The Chronicles of Shamballa

Chapter V: Clues

“This parchment mentions about a place, no, no, not enough, hmm, this one’s a story about an immortal king, hmm, this could be it, and it’s around 60 years old, all right, this one’s a poem about the great kingdom of the north, right, this is 100 years old roughly, hmm…”

And so began Carey’s dive into the madness that Ram Babu feared so much. He kept muttering to himself, completely forgetting about himself and his surroundings, all he saw before his eyes were the crude parchments and ancient texts.

“Ten pieces of ancient texts, all mentioning the same place, yes!” muttered Carey.

He had arranged the texts that were either in the form of old books or in broken and ruined old papyrus. From top to bottom, there were ten of them- at the bottom was the latest mention of Shamballa in a 60 year old Sanskrit poem and the further upwards he went, the older the texts got. After a careful inspection, he reached the top of the arrangement. It was a 1000 year old text, a piece of papyrus half ruined and very fragile. Carey took his magnifying glass and brought the hurricane lamp closer. A light breeze blew through the open window and the flame flickered. He read the text carefully, it seemed like it belonged to a larger part of a poem and he couldn’t recall where and when he collected it. But when he took a second look at it, his eyes opened wide. It translated roughly as-

“Beyond the shores of the mother Ganges,

Floats the heavenly abode of our Lord,

Beneath the sands of time,

Lies the gateway…

The Immortals rests in their northern abode…”

This was it, the final piece of the puzzle, which indicated that the land of the immortals- Shamballa, was more than a legend. Why would they write stories and songs about something that was fake? It was obvious to him that some part of the legends must be true. Now all he had to do was to figure out from which era or location did this parchment belong to?

“Good heavens, how could I’ve missed this?” said Carey to himself as he took a closer look at the parchment.

“This poem actually tells of the place where the map is located, let’s see, it says about the river Ganges, now that’s a good place to look…hmm, floats the heavenly abode, floats? Could mean a temple or a shrine?” Carey’s eyes opened wide as he analysed the parchment.

“So on the shores of the river, there is a shrine that stores the map, and that could lead me to the land of the immortals- Shamballa!” he said to himself, holding the parchment in one hand and the magnifying glass on the other.

“Am I interrupting?” said the governor standing on his doorstep.

“Oh! No, no, do come in,” said Carey trying to tidy up the table.

“Quite the set up you got here, Mr. Carey, pray tell me what is it that you are after, and what brings you to my state,” said the Governor making himself comfortable and placing his riding crop on the table.

“Oh you know me Sir, same old boring studies…academia…research on the-the- local, ahem-culture-“replied Carey trying to hide his real objectives.

The Governor watched him closely and saw how nervous he was. But he didn’t like to think hard even though he felt that Carey was hiding something from him.

“Oh well, never mind, I was meaning to meet with you sooner but you know I’m so busy these days- the peasants- the revolting peasants- how are we supposed to do business here if they don’t cough up some good taxes. I mean we are teaching these savages the meaning of civilization-God! You look pale, I shall order some whiskey- Guard! Guard!” the governor was getting on Carey’s nerves- he was in the middle of a breakthrough.

A servant brought them a bottle of scotch and two glasses on a silver tray and served them. Carey took his glass and sat down quietly in his chair opposite to the governor.

“Mr. Cunningham, if I may, I’m quite weary from my work, so-“said Carey.

“I’ll get to the point Mr. Carey, I found my constables lying in the middle of a paddy field, with no idea how they got there. And then you arrived last night all by yourselves, I find it quite odd- I have to file a report of your kidnapping and I need to know how did you escape?” said the governor interrupting him and walking towards the open window.

“Sir, we arrived at the station and two men dressed as your constables were waiting for us. We got in the carriage and an hour later we realized that we were abducted and taken to the middle of the forest, I tried to negotiate and somehow managed to reason with them, finally I offered them every penny I had and they let us escape with the carriage,” replied Carey after taking a big gulp of the scotch.

“Hmm, peculiar. The thugs around here don’t let the white man go so easily,” replied the governor.

“Thugs?” asked Carey in shock- recalling his previous encounter with them.

“Yes, blood thirsty robbers, pagans, devil worshippers- no one gets out alive out of their hands. They sacrifice their hostages on the altar of their goddess- they are everywhere. If it were up to me, I would strangle every one last one of them in the name of Her Majesty. But, you managed to bribe them off- maybe they weren’t thugs- “explained the governor walking across the room and pausing at the right hand corner of the room, exactly over the bag of gold coins that the Nawab had offered him.

Carey was seeing this and he had to act fast before the governor asked him about that odd bag lying on the floor.

“Ah! I’m starving, haven’t had a proper meal in days,” he remarked trying to draw him away from the bag.

“Well why didn’t you say so, come with me and I shall treat you to a proper English supper, not that hot spicy garbage,” said the governor enthusiastically patting his back.

That night, Carey had his supper with the governor and somehow managed to listen to his war stories and bear his ridiculously loud laughter and poor jokes. Fortunately, the governor believed every single one of his lies and promised him that he would bring his kidnappers to justice. Sometime later, Carey bid him good night and went upstairs to his room, closing the door behind him. He immediately sat down to finish his work.

“The river is 300 kms. away from here, and I’ve heard of a ruined shrine belonging to some deity, I need to get there as soon as possible,” he said to himself.

He then opened an old text and studied it till he fell asleep on his chair. The night was calm and the heat was getting unbearable but the open window in his room let a soft breeze in that caressed his skin. He started dreaming again, this time, it was even stranger…