A wandering pilgrim with no name sits cross-legged in the sand, facing the loving samundar. The pilgrim plays bansuri for a goat who is the colour of dandelion flowers. The samundar loved the song so much that they came inland and bartered for music. The pilgrim and the samundar agreed, that a piece of the samundar will live on land, and a piece of music will live in the heart of the sea.

We lost count of the number of times we packed up our loves and left our homes, and sat on the shore with our suitcases, playing music for animals who resembled flowers, while our spirits were cut into jigsaws, while we threw away our names and birthplaces, and watched the sun fragment into amethyst and coconut shards as it walked backwards into the ocean.

In the present day, the fragment of music in the sea is represented by a white dolphin, who is an incarnation of Krishna, and Jesus Christ. They are the last living dolphin. All the sea animals are gone because we ate them.

Because history always repeats itself, I am receiving ‘WORK IN PARADISE’ letters from the Queensland Government, as is my cabbage, as is my goat, as is the composition of the lullaby formed on the dream from Calcutta to Levuka, luring our mouths again into the songs of the green. My past life hangs as an apparition in the jungle, with a nose ring, with a bangle, with a sickle, with a talking parrot.

Soon, the samundar song will walk the earth in human form and speak to and transform deep parts of the contemporary psyche and form, the way that psychoactive plants do, and the effect of this will be felt across generations.

Songs inscribed in the flames of our footprints are unknown mists, rainforests and deserts in which we once lived. We lived again and again to understand the formula in which we were written. Coca leaf, tape-recorded bird sounds, a handful of silky sea vegetables, offerings to maps in which we are nameless.

Wandering pilgrims will dream of music in the form of a white dolphin. Music of wish, music of anguish, music of ecstasy, and music of dandelion flowers sound the same in the womb of the loving sea.