Book Review - Zahir

I just came across a very fascinating novel called ‘Zahir’. I was flabbergasted with what I read out of this novel because it tells a story about love, life and marriage. And logically, it appears appealing. A lot of theatrical description is used which keeps the readers spell-bound.

Summary

The bestselling author – ‘Paolo Coehlo’ describes that love is not limited by marriage or society, or family, but it permeates the whole Universe. The story revolves around the man whose wife has run away in a mysterious way. Steeped in fame, money and great deal of work, he decides to forget her and move ahead. On the contrary, over the time, he gets as much obsessed with his missing wife, and thus the name - ‘Zahir’ (someone or something which, once we have come into contact with, gradually occupies our every thought, our every ounce, before we can think of anything else). From here, his Pilgrimage begins which starts with finding her out and ask her the reason of leaving him. 
During the journey, he reflects on his marriage and the reason of the problems between two people after marriage which put it to an end. He meets her acquaintances to reach her and figure out the reason, but he is introduced to a different world, beliefs, and mission of spreading love throughout the world. All these experiences change his outlook towards love, marriage and life. He not only learns those reasons but also the realisiation of ever-increasing love and much more.

“Finally, he explained to me that suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself—free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on.”

The story mentions about the stillness that comes after marriage, the constant distance which separates two railway tracks, which remain parallel but never meet - the boredom resulting into a distance with the passage of time! 

There should really be something which would guide people in going ahead happily together in life like forgetting the ‘personal history’ that limits the world we live in, and stops the ‘energy of love’ to flow inside us. Our soul should be that of a new born so that we can feel love afresh. 

That’s what I think we forget to do in life – be like a child, and feel everything as a new experience everyday. 

The novel speaks about the things one would have never thought about – the epileptic people who hear the ‘voices’, and follow the omens, the beggars who don’t have any ‘personal history’ and are free unlike us who are bound by our own limits imposed by the society and family, the soldiers at war who live true emotions of love between life and death.

Some worth-mentioning paras from the novel as answers to very important questions enough to deal with life and relationships in a better way

What is important to be happy every day?

‘In order for the true energy of love to penetrate your soul, your soul must be as if you had just been born. Why are people unhappy? Because they want to imprison that energy, which is impossible. Forgetting your personal history means leaving that channel clear,allowing that energy to manifest itself each day in whatever way it chooses, allowing yourself to be guided by it.’

What stops it from happening?

‘That energy gets blocked by all kinds of things: commitments, children, your social situation…and, after a while, by despair, fear, loneliness, and your attempts to control the uncontrollable.’

 A historic manifestation

‘According to the tradition of the steppes—which is known as the Tengri—in order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement; only then can each day be different from the last. When they passed through cities, the nomads would think: The poor people who live here, for them everything is always the same. The people in the cities probably looked at the nomads and thought: Poor things, they have nowhere to live. The nomads had no past, only the present, and that is why they were always happy, until the Communist governors made them stop traveling and forced them to live on collective farms. From then on, little by little, they came to believe that the story society told them was true. Consequently, they have lost all their strength.’

‘No one nowadays can spend their whole life traveling.’

How to overcome this hindrance?

‘Not physically, no, but you can on a spiritual plane. Going farther and farther, distancing yourself from your personal history, from what you were forced to become.’

 

How does one go about abandoning the story one was told?

‘By repeating it out loud in meticulous detail. And as we tell our story, we say goodbye to what we were and, as you’ll see if you try, we create space for a new, unknown world. We repeat the old story over and over until it is no longer important to us.’

Is that all?

‘There is just one other thing: as those spaces grow, it is important to fill them up quickly, even if only provisionally, so as not to be left with a feeling of emptiness.’

How?

‘With different stories, with experiences we never dared to have or didn’t want to have. That is how we change. That is how love grows. And when love grows, we grow with it.’

Does that mean we might lose things that are important?

‘Never. The important things always stay; what we lose are the things we thought were important but which are, in fact, useless, like the false power we use to control the energy of love.’