What an Invitation!

A few months ago, a friend of mine tossed a book into my hands and said, ‘You are a reader. Read this! I know you’ll like it. You like every book anyway. And tell me the story afterward, Mr Storyteller.”
 I looked at the small book, judged it by its pink cover and the stylish calligraphic font type and thought, ‘This looks girlish, no way am I going to waste my time with superfluous and delusive feminine stories.’ But I, being myself, didn’t say these words out to her. Instead I pocketed the book and promised I will read it. She had no idea that it was going to lie in my shelf for months. It didn’t look ‘hard’ enough for me. Plus, it was too short a read – less than 150 pages. Again, I didn’t quite flow along with the author’s name which just didn’t look authentic to me. What kind of a name is Oriah Mountain Dreamer? And so I ignored it.

Then, last week I took a bus trip to Tonota to a national meeting on developing a culture of reading in our country. Somehow I took this book with me. I think I needed something physically small, something that I can stash in my pocket without creating extra luggage. Of course I didn’t read it on my way there – partly because I was sitting next to a loudmouthed friend who babbled all the way to Francistown, and also because I basically was still not inspired to read this little pink book.

The meeting was only one day. It was a highly fruitful conference attended by Botswana’s giants in the writing and reading fraternity. The night after the meeting, a nasty situation slashed me like an axe-chop that hit without any warning whatsoever. I mean one of those deep, personal conundrums I can’t share with you here. You understand. I couldn’t find my sleep that night in a hotel room. I tossed and turned, pardon the trite. I was in an intense emotional turmoil. I was tearing apart. Blood dripped from every pore of my skin. The TV couldn’t do any help. My friend, whom I told about the situation earlier, called from his room trying to give me some comforting words. He tried, yes, and I highly appreciate. But he sounded like a robot to me. When I finally slept, I thank God I didn’t have any nightmares.

In the morning we took the 500km trip back to base. The bus was almost full when we boarded. This time I couldn’t sit next to my friend, yet it was a time I really needed close company. The bus pulled off. My mind continued with its torturing thoughts, tormenting this little soul of mine.  As I stashed my hands in my pockets in attempt to sit comfortably, I felt the small book in there. I pulled it out. I read the cover again, almost for the first time. ‘The Invitation’ was the title of the book. And just under that, a short stanza from what looked like a poem read ‘It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.’ I saw these words lifting from the cover, one by one, and dancing in their calligraphic font right in front of my eyes. I smiled, in spite of myself. For the first time, I opened the book and read the first page. It was a poem! A poem that was written for me; written for the stranger next to me; written for my situation; written for the world; written for happiness and sadness; for fear and beauty and failure and joy; written for everyone and everything. But the poem was on only one page and a half. The whole book was filled with amazing prose, words based on this poem, weaved in a tense, cohesive, potent and gripping style I had never read before. The writing was deep and poetic, as though written by a seer or prophet of some sort.

Suddenly I wasn’t in the bus. There was no one around me but stars of words as I spun like an astronaut in this writer’s world. Pure meditation! It talked of my joys and pains and everything; my achievements and the lack thereof.  I learnt that in life we face obstacles that seem impenetrable; hindrances that threaten the very fabric of our existence. But despite all these, there’s always a steady push from within our deepest core – a push to survive and do right. We all can get this. And as we voyage through our lives, we get confronted by phenomenons that are interwoven into life itself. But nonetheless, we have to strive to live and beckon for those that impact us positively.

This little pink paperback opened my mind and poured me with floodlights of wisdom. It was nowhere near a chimerical book that I had so irrationally believed it to be. It filled my heart and fired up my hearth. It cured that nasty situation I was in. I greedily consumed it all and by the time I reached my destination, I was reading it again. Now, as I finish reading it for the third time, I can’t help but think of my friend, the friend who gave me this book. Such a beautiful book from a beautiful friend. Beautiful in cover and in content – both the book and the friend. I have a story to tell her. And I will tell it wholeheartedly, with the passion that I know the book has fired up inside of me. I respect this writer, Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Weird name or not, she just joined a list of my favourite non-fiction writers. Let us please turn off our televisions and READ.