans and the mountains.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 245: #BestFriendBook