The Chronicles of Shamballa

Chapter XV: The Magic of the Ages

Inspired at the prospect of finding love, Carey took out his notes and journals and sat outside the shed with the hurricane lamp. Ram Babu got tired and fell asleep, while Kali unfurled the sail and let the wind guide the boat. It was almost midnight, a light breeze blew across the boat that flickered the flame of the hurricane lamp. As Carey went over his notes, he recalled what the Princess has asked him earlier on the carriage-

“Why does the map takes us to different places in the country, why not lead us to a single location and say- hey, here’s the lost city of Shamballa, go find it!”

He kept pondering upon this rather important question- why not point out a straight route to the map but take them through different places all over the country. He assumed that these places must have something to do with the final destination, maybe there are other clues. He consulted the drawing on his note once again and immediately realized that he had been utterly mistaken. The drawing depicted the journey from one end to the other- the starting point being the district of Champaran but as he observed closely, the end point didn’t lead to Shamballa but came around and ended in Benaras itself. He scratched his head in confusion and then he realized, that this was not just a map, it was a MANDALA of sorts, which in Buddhist traditions were drawings depicting the cycle of human life- from birth to death and rebirth, hence the complete circle, upon which a human soul is forever caught until he finds Moksha and frees himself from this cycle of suffering. Due to his uncanny ability to trace the drawing to its precise details, the copy he made on his note was as good as a photograph.

“This is why it’s called Kalachakra- wheels of time- ugh! How blind have I been?” said Carey cursing himself.

Next he began deciphering the five mysterious symbols on the map, which were the directions and names of different places. Following the same method, he decoded the rest of the symbols- after the symbol that represented the district of Champaran, there was a drawing of a mountain range but with a hole in it and then a tiny drawing of a waxing moon facing west. This he immediately assumed to be a cave in some mountain. Then came the Sanskrit letter for east- Pu, for Purab, meaning east, entangled and drawn over the letter that sounded like- Kh, which when put on the map led to the name- “Kathmandu”, which is in Nepal. There was a symbol that represented waterfall, next to the symbol of the location, after which there was another drawing of a moon shaped object but bigger than the previous one. Carey looked again at the map a bit closer, there were four moons drawn after the symbols. Each one growing bigger and fuller and at the final symbol, it became a full moon.

“What’s with the waxing and waning of the moon? What does it symbolize?” he said to himself, turning his note book upside down and tilting his head from side to side.

After almost an hour, he deciphered the names of the places and the rest of the symbols – after Benaras, which was the starting point, the journey leads towards the district of Champaran where there’s a cave in a mountain which would then lead them north-east to Kathmandu, where they are supposed to visit some waterfall, then they were supposed to move west towards Tibet, following a narrow pass of some kind and finally further north. Most peculiarly, there was no name that he found on the fourth symbol, just a drawing of a full moon. The fifth and the final symbol was the same- the starting symbol- the city of Benaras from where they had started the journey. He counted the names and symbols of the places. There were five symbols indeed but only four of them were names of directions and places- Benaras, Champaran, Kathmandu and Tibet. The last one was just a direction- U, the Sanskrit letter for north. Hence the drawing went round and round in a complete circle, the starting point was also the point where it ends. The drawing of the four moons started from the first location and ended at the fourth location. This was the only part that he was yet to decipher, his heart was filled with excitement when he finally understood the meaning of the symbols but he could not help but address the fear of the unknown when he could not find the meaning of the moons in the drawing. It was always dangerous in his profession to go on a journey with half cooked theories but no matter how he hard he tried, he could not make out the meaning of the symbolic moons.

“We shall burn that bridge when we get there!” he said to himself and looked towards the sky, it was about to be dawn.

He looked around, there was a thick fog around the boat but he could make out the lights of a distant city many miles away to his right. He looked at his pocket watch, they had been canoeing on the river for almost six hours- another six hours to go before they reach their destination. He closed his notes, laid down on the wooden planks of the boats and looked at the sky- the stars were peeking through the heavy clouds- the moon was hidden somewhere towards the west…

“The moon, hmm, four waxing moons and five locations and then it becomes a full moon…” he kept thinking.

Somehow the cool air of the river, stimulated his mind, he visualized the map in the cloudy night sky. He didn’t know much about astronomy or about how long does it take the moon to revolve round the earth. Even though they were elementary facts, he chose to focus more on his field, it didn’t matter to him whether the earth revolved round the sun or vice versa. Suddenly he jumped up in excitement-

“Madame Blavatsky would know the answer,” he said and began to rummage through his notes.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian author, who had been in the news during that time for her otherworldly ideas of a master race of human beings that lived high in the Himalayas. According to the writings in her journals, she believed that these beings possessed unlimited powers and highly advanced technology. She believed that these beings still existed and were secretly trying to help the world to be a better place. Carey was given her journal by the League, although they never told him how they have come to possess it in the first place. He had been studying the journal for over a year, looking for clues and direction but all he could find in that journal was Blavatsky’ never ending ideas of religion and philosophy. One day, he finally got bored and stopped reading the journal altogether even though there were only a few pages left. In the last few pages, she described that how she was beginning to believe more and more about the existence of the immortals and that she was starting to find evidence for it; then there were some crude drawings and then the pages were empty. Carey thought that it wouldn’t hurt to revisit the journal, hoping to find something in the light of the recently collected evidence. He skipped through the pages and finally landed on the page with the crude drawings. His eyes opened wide- those were the same drawings that he had found on the map- the moons- waxing and waning! He saw that there were more drawings on the adjacent page- strangely enough, the waxing moons were drawn from left to right on the page but they were separated by the mathematical symbol for addition- the plus sign; four moons with the plus sign in between them and finally just like a mathematical equation there was the sign for the equivalent or ‘equals to’ with the full moon on the other end of the symbol.

“Strange! Four waxing moons adding up to become a full moon? Why would she draw such a frivolous piece of information in her journal?” he said to himself, taking the journal closer towards the light of the hurricane lamp.

Suddenly, a stranger thing happened, the image of the full moon began to sparkle for a second under the light of the lamp. He looked closely and tilted the journal to one side- there it was again, there were some tiny invisible lines drawn at the centre of the map that only lit up under the lamp light. These four sparkling lines, which only lit up when the journal was tilted on one side, were drawn from side to side, dissecting the circle in four unequal halves and intersecting at the centre. Carey sat there looking at the strange effect all the while being more confused and then it finally hit him-

“What if these are not moons? They are parts of some sort of a round object?” and then everything started to make sense to him.

“The four figures that looked like the waxing moon were actually four parts of a big and oval sort of object and since they were distributed on different spots on the map, he strongly believed that the parts were located on the four locations that he had previously found- this is it- the map was deciphered completely! I did it- yes!” he wanted to jump and scream in celebration but he realized that he was on a boat passing through some treacherous waters, so he calmed his excitement and waited for the Princess to wake up so he could deliver the news.

Somewhere in the middle of the forest, miles away in some dark and deep cave, sat an old sage in deep meditation. He had a light piece of cloth over his body, he had grey hair and a long white beard and his skin was pale and wrinkled but he had a kind look on his face. In front of him was a small fire that had almost burned down to its embers. A strange glowing metallic piece, which magically floated one feet over the glowing embers, slowly rotating and making a low-pitched sound. The object seemed to be made out of a silver coloured metal but it looked like it was broken around the edges and it used to be part of something bigger. The sage or priest seemed to be controlling the object with his mind, keeping it perfectly balanced in the middle of the air. Suddenly he saw a vision, someone was coming to retrieve the object, someone worthy, someone he knew…he immediately opened his eyes and smiled.

“Welcome home, dear friend,” he said.