Yet joy, yet eternity awakens…’ This is how love is. Despite death and separation, the love that exists deep in life, its traces remain. The stream of joy remains. We have learned the same from Ravi Tagore’s songs. This love, this love, never dies. It never perishes. And that is probably why, even beyond death, the earthly heart walks its path in the light of Maya.
The time was 1977. At the age of just 25, Graciela, who was pregnant, left this world, leaving behind four children. Her husband was devastated by her untimely death. Pain burned like a fire in the heart of a sad farmer in Argentina. He clung to old happy memories and lived.
Pedro Martin Ureta once saw his wife delighted after boarding a plane and seeing a strangely designed farm from above. His wife asked if they could also create a giant guitar shape with trees on their own land! Guitars are his favorite! Pedro, under the pressure of work, said, ‘We’ll think about it later.’ But who knew that ‘later’ would one day become a dream come true!
Two years after his wife left, a silent movement began. Pedro spread out his canvas on his farm near the town of Labolay in central Argentina. Professional landscapers thought he was crazy. But what madness there is in love! Without any modern measuring instruments, Pedro would stand his four children at a certain distance and mark the rows of trees. Over four decades, about seven thousand seedlings were planted.
With hard work and indomitable determination, the place eventually took on a green appearance. The guitar body emerged from the dense green leaves of the cypress tree. And the beautiful neck of the guitar was made from the bluish bark of the blue eucalyptus tree. When viewed from the sky, it seems as if a green gamut, about a kilometer long, lies in the heart of green Argentina.
Surprisingly, Pedro himself never got to see this amazing love monument he created from the sky due to his fear of flying. But so what! From NASA satellites to Google Maps—everyone today sings the praises of this green songbird. This guitar in the forest catches the eyes of air travelers flying overhead.
This story of separation created by Pedro is an example of how the separation of a grieving person can turn into an entire forest. Where the voice of his untimely wife can still be heard in the rustling of the leaves of the tree. Just as Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal on the banks of the Yamuna for his beloved wife Mumtaz, Pedro’s guitar forest will remain an immortal symbol of love.